Season three of the Bravo hit gets off to an awkward start, after Kyle sent a mean manifesto to his housemates.
“Send it” has a whole new meaning on the new season of Summer House.
On the season three premiere, the housemates catch viewers up on everything that’s gone down since the end of the season, namely a 17-page email that Kyle Cooke sent en masse to the full cast of season two. Let’s just say, it wasn’t a love letter. Luckily, ET caught up with Kyle, his now-fiancee Amanda Batula and their pal (well, she was) Lindsay Hubbard at the Bravo offices in New York City to get the lowdown on the letter.
“So a lot happens in the fall, in the winter and in the spring and we don't really pick up where we left off,” Kyle explains to ET. “Some friendships are stronger, some have literally fallen apart. So that email was really just, I was kind of breaking the silence. No one had spoken to either [Amanda Batula or me] since we filmed the reunion.”
“I felt like I got, you know, kinda stabbed in the back,” he adds. “And I felt like we were owed an apology.”
“It was a very long email,” Amanda notes. “I didn't approve of it, but he sent it. Kyle does what he wants sometimes and you just have to go along with it.”
According to Lindsay, a good chunk of the letter was directed at her and how Kyle thought she could treat Amanda better. Apparently, Kyle was upset that Lindsay had cropped Amanda out of group photos and unfollowed Amanda on Instagram.
“I read through it and then I thought about it for the night and the next morning I was like, 'You know what, I'm just gonna call Kyle,’” Lindsay recalls. “I was like, 'You know, I really don't have the time to respond with, you know, my own 17 page email, so let’s just hash this out.'”
“It's really funny, because he has a lot of opinions,” she says. “He has his own side of his truth. But so do I, so you know, it was an interesting read.”
“I think that there's a lot of residual tension built up after, you know, the summer before, so he finally pulled the trigger and sent the email and, you know, it then created tension going into this summer,” Lindsay continues. “I have my side and you have your side, we can agree to disagree or we can meet in the middle. You know, I do believe there's always that opportunity, but Kyle's the hard one, he's a tough cookie sometimes.”
The tension is obvious in ET’s exclusive sneak peek at the premiere, which finds Lindsay arriving to the Hamptons share and greeting Kyle and Amanda with awkward hugs. Watch here:
Kyle and Amanda are quick to call out Lindsay as the “pot-stirrer” this season, but she says she’s just an effective communicator.
“I communicate in a very different way than I think, you know, most of the people in the house this summer,” she shares. “I'm a very direct person, so if that creates drama I mean, I just look at that as just talking things out or being upfront and true to myself and how I feel. I don't like holding tension, right? ... I just want to get it out, get rid of the tension, get through it, move on.”
Now, things could have been a lot worse, as Kyle admits that the first draft of the email was well over 20 pages!
“I had so many nasty, like, from the heart jabs in there because I felt we were, you know, the punching bags at times,” he says. “I had to remove all that and just focus on the matter at hand, which is just, if we are true friends then you guys owe us an apology.”
Of course, Kyle and Amanda’s beef isn’t just with Lindsay; there were a lot of hurt feeling between the couple and former housemates/co-stars Stephen McGee and Lauren Wirkus, who also received the email.
“My relationship ended with them ended after last summer,” Amanda confesses. “There was no more communication, I tried to reach out, I tried to get together. I’ve seen people out and have tried to say, hello, and it’s just it’s either, like, laughter in my face or just complete silence. And so, I’m OK that I didn’t have to share a house with them [this year[. I think it just would have made it really uncomfortable for me.”
“I’ve never had a falling out with a single friend in my entire life,” Kyle jumps in. “So, it was a very weird experience to go through and that’s why I just try to sit on my hands and give everyone time and finally I was like enough’s enough. I had to say something.”
Lindsay says she is still close to her former co-stars, but understands why it didn’t make sense for them to be on the lease this time around. In Stephen, Lauren, Amit Neuman and Ashley McAtee’s places this summer are new cast members Hannah Berner, Paige DeSorbo and Jordan Verroi, whom Kyle, Amanda and Lindsay all label as “characters.”
“People have to move on with their lives, and I don't blame them,” she says. “I think that it was a really good summer, ultimately, and there was some drama and, you know, there was some tension, but I really enjoy the friendships that came out of it, the new ones and the old ones.”
“Of course there's drama, but we in the house are kind of like a family and, when there is an issue, we move past it,” Amanda says of season three. “We don't dwell on it and sit there and hold grudges. We talk about it and we move forward and I think that's the biggest difference between these two summers.”
Summer House returns to Bravo on Monday, March 4, at 10 p.m. ET.
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