Why Did João Franco Refer to Himself as ‘Jezabob’ on ‘Below Deck Down Under’?
Below Deck Down Under second officer João Franco has an alter ego, Jezabob, and Jezabob can cause chaos. During his first Below Deck appearance, Franco would get drunk and make extremely spicy comments to the crew.
He alienated some of the crew members, especially chief stew Hannah Ferrier and Jezabob mainly emerged during drunken nights with the crew. When he returned as bosun in Below Deck Mediterranean Season 4, he muted Jezabob but still managed to offend some crew members, especially Aesha Scott. She blocked him on social media after he said her outfit resembled something a prostitute would wear.
Franco is back on Below Deck Down Under as the second officer and claimed that Jezabob won’t return. But how bad was he and what steps did he take to kick his alter ego to the curb?
João Franco claims he didn’t realize he turned into Jezabob until ‘Below Deck Med’
Below Deck Med put a mirror up to Franco’s face. “After watching myself last year, I actually met Jezabob for the first time,” he admitted on the Below Deck Med Season 4 After Show. “Seeing it within the first episode, I was like, holy s***.”
He blamed drinking too much, especially back home in Zimbabwe. “It’s a big drinking culture back home. There’s not much to do,” he explained. “With everything going down, there’s a lot of political issues. There’s a lot of things happening, and we get away with drinking at quite an early stage of our lives. I got into a lot of fights. I got into a lot of trouble. But I just didn’t realize the extent of it. I’d always think, ‘I couldn’t have been that bad because I don’t remember it.'”
Jezabob was mean on ‘Below Deck Med’
Franco cringed when he saw how mean he could be to his friends. “I don’t have a filter, but there’s a nice way of saying things, and Jezabob has no nice way of saying things,” Franco said.
“It’s just kind of like, I guess it’s just belittling, you know?” he asked. “The way I would try and belittle people if they gave me any trouble, I’d just react on anything that came up. So, you know, if Hannah said something jokingly or not jokingly, instead of taking a step back and thinking it’s all right, I would just react on what everyone was saying.”
Although Franco tried to keep Jezabob quiet during his last season, he admitted in the After Show that Jezabob was somewhat to blame for the remark he made to Scott about her outfit.
He got sober, which is a big step to keeping his alter-ego at bay
As the world was going into lockdown due to the pandemic, Franco came to the realization that he had to stop drinking.
“As I sit in the airport, waiting for my next flight after spending time with my dad who I had not seen in 4 long years. I find my mind lost in thought,” he shared on Instagram. “There is irony in that right? Finding your mind and finding it lost in thought? Using cognition to subconsciously search through a set of cognitive faculties while using the same cognitive means to determine that your mind is in fact lost in cognition?”
He recalled missing so many important family moments due to being too hungover. Plus he admitted to blacking out when he got too drunk. “Absolutely no recollection of the entire night, except a few flashbacks of arguments or fights with people. I am an aggressive and stubborn drunk,” he wrote.
Franco added that he was done with drinking. But is he really done with Jezabob?
Find out on Below Deck Down Under on Monday at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.
