When Leva Bonaparte tries to clear the air with Kathryn Dennis, Austen Kroll complicates matters and the swear words fly.
Ferry rides never end well on Southern Charm.
In ET's exclusive sneak peek at Thursday's supersized episode, Leva Bonaparte and Austen Kroll one-up the Ashley Jacobs vs. everyone ferry fight of season 5 by getting into a heated exchange over Kathryn Dennis. The group is headed home from a private beach party when Leva approaches Kathryn for a little heart to heart that, in all honesty, might've been better suited for another time.
"Listen, I’m gonna say one thing -- and I wasn’t trying to be an a**hole to you -- but, I just want you to know, like, that I feel like you’ve walked your life like people are against you," Leva tells Kathryn. "I feel like you’re looking at me like I’m against you, but I’m not."
"But you gotta understand why she feels so, right?" Austen asks, seated next to Kathryn. "Listen, she feels attacked by every woman on this boat. Every single woman."
"That’s not true," Kathryn admits, but her correction falls on deaf ears as Leva turns her focus to Austen for getting involved in the first place. The peanut gallery of other cast members starts to chime in from behind the confrontation, with Danni Baird announcing that "Austen said some stupid s**t," and Craig Conover declaring, "She's gonna kill him."
"Listen, you little f**k boy," Leva exclaims in a confessional. "Just because I’m a woman and I have a voice and I know how to use it, that doesn’t mean I’m a f**king bully."
"Her and I have some issues that, honestly, affected my f**king husband and my child," she then tells Austen to his face, referencing offensive messages Kathryn sent to a Black activist over the summer, as well as her apparent apathy toward the removal of a statue of her ancestor, proud enslaver John C. Calhoun, from a park in Charleston, South Carolina. (For what it’s worth, Kathryn told Bravo's The Daily Dish she feared speaking out or attending meetings about the statue due to death threats.)
"No, shut the f**k up," she tells Austen as he tries to interject. "She said some s**t that affected my f**king child and my husband and I was decent enough to have a conversation with her, because I communicated with her how offensive that s**t was, so shut the f**k up about that! Shut the f**k up."
"Leva, quit saying shut the f**k up!" Austen fires back. "I'm serious."
That’s when Leva's pal, Venita Aspen, tries to break things up, as Craig mutters that it's "getting bad" and he may have to step in, though he doesn’t want things to come to that. Then, Austen asks Leva if she's "crazy" and if she's "lost her mind," driving his ex-girlfriend, Madison LeCroy, to jump in and tell Austen to “shut the f**k up” and let Leva speak.
See the whole thing for yourself here:
"I think Austen and I can be oil and water," Leva told ET of the exchange -- which was first teased in the season 7 trailer -- back in October. "Austen is kind of very boyish and I think that, because I'm so confident in saying my opinion and if I'm like, you're an a**hole or, like, that is not correct or whatever it is, I can say it to your face, he has this weird thing where he just struggles, like, saying what he really feels."
"I think he wants to be a people pleaser, and I think in that moment he just wanted to coddle Kathryn and I just look so big and bad," she added. "I just was so exhausted by all the conversations, and it was a typical Southern male moment and I think it just triggered me because I was like, you're not being chivalrous right now. Like, we're grown women. We're having our own conversation. You don't need to jump in and save anybody. Nobody needs your saving. Nobody's a kitten up in a tree. Like, go away."
Leva called the whole thing "offensive," but added that she "[should] probably regret the way that I responded, but I don't regret why I responded." In December, she told ET she was looking forward to discussing it at the all-cast reunion, which they filmed in New York just before Christmas.
"I feel like sometimes I was misunderstood by some of the guys," she said. "I think there's times when they thought I was trying to be a bully and I was like, I'm not trying to be a bully. If you want to see me be a bully that's a different story. And I was offended because I have never been a bully. I've always been the kid on the playground that's like, ‘Don't bother her!’ You know? So, that was hard for me. With the guys, it's almost like my grievances are more with the boys than [Kathryn] because I wish that they had pushed her more and coddled her less."
Southern Charm airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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