Steven Soderbergh finally reveals why he loves Below Deck: “It’s about work”

Few directors are as enigmatic and unpredictable as Steven Soderbergh. Less than a year after directing the only good movie about COVID lockdown, Kimi, he’s back with the third part in what he calls his “version of a superhero movie,” Magic Mike’s Last Dance. But before Mike hits the stage for one final hip thrust, Mr. Soderbergh has some explaining to do. Chief among the things Rolling Stone writer Marlow Stern wanted to know, why does this Oscar and Palm d’Or winning director like Below Deck so much?

“It’s about work,” Soderbergh explains. “It’s about problem-solving at work when you’ve got huge personality clashes, class issues, and talk about intimate! The way that these people live on these boats, even these big boats, is crazy! If you designed a psychological experiment like this you would, like Stanley Milgram, be thrown out of academia. It’s crazy what a pressure cooker these trips are for everyone involved. I like the work aspect of it. These people work hard.”

Every year, the director releases a list of everything he’s watched over the year. It’s always a surprise for cinephiles to see episodes of the Bravo reality show Below Deck tucked between three viewings of Sorcerer and four screenings of The Killer (we’re assuming this refers to David Fincher’s upcoming film, but maybe Soderbergh was on a John Woo kick). And the answer is he respects the hustle. These yacht attendants party hard, and their clients expect “five-star service.” Plus, he’s interested in “group dynamics,” mainly when someone is “about to explode.

“For anybody who has any kind of job, how you get along with your coworkers and how you feel about getting along with your colleagues is a big part of your life. We spend a lot of our lives at work,” he said.

Apparently, he has the same reaction as anyone who watches that show, which is to wonder why these people are acting this way. “You watch a person, and you go, ‘If you’d literally done nothing, you would be in a better situation than you are now. You actively made this worse.’ That’s fascinating to me. Like, you can’t keep your mouth shut, or you can’t do this. You just look at them like, “Dude, you’re making this worse! Just shut the fuck up!”

That’s not the only thing Soderbergh discussed in the interview. He also explained how he helped the Russos take over Hollywood (they asked him if he could reach out to Kevin Feige), sex scenes in Hollywood movies, and the rumors regarding Thandiwe Newton’s departure from Last Dance (“Everything I saw publicly was wrong”).

Read the whole interview at Rolling Stone.