Lindsay Hubbard admits she's still trying to figure out what went wrong between her and Danielle Olivera on season 7 of 'Summer House.'
Lindsay Hubbard is still trying to piece together the puzzle that is last summer.
"I'm still trying to process everything," the Summer House star admits to ET, sitting down to promote season 7, alongside her co-star and fiancé, Carl Radke, in New York City. Much of the fresh batch of episodes will focus on Lindsay's falling out with longtime best friend Danielle Olivera. The two are not on speaking terms after filming the season, which wrapped last September.
"We're not in communication," Lindsay reveals. "I think we both needed a lot of time to process our feelings and emotions. ... A lot happened, a lot was said this summer that I don't know if I'm over quite yet. So, until I can get to the point within myself where I'm even ready to forgive somebody, there's no point in talking until I'm ready."
"I've spent a lot of my therapy sessions really trying to understand what happened," she shares, "and I'm still not quite understanding, because I think my genetic makeup when it comes to friendship might be a little different. Maybe that's all I need to understand?"
Lindsay says she and Danielle entered the new season on good terms, with (per Lindsay) no indicators that there was anything amiss in their friendship. While she's yet to pinpoint when exactly things took a turn, she has her suspicions -- and largely puts the onus on Danielle. First, they started filming the season separately; Danielle missed weekend No. 1 with the group in the Hamptons. Then, Lindsay and Carl were out of town on the second.
"I don't know, I mean, I'm looking at the trailer, watching the weekend that Carl and I were not there, the girls are now convincing Danielle that maybe we're not good friends to her?" Lindsay muses. "So maybe that was the moment? Again, I don't know the exact moment. It was very unclear."
The only other moment Lindsay can point to is a later weekend, when she turned down an offer to go out with Danielle and stayed home with Carl, who suspects Danielle's issues with Lindsay started long before season 7.
"Danielle and Lindsay went on a trip in September, after season 6 filming," he recalls. "They went to Mexico and Lindsay kinda opened up to Danielle and was like, 'Hey, Carl and I are having some things...' and Danielle was very like, 'No!' Like, she was a little resistant to it. Fast forward a few months, obviously we had hung out with Danielle, and we were friendly. We'd do different things together, slowly it seemed like she was getting more comfortable around it."
"I did not expect anything to deter us from our friendship," Lindsay jumps in. "That would have been the last thing I would have ever thought would have happened."
The supertease for the season previews Danielle asking a lot of questions about how fast Lindsay and Carl's relationship is moving; she even calls the idea of the two getting engaged "crazy." Turns out, that's exactly where the romance was headed before season's end, seemingly sparking more tension between Danielle and Lindsay, and leading Lindsay to explore a possible "projection" theory with her therapist. See, as Lindsay's relationship with Carl moved full-stream ahead, Danielle's long-term romance with chef Robert Sieber seemingly began to fizzle. While neither Danielle nor Robert has publicly confirmed that they're no longer an item, Carl says "we're told" it's over.
"I do think that," she offers. "My aunt, actually -- my other therapist, Aunt Ronda -- she basically was like, 'You know, Lindsay, sweetheart, sometimes this happens with women. When they think they should be at a place in their lives before you, and you get there before them, this happens sometimes...' and I was like, oh... I've never understood that, because I've never treated any of my-- if I'd acted like that, I wouldn't have any friends, because all my friends are way ahead of me in life. Like, they're all married and have kids and, like, I could not be happier."
"It's sad," Carl weighs in. "Unfortunately, when you get into a more serious relationship, people are very focused on that and grow up a little bit more and it doesn't seem like Danielle has been fully supportive of that growth or change. I mean, it's healthy in a way. We're not trying not to be friends here. We're just taking on a different shape, so it's been hard to adjust."
"Also, I just know how difficult it's been for [Lindsay], because she's been a really good friend," he continues, "and I feel like she has tried with Danielle, and she's been that person for Danielle to support her and talk to her about whatever's going on in her life."
"Danielle was in a relationship with a serious chef, and she traveled around, and there was no animosity about her going away and we did the best we could," he adds. "So, it has been confusing. I feel bad for her because I think she is a very loyal friend and gives it her all with people she really cared about."
"I just don't lose friends," Lindsay interjects. "That is not something that is normal in my life."
"Not only did I lose one of my best friends who's supposed to be standing next to me at my wedding, but I don't understand why this happened at all," she continues. "It's very confusing. It's very hurtful, and I I'm literally still trying to figure it all out."
In sneak peeks at the next season, it seems the women of the house rally around Danielle over Lindsay, which did not come as a surprise to Lindsay.
"I breathe and I'm the bad guy," she jokes. "A lot of blame gets put on me a lot of times. ... No one ever really gives me the benefit of the doubt or comes to me."
"It's just a very predictable 'Lindsay gets the blame' storyline," she says. "Maybe that's what Danielle was going for, because she knows that these girls very outwardly don't like me. So maybe that's what she wanted, support on her side and she knew she would get that. I don't know if that was a conscious or subconscious thing."
"I'm manifesting that they at some point will get together and clear the air," Carl says. "I'm just really hoping for that, because it's hard to go through life with all these negative relationships, or walking into a room and feeling awkward. I don't think any of us really want that, either."
Lindsay "100 percent" hopes for reconciliation with Danielle in the future. "I hope that this is a learning experience," she muses, "and we can come out and recover from this. I just don't know at what level we'll get back to where we were."
"This wasn't just a 'best friend' title, like, 'Oh, we film a TV show together and I'll hang out with you during the summer time and then not really see you during the other seasons...'" she says. "This was, like, actual best friend in everyday real life."
"I really put a lot of effort and support into my best friends," she adds. "I want that back. I miss that with Danielle, but I think there has to be an acceptance that maybe we are in different directions, and that's OK. You can still be best friends even though you're in a different direction."
Lindsay says she was able to lean on Mya Allen over the course of the summer for support, which will come as a surprise to viewers after they see the premiere. In the opening episode, Mya exposes some off-camera drama between her, Lindsay and Carl, which sparked while they filmed an episode of Celebrity Family Feud early last year. Mya claims Lindsay felt "threatened" by her and Carl's friendship while hanging out in Los Angeles for the taping.
"She didn't really have this 'big friendship' with Carl other than Summer House last season," Lindsay explains. "I mean, this whole story just got so blown out of proportion and exaggerated, it just wasn't how it went down. Long story short, she had mentioned something to me at the studio when I went in for confessionals [last season]. She was finishing her confessionals, we're catching up ... [and] she had mentioned it was really weird for her that I was dating Carl. Then a month later, at Family Feud, she was like, 'Oh, I'm gonna text Carl to go smoke weed with me...' and I was just like, 'Well, this is all weird...' That would be like Andrea [Denver] sitting next to [Carl], texting me to go hang out with him. We're all here together as a group, it's strange."
"So I just asked questions and I was like, 'Well, don't you think you should've maybe talked to me about wanting to go smoke weed with Carl?'" she continues. "Like, I'm literally four months sober to support him and then, on top of that, I was like, 'Well, maybe I'm bringing this up because a month ago you also said something weird that rubbed me the wrong way...' so it's very casual and calm."
Lindsay promises she was "not activated," and suggests Mya exaggerated the story to "attack [her] character."
"Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would turn into what it has," Lindsay notes. "I thought we were all gonna go to dinner later that night on our group trip, and I even said, 'Hey, what are you wearing tonight? Are we good?' And then we texted her, we called her -- we even went to the front desk and had them call up [to her room] -- and she didn't answer me or anyone else."
Lindsay says she never used the phrases Mya put in her mouth, including feeling "threatened" or believing Mya wanted Carl in a "sexual way."
"She had a boyfriend at the time," Lindsay points out. "Like, you have a boyfriend that you hang out with. I would never think that you're into [Carl] at all, you know? The only thing I said was, 'Well, you said this at the studio, it was 'weird for you' and that made me feel weird.'"
Lindsay admits she "had a feeling" this would all become a topic of conversation once cameras went back up on their lives, and says fans will see her and Mya "hash it out" sooner rather than later.
"I don't think we ever thought it was that deep, or like she felt so hurt or upset," Carl acknowledges. "I will say, Mya throughout the summer, she was very supportive at times and was actually someone that we leaned on for some of the challenges with the rest of the group."
"Especially me," Lindsay adds. "I really did appreciate Mya's friendship throughout the rest of the summer."
"She was able to listen and understand [our] perspective, and try and understand the story vs. sometimes where others maybe don't do that," Carl says.
"Mya was the only girl at times who would ... ask me, 'Hey, what's your side of this story?'" Lindsay offers as an example, "and oftentimes -- the three times that she asked me -- she was like, 'Oh, I totally get it!'"
After another season of high school-style drama, it seems as if Carl and Lindsay may be ready to move on to a more adult chapter; whether this show fits into that remains to be seen.
"I think about this all the time," Lindsays admits. "I do think there is an expiration as far as, like, us dancing on tables until 5 a.m., and we've already expired on that. So I think for us, our personal next steps are getting married and having a baby, and if there's a way to incorporate that into Summer House, maybe in a different way, I don't know... it would kind of be funny to have a baby at the summer house."
"We've been doing this for seven seasons now," Carl says. "I think it's natural to grow and evolve a little bit, but also we can still have a good time. We can still be opinionated and vulnerable and do all the things that make for great TV. It's just in a different way. That's my only hope with Summer House, is it has evolved with us ... [and] I feel like they should embrace that growth."
Summer House airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT starting Feb. 13.
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