Austen Kroll Says Winter House Season 2 Will Continue His Summer House “Saga”
The Southern Charm cast member also addressed recent headlines about Madison LeCroy, Lindsay Hubbard, and Ciara Miller.
It’s been a minute since Austen Kroll was last in the Bravo Clubhouse, and boy, did Andy Cohen have much to discuss with the Southern Charm-er during his appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on July 21.
First up, Andy gave Austen the floor to address all the drama between him, Lindsay Hubbard, and Ciara Miller during Season 6 of Summer House. In so doing, Austen also teased that we can expect to hear more about this in the upcoming Season 2 of Winter House. “I mean, there are plenty of things that I wish that I could say and could have done. Did not go back for another weekend [on Summer House], but I feel like Winter House 2 is kind of, you know, the next chapter of that saga… my story with that group,” Austen said. “So that’s kind of what Winter House 2 was about for me, that next step.”
Austen then said he never told ex Madison LeCroy that she was “picking the wrong guy” after she became engaged to Brett Randle, as she claimed in the July 21 episode of Southern Charm (clip below). Austen similarly told The Daily Dish in an interview prior to his appearance on WWHL last week, “Oh yeah, I didn’t say that. That never happened,” adding that what Madison said was “a bald-faced lie.”
Austen also clarified that he and Madison weren’t on speaking terms at the time of her engagement. “Well, she never gave me the courtesy of telling me. Basically, she justified that [on her Amazon Live], that she doesn’t consider anyone to be her ex except for her ex-husband. And so, I heard that, and it’s like, OK, well, if you don’t give a s--t enough to tell me and I was never an ex of yours, then you don’t need any sort of congratulations from me or anything. Perfect. Thank you,” Austen told The Daily Dish. “What happened was, when she first told me that she was dating him, that is when it kind of hit me. But when she got engaged, I didn’t tell her anything. We weren’t speaking, we weren’t texting, we weren’t anything.”
Back on WWHL, Austen said he didn’t watch Madison’s appearance with Venita Aspen in the Clubhouse on July 14 — but his parents did. “They were laughing,” Austen said. “You know, they were like, this is not factual in the least.”
Austen opened up about many of the women, in addition to Madison, we’ve seen him become romantically involved with on Bravo over the years, which you can check out in the video at the top of this post.
And when it comes to the ups and downs in his friendship with Lindsay, Austen shared that the pair made up at the NBCUniversal upfront in May. “We had a great chance to talk, and I’m very happy with how she’s so happy. And we just were talking about how to figure out our relationship and how we should move forward together as friends, and what that looks like. And I’m pleased,” Austen shared, before adding, “We certainly spoke after last week’s Watch What Happens, yeah.”
What he is referring to there is another revelation from Madison’s most recent WWHL appearance in which she said that Austen and Lindsay had been hooking up while she and Austen were in a “gray area” in their relationship. Madison said she only found out about this later since Austen had always told her that he and Lindsay were just friends.
Austen responded to Madison’s claims during his appearance on WWHL last week. “Yeah, so, I texted Lindsay on this topic, and the overwhelming kind of response from both of us is, it was, like, an easy kind of cop-out for [Madison] to feel justified with all the actions she’s done,” he explained (see the clip below). “Fact of the matter is, Lindsay and I hooked up one time, and I have zero reason to lie about that at this point in my life. So that’s a fact.”
Austen gave some more background on the situation in the above WWHL clip, and he also gave more context on it in his interview with The Daily Dish: “I mean, it really was in direct response to something that Madison had done, because when something happens to her, she goes scorched earth, and she did it to me many times,” Austen said. “I don’t know if it’s something that she says to make herself feel better, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s like she wants people to believe that I’m, like, a bad person and that I was doing this whole thing behind her back. And there is a reason for it, which I don’t want to say because it would be a whole other headline and mess, and I don’t want to bring this person’s name into it, but she knows exactly why that was a result of what she did.”
Toward the end of this episode of WWHL, Austen addressed Ciara’s saying she gave him “an earful off of camera” at the Summer House Season 6 reunion when it came to all the drama with the group last summer. “I, like, want to give an interesting answer. I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, you’re definitely going to see more of our saga continue onto Southern Charm a little bit.”
Austen’s response prompted Andy to exclaim, “Oh, all right! Good tease.”
As this episode of WWHL came to a close, Austen reflected on some of the criticism he received from fans for his actions on Winter House and Summer House. “It’s disappointing to see, of course. People have been following my journey on Charm for five or so years. They, like, know everything that’s happened to me, and then they know what I kind of just got out of. It was not the best thing,” he shared. “So I thought that people might not have been a champion for it but a little more understanding of why I had gone off the rails or had a fun summer for myself, finally. So I thought that was gonna happen a bit more than it did, and it didn’t [laughs].”
Watch Southern Charm on Bravo Thursdays at 9/8c and next day on Peacock. Catch up on the Bravo app.
— Additional reporting by Abby Feiner
