Water under the bridge! Malia White admitted that her relationship with Below Deck Mediterranean costar Sandy Yawn took an awkward turn when the captain questioned her sexuality — and it couldn’t have come at a worst time.
“To be fair, that comment was made the night before we started filming. So I kind of had to just get on the boat and put a big smile on,” Malia, 31, exclusively told Us Weekly. “I think with Captain Sandy, the thing that I know to be true is she never means harm. She never means disrespect or she never means for it to be hurtful.”
Last year, a clip posted to Cameo, a website where fans can purchase customizable messages from celebrities, where Captain Sandy, 56, seemingly discussed Malia’s sexuality.
“Malia, I think, secretly gay, to be honest. That’s my opinion. Everybody in production thinks that,” Sandy said in the September 2020 video before asking, “This is going to be public, isn’t it? So maybe, who knows?”
At the time, the Below Deck Med captain tried to clear the air by explaining that her statement wasn’t what it looked like.
“I was wrong for making that comment, that clip was taken out of context,” Sandy wrote via her Instagram Stories after the video went viral. “That clip was taken out of context, it was sliced to make it into something it was not. My apologies to Malia!”
Malia, for her part, also took to social media to address the situation.
“Hey guys, it’s Malia. My personal life seems to be quite the topic at the moment. I am not on Twitter, I don’t do a lot of Instagram Lives, so I thought that I would send out a message in my own words,” the bosun said in a since-deleted Instagram video in September 2020. “I was just as shocked as everyone else. I’m not sure why my sexual orientation is being discussed in Cameos.”
She continued: “I’m not sure why my sexual orientation is being discussed in Cameos. First off, if I was gay, I would just like to say it should be my decision when and if to out it to the entire internet. But no, I’m not, but if I was, I would be openly proud to be gay. I’m a huge supporter of the community and, yeah, I’ll just leave it at that.”
Looking back at it now, Malia told Us that she doesn’t think her boss understood the repercussions when she initially made those comments.
“I think when that kind of hit the fan, she was kinda like, ‘Well, I was just kidding,’ and she didn’t realize the consequences it would have for me and with my family and friends,” she shared with Us this month. “So she did apologize, and I was like, ‘It’s not a big deal.’ It just was not something I needed.”
With reporting by Mandie DeCamp
