Yahoo News How Daisy's 'Below Deck Sailing Yacht' Romance with Colin Went from Hopeful to Her 'Worst Nightmare' (Exclusive)
Bravo's Daisy Kelliher tells PEOPLE that her boatmance with Colin MacRae "unfortunately wasn't smooth sailing" — and that she had reasons to be "leery" of the Chief Engineer before they hooked up
Below Deck Sailing Yacht's Daisy Kelliher has no problem admitting the "very complicated" dynamic with her friends–turned–lovers Colin MacRae and Gary King took a major toll on her during the course of season 4 — and, to some degree, still plays on her mind to this day.
Monday's episode showed Parsifal III's Chief Stewardess make a major slip while emotionally and physically exhausted aboard, calling Colin by his friend's — and her former fling's — name in bed.
Colin was already trying to decide how to negotiate the "true feelings" he was developing for Daisy since their surprise hookup in the context of his friendship with the yacht's First Mate. Making things even murkier, Gary made a drunken, yet "tactical," revelation that he and Daisy had slept together twice in the recent past — and agreed to keep the trysts a secret, even from close pal Colin.
Fred Jagueneau/Bravo
On Monday's double-header episodes, Colin and Gary talked through their issues (as much as boat bros do, at least), and Colin assured Daisy that he and she were "moving in the right direction." And as she told PEOPLE previously, she had already been hopeful there was "a future there" with newly single Colin since before filming for the season began.
But the moment Daisy half-sleepily called Colin by Gary's name, it seemed all their momentum as a couple had been scuppered.
"I have never been mistaken for anybody else in bed," he said in a confessional interview. "It's a blow to the ego. I mean, maybe she's actually thinking about him when we're fooling around? I don't know."
Hours after he called Daisy a "stage five idiot," she explained herself: “I thought you were Gary. Because the two are in my head, you’re both f---ing with my head, I just want you out of my f---ing head." She insisted the misnomer was Gary's fault for his aggressive flirting during drunken days out with the crew, but Colin wasn't convinced.
"It's his fault that you’re thinking about him?" he challenged. "You're blaming literally everyone and everything else for what comes out of your mouth. And you need to take accountability."
Later, he told her plainly, "What I want is for you to figure out what you want."
Bravo
Now, nearly a year since filming season 4, Daisy tells PEOPLE the transition from friends to more with Colin "kind of just switched" the moment they first kissed. "It all started to get really, really heavy, really quickly."
While she is very clear that "Colin and I were definitely a lot more serious" than any potential romance she had with Gary, she does believe Gary's presence "added another dynamic to mine and Colin's relationship."
The would-be couple "weren't getting on — and Gary was still there," says Daisy. "It was complicated."
Compounding the confusion, she and Colin — who'd been friends for three years prior to becoming intimate — had plenty to learn in this new phase of their relationship
"We got to learn a lot about each other," she says. "I think he was more surprised by me than I was by him. I think he was surprised at how affectionate I am because I put on a scary facade — everyone thinks I'm this ice queen when I'm working, but I actually do have a soft side, and I am intimate and I am affectionate."
Bravo
The pair never labeled anything during their final weeks aboard the sailing yacht. "I definitely had my wall up," she admits, and "it takes a lot for me to break that down."
She continues, "Unfortunately it wasn't smooth sailing, no pun intended. I think in an ideal world we would've liked each other, we would've gotten to know each other and kind of progressed into that. But I did have a history with Gary, and that's not anyone's fault. Colin was taken [at the time I slept with Gary], and Gary and I get along and, yeah, I guess we have feelings for each other to some level. So that just added so much complicated stuff."
She does add an important bit of context that might surprise Below Deck fans. "I was also leery of Colin. He does have a lot of girlfriends, so I didn't want to be just another girlfriend," she says. "And for me, I felt he needed to take time to be on his own and figure life out on his own before we got into something serious. So there was a lot going on while we were trying to navigate our feelings for each other."
Fred Jagueneau/Bravo
As for where her relationship — friendship or otherwise — with Colin stands now, Daisy chooses her words carefully. "I don't want to give too much away, but a lot has happened in the last few weeks and at the moment I don't expect to hear from him," she says.
"It's difficult to not be able to kind of comment on it because I don't want to spoil anything for the viewers or anything like that," she continues. "But yeah, a lot has happened in the last year."
As someone who's previously seemed hesitant to get entangled in a showmance, Daisy is blunt in acknowledging that "this playing out so publicly is definitely my worst nightmare. It's not the most fun experience and definitely not the way I thought things were going to go, but here we are."
But after a season marked by literal "s---shows," explosive breakdowns and near-collisions (and those are just the problems with Parsifal III itself), Daisy tells PEOPLE: "I feel like I've been through the worst of it. I've dealt with a lot over the last few weeks, and now I'm just putting it behind me and just hoping everyone enjoys the season and that will make it all worthwhile."
With a a handful of episodes remaining, Daisy says she's still "a yes person at the moment" when she considers whether a return for season 5.
"This season's been definitely hard," she acknowledges. "But yeah, I'm still enjoying the ride and if they asked me back, for sure I'll probably do it — unless I'm not completely scarred by the end of this season."
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Below Deck Sailing Yacht airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.
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