Bria spills on all things season 2, sharing pre-reunion updates with housemates Summer Marie Thomas and Preston Mitchum.
Bria Fleming rejects the label her Summer House: Martha's Vineyard co-star, Preston Mitchum, put on her.
"I don't look at myself as a brat," the 28-year-old fashionista tells ET. "I look at myself more as a diva."
Preston pulled out the b-word earlier this season at an intense dinner, during which Bria voiced her frustration with the house welcoming back season 1 castmate Mariah Torres without issue, when Mariah was voted out of the house the summer before, for getting slightly physical with Bria.
"Yes, when ... I feel like everything in my world needs to go my way, I can be a bit of a diva about it," she reiterates. "When I get angry and I lash out on my friends in the house, it's because, you know, 99 percent of the time. I'm in the right, and they try to, like, lie and manipulate around that, and it frustrates me. So, I kind of lash out."
"Like, OK, if I talk to you nicely, you're still playing in my face and you're manipulating me," she continues, "and then, if I scream at you, it's like, 'Oh, wow! You're a brat. You're a child...'"
Bria says people can believe what they want to about her, but she wishes they would take into consideration what others may have done to her to elicit the bratty/diva response.
"What did you do to Bria to make her act that way?" she asks. "Because I don't wake up and just choose violence. I have a great time, so [Preston] never says what he does, but he always likes to point the finger at me."
It's something Bria hoped to hash out at the first-ever SHMV reunion, which filmed Thursday in New York City. ET spoke with Bria over video chat the day prior.
"I'm very nervous," she confesses. "You feel like you're in a great place with everyone, but then you have to address certain things, and for me, there's a lot of miscommunication and misunderstanding between me and Preston ... and I want to clear some of those things up, and just get to the bottom of where these feelings are coming from. So that's one of my main focus, is just trying to figure out why, you know, sometimes we mesh, sometimes we don't. And what's the real underlying issue here?"
Bria's been taking stock of her own behavior while watching back the season, noting some areas of improvement that likely contributed to her clashing with Preston.
"I will sit and watch and be like, 'Wow! I had a point there...' but like, I was mumbling, and I was very aggressive or angry," she reflects. "So I definitely am aware of my behavior, and I would love to change that moving forward, because it's very great things, 99 percent of the time. But the [delivery] is just not... it's missing."
"That's where the people aren't getting it, my friends and the viewers," she adds. "They're like, 'OK, she sounds crazy. This girl's chaotic. What is going on?'"
Last Sunday's episode left viewers in the middle of the chaos of a summer storm -- or, rather, a Summer storm -- as housemate Summer Marie Thomas unleashed on Bria (as well as roommates Shanice Henderson and Noelle Hughley) after an alcohol-induced misunderstanding... during a game of "Never Have I Ever." A "to be continued..." screen punctuated the height of "Hurricane Summer," the production coordinator/entrepreneur sending a cardboard box flying across the house in a fit of frustration.
"After she storms out, and we kind of run to close the door and stuff, you're gonna see it just picks back up where she's just kinda explaining her deeper emotions and what she feels and why she's angry, and why she's hurt," Bria teases.
"I feel like she's really had a tough time in that friend dynamic with [Jordan Emanuel] and Preston," Bria surmises. "They are very, very tight and close, and they keep their relationship, their problems, their concerns to themselves. And with Shanice, Noelle and I, our dynamic? We're very open, and we're very friendly and fluid, and we just click. It's just, like, some people click and some people don't, and I feel bad, because Summer and I were very close."
"It's sad to me that she didn't feel like she could click like that with us," she adds. "But we didn't exclude her from that."
Bria says she and Summer ended the summer in a "respectful" place, but they definitely needed a post-filming cooling off period.
"I told her, I'm like, 'Don't beat yourself up for that. You're more than that,'" she recalls. "And, 'Girl, go take a spiritual bath and we'll come back together...' And, yeah, we have hung out after the show."
Someone Bria's not hanging out with off-camera, though, is Mariah, who eventually returned to the series on the most recent episode. She and Bria squashed their beef over their season 1 altercation, which started when Mariah got upset over her laundry being mixed in with items used by Bria's dog, Milo. It was secrelty housemate Amir Lancaster who combined the two loads of laundry, but he kept quiet when the two got into it.
"Having her come around and talk with her, it was such a big deal for me," Bria shares. "I didn't have that conversation with her after season 1. We never talked about anything. Yes, we were like, 'Wow! That's crazy...' once we found out Amir did what he did, but we never sat down and had that, like, girl-to-girl talk."
"When I got to talk with her, and I got to the bottom of everything, you know, she was very apologetic," she continues, "and she was like, 'Listen, it's just all a miscommunication...' ... So that talk was needed. And yeah, I don't have a problem with her; but she's not my cup of tea. Like, we're not going to be best friends."
Also shaking up the season 2 dynamics is Bria's longtime love, Simon Marco. Viewers are in the middle of watching the German entrepreneur's three-day stay with the group.
"He came in too hot, and he wasn't really being himself," Bria admits of the version of Simon playing out this season. She says he "acted out" because they had been apart for longer than usual in their long-distance romance.
"Watching him, I'm like, that's not you," she says. "Why did you do that? Like, you're the Simon from season 1. Like, you're sweet, you're calm, you're funny. ... He went overboard this summer."
Bria and Simon will soon celebrate two years together and, she says, they've worked out a travel schedule that works for them to keep the spark alive. Bria travels to Germany a few times a month from New York City, and predicts they'll stay long distance for the foreseeable future, at least two years.
"I want to have kids, maybe in my late 30s? I'm only 28," she explains. "I for sure want to be married, eventually. We do have a home in Germany that we share together, which is very nice. But since my work is here and his work is there, you know, my home base is here for now."
Milo has also racked up the frequent flier miles; he's currently enjoying an extended stay in Germany, so Bria's getting her fix of him by watching Summer House: Martha's Vineyard.
"We have dog watchers!" she notes. "I know there's a dachshund group ... and they tune in Sunday to watch Milo, and they take screenshots and they repost it in the group. So you know, for the dachshund lovers, Milo, he does have a little couple of confessionals. So you know, it's fun to get to see. You know you have Milo getting in a mix."
Summer House: Martha's Vineyard airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo. Episodes stream next day on Peacock.
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