Fans wondered why producers didn’t intervene when Ashton Pienaar from Below Deck became angry and violent in the van ride back to the boat.

Kate Chastain, Adrian Martin, Ashton Pienaar |Greg Endries/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Pienaar became furious when chief stew Kate Chastain asked about his mother. The crew had been drinking heavily that night and it was clear everyone in the van was highly inebriated. However, Pienaar, who rode in a van with Chastain, chef Kevin Dobson and Tanner Sterback lashed out and ended up punching the side of the van’s interior. Dobson and Sterback ultimately had to talk Pienaar down, nearly restraining the bosun from physically attacking Chastain.

Chastain recently recounted the incident when she appeared on Colin Macy-O’Toole’s podcast Radio Check. She addressed the question about what was happening behind the scenes. Plus shared where she actually went once she walked off the boat.

She could have been physically harmed if Dobson wasn’t in the van

Although Chastain remained physically safe, she wishes the entire encounter would have been handled differently. She said the producer who rode with them in the van was not authorized to break the fourth wall and intervene. However, the producer quickly got on the radio to determine what was the right thing to do.

Nothing like some violence in a moving van to get everyone in the holiday spirit! New #BelowDeck tonight at 9 pic.twitter.com/AYrtBqeqon — Kate Chastain (@Kate_Chastain) December 23, 2019

“I’m just really thankful in a weird way that I was in the van with Kevin,” she recounts. “Because if it had been Simone in the front seat, I think Ashton would have made it over to the backseat. And I don’t know what would have then happened.”

Chastain says while it’s hard to say if Pienaar would have physically attacked her she said he getting pretty close. “It took quite a bit of Kevin holding him back,” she says. “I don’t know what his plan was once he got over that seat. But it didn’t seem like it was to talk to me at a closer proximity.”

She wishes production would have handled the situation differently

Chastain says the producer in her van was essentially making a “911” call to see what should be done during the altercation. “Which they’ve never done before,” she adds “But we were out of range, so she didn’t want to do the wrong thing so we kept driving.”

There’s only so much bullsh*t a girl can take. One hour until the new #BelowDeck pic.twitter.com/gstKBdFKqq — Kate Chastain (@Kate_Chastain) December 24, 2019

“But I was surprised that when we got back to the marina, that we didn’t just pause the shooting, everybody separate, no cast members talk to each other,” Chastain continues. “Maybe take Ashton aside. I was surprised and disappointed that that did not happen. Because it almost seemed to me like they knew what Ashton had done, and by not taking him aside, and being like, ‘You can’t do that’ or anything, they were kind of enforcing his behavior as okay.” She thinks Pienaar was then further emboldened after no one from production addressed his behavior.

When Chastain left, she assured fans that she was safe. She says she knew better than to wander the streets of Thailand. “There were nice yachts in that marina and there was a hotel that I knew of at the of the dock,” she says. “And I had a feeling I was going to be able to just go to that hotel.” She adds joking, “It was glamorous in that Kate disappeared to a four-star hotel bed with white fluffy sheets.”