Jemele Hill Shares ‘Below Deck’ Behind-The-Scenes Details With Leslie Jones: “I Was Drunk As F**k”

Jemele Hill is one of the most memorable charter guests to appear on Below Deck, but the real question is: how much of it does she remember? Turns out, just enough to share some of the good stuff.

On the latest episode of her Spotify podcast, Jemele Hill is Unbothered, Jemele spoke with Below Deck superfan Leslie Jones about her experience on the show, which took place in 2019 and aired in early 2020. “You can imagine my joy and my surprise when one of your commentaries made its way to Below Deck,” Jemele told her guest. “It was the observation of all observations, you knew, I was drunk as f**k. Like super, super drunk. We had been drinking all day. Like, I had been drinking since about 9 am in the morning.”

And Leslie recalls knowing the episode was a classic — before she even saw it. “I was like, I don’t know who this black girl is but I swear to god, I am going to watch this episode.” And while the two women weren’t yet friends, Leslie knew it was just a matter of time, telling Jemele her first thought was, “She don’t know me but she is my homegirl. You reminded me of some of my friends. Because people don’t know black women can f**king drink.”

At around the 43-minute mark in the podcast, Jemele reveals to Leslie, “Let me tell you how they set you up on Below Deck though. Because I feel like you need to go on Below Deck. You need to go on there. I think you will be like the perfect, perfect charter guests. So they get you tuned up. Before we even make it to the yacht, we’re at a bar that’s right on the marina area and the producers are like, yeah, we’ll just like go over like the mic packs, you know, just general stuff. You should know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, y’all want some shots?”

Of course Jemele and her pals happily said yes to the shots and Leslie told her, “They get you f**ked up before you get there!”

Jemele detailed how they got to the boat “feeling no pain,” and before she knew it, “As soon as you get on, you get the champagne, you’re like, alright! Kate’s showing you around the boat.” Though the primary guest and the chief stew didn’t get off on the best of terms. “Having watched the show, I know kinda how she is, or at least how the show portrays her to be,” Jemele recalled. “But she was a little bit frosty and I was just like wow, we ain’t been here an hour yet and you seem frosty. Now, once I saw the entire season, I realized wow, because the crew had gotten into a huge fight like right before we got there.” The two ended up becoming pals… but not before Jemele had a few more drinks.

Referring to the first night on the boat, Leslie told Jemele of her birthday dinner, “You had me laughing! I said, Jemele is not gonna make it to the cake and you started leanin’! When you got up and whispered to your friend, I was crying.” Leslie is of course referring to the infamous Dick Cake Incident, and while Jemele thought she was being covert about how intoxicated she was, she also admitted she was thinking, “I’m about to pass out in this lovely lobster ravioli.”

“That was the best episode,” Leslie confirmed.

In fact, it was so good that it has opened up a whole new world to Jemele and her friends. “So now my friends they call it, they’ll be like, oh we about to go out and get BDD which is Below Deck Drunk. So now it’s a whole thing.”

“Them shows is like that, they just want you faded,” Leslie told her.

And Jemele also confirmed that at night two’s ’90s dance party night, she was even drunker than the previous night! “We were trashed that night,” she said. “[My friend] had to walk me to my room. The night before I left on my own free will, that’s the difference.”

Leslie replied, as it is worth repeating again, “That was the best episode ever.”

Below Deck airs Monday at 9 pm ET/PT on Bravo. 

Listen to Jemele Hill is Unbothered