Leva Bonaparte looks back on her sophomore 'Southern Charm' season, sharing some behind-the-scenes secrets as the finale hits TV.
Two seasons into her Southern Charm experience, Leva Bonaparte feels like the audience hasn't gotten a chance to really know her yet.
"It's tricky," she admits of reality TV, speaking with ET over video call. "I think the viewer hasn't gotten to know me too much personally, because year one was COVID, year two was new people. Maybe next year it will be a little bit more of, like, 'Real Leva' and what's going on at home."
Season 8 saw the cast of Southern Charm balloon a bit, with new additions Taylor Ann Green, Venita Aspen, Olivia Flowers, Chleb Ravenell and Marcie Hobbs snagging screen time that ultimately left Leva's personal story on the cutting room floor.
"I had a lot of moments with my sisters, where I was just trying to figure out how I wanted another kid, how do I do another kid, you know?" the mom of one shares. "I have so much on my business plate that I don't necessarily want to give up, but I also don't want a full-time nanny. Like, I had a child so that I could raise him, so I could enjoy him, enjoy every little morsel of it."
The trailer teased this struggle, a conversation about Leva feeling as if she's "suffocating" never making it into an episode (though the finale remains to be seen).
"Can we have another child? Do we have another child? Can I carry the other child? You know, there was a lot of that," she explains, "but I am also not a TV hog. There's new people on the show, and I want the viewer to get to know them, too."
She also points out that where she is at in life is not where her co-stars are, with the majority of the cast single or, if they're coupled up, unmarried.
"Those are things that are hard to bring up in the group, because I can't land my fertility issues with Taylor, or land my mom struggle with Naomie [Olindo], although they're dear friends, there wasn't really many too many places to land," she says. "It could've maybe been with Madison [LeCroy], but [our falling out] happened so early on that we were just both in our corners, and me and Madison are, like, the two bulldogs of the group."
Leva's attempt to have it all, or make sense of having it all, played into her opting out of group experiences. She left the first cast trip early and skipped the second altogether.
"I really had to do that with friendships, create boundaries, I had to do that personally," she offers, calling herself the "big sister" of this crew.
"Who's here for me?" she asks. "They're like, 'Have another drink!' I'm like, 'No! No, it's not what I need.' 'Just come get wasted! I'm like, 'No!' Maybe that's what I need, but it's not really what I need."
The sometimes alcohol-fueled antics of at least one of her co-stars, Craig Conover, leads to an intense confrontation on Thursday night's finale. In last week's "next time on..." promo, fans got a glimpse of the fight, with Craig ultimately kicking Leva out of an event celebrating his business, Sewing Down South, after he felt like she disrespected him. Leva labeled her castmate a "clown," taking a dig at Craig by saying she was speaking with the people who "actually" run his company.
"Craig does like to talk about his new persona in business and everything, which I am so proud of him and I am so supportive and always have been," Leva declares, "but in that moment I was like, you are being a really mean guy. Like, you are being rude, you are being mean. I am a person who loves you, who cares about you, and you know when I went to sit down with his partners, I have my own relationship with his partners outside of Craig. We text, we email. I helped them launch a pillow, I helped them get their [storefront], you know what I mean? Like, we are friendly. We are people who own businesses in the city, so I have my own relationship with them, and I think when in that moment I am having my own conversation and then he is sort of like jumping in, and he was acting like a clown."
"You are acting out of pocket," she says of Craig's behavior at the party. "I had held my tongue enough, I think, all season and I don't like to be mean, but I am also not like, you can't just, whatever, s**t on me. I don't know how else to put it."
Leva says the moment was the culmination of Craig's season of "stresses" finally breaking him, most notably his strained relationship with ex-girlfriend Naomie. Season 8 was punctuated by tantrum-style attacks by Craig to Naomie, as he aimed to protect his still young romance with fellow Bravo-lebrity Paige DeSorbo.
"It's normal to be stressed out," Leva notes. "You have a new girlfriend, you have an ex-girlfriend, you have some old wounds with the guys. Not everyone is after you. You are trying to be this new person. I kept trying to talk to him about it and he was like, 'Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine,' you know?"
By finale time, Leva says she was pushed to her personal limit when it came to watching a man scream at a woman.
"I have standards and boundaries," she shares. "I don't like to see somebody just screaming at someone constantly. It's just, it's not OK. OK, you had a day, you had a time, it was, like, one moment. But time after time? Dinner party after dinner party? And I am protective of Naomie. I was there for all of it: the good, the bad and the ugly during their relationship."
"I voiced that it's not OK to speak to people that way, and I think for Craig, I am his kind of bigger sister, so I am safe, you know?" she continues. "Sometimes people are meaner to the people they are safest with, but also I don't let me husband scream at me that way. I don't let anybody scream at me that way, so I had to create a boundary."
After getting kicked out of the event, Leva seemingly unfollowed half the cast on her ride home, an Instagram update fans were quick to clue into.
"The girls that I unfollowed, that was because they were sort of like piling on with Craig in there," she explains. "The girls that clapped and were like supportive of him speaking to me that way were the ones I unfollowed. So that was the Madison, Venita, Kathryn [Dennis], Paige. The ones that were kind of like, 'You go, Craig!'"
"I unfollowed them, and then Austen [Kroll]," she continues. "We were good friends and the fact that he didn't sort of-- he has a lot of reign on Craig, so the fact that he didn't reign Craig in? Shep [Rose] would have had a harder time, and Shep I know was upset by it, but Austen could have reigned him in and he didn't. Austen did not clap, but he did not rein him in, and so I was upset."
It's all unpacked at the reunion, which the cast filmed earlier this month in New York City. Along with addressing the Craig situation ("We have had some talks," she teases), Leva also goes head to head with Madison. While never super close, the two fell out hard over a text message Leva sent to Venita, labeling Madison "dumb" for how she seemingly strung Austen along after their breakup. When Madison called Leva out on using the insult to describe her, Leva doubled down.
"I learned who my friend was in that moment, I learned a lot about Venita in that moment," she admits. "It wasn't like I was trying to hide [my thought] from Madison. Madison and I, if there is anybody who is going to say exactly what we think to the other person's face, it's her and I. We have never had a problem, and so in that moment ... she wasn't understanding where I was coming from. I think she does now. But the thing that I would do differently is, I would not advise Madison."
"I don't need to big sister her," she adds. It remains to be seen, though, if Leva still feels the need to play that role to Venita. She says their issues go much deeper than the Madison text drama, even though that's all that's been seen on the show.
"There was like a lot of real, real, real disappointments and hurt and frustration," she says. "The Madison argument ... was just a very small part of my disappointment in Venita, really."
"A lot of big things happen at reunion," she then offers. "A lot of big shifts. Even I was like shocked by a few things."
The trailer for the two-part sit-down special previews an especially emotional exchange between recent exes Shep and Taylor.
"It went so much farther than what I knew," Leva says. "There was like a lot of crying at the reunion. There's a lot of-- I think this might be one of those reunions where it's less screaming and it's more really raw emotion, because it is real. Despite what people think -- I think people think that the cast is bigger and it'a not real friendships and I'm like, no, no, no. This is really real, which is also why people are tip-toeing around feelings, because we really care that much."
"It's not for the camera, you know?" she adds. "So it's kind of the opposite, I think, of what people are thinking. People are protecting their friends and their partners, or whatever, so it was a tough season and a lot happened. A lot happened I think at reunion. It was very raw."
Southern Charm's season 8 finale airs Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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