Newlyweds Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula tease 'Winter House's debut season, including sparks between Paige DeSorbo and Craig Conover!
Turns out, one can still "send it!" in the snow. Kyle Cooke, Amanda Batula and their pals from Summer House are out to prove just that in the spinoff of sorts, Winter House. The new series finds Kyle and Amanda, as well as their summer housemates, Paige DeSorbo, Ciara Miller, Luke Gulbranson and Lindsay Hubbard, swapping the Hamptons for the Green Mountains of Stowe, Vermont, for a 17-day getaway with Southern Charm stars Craig Conover and Austen Kroll, as well as four newbies: Andrea Denver, Gabby Kniery, Jason Cameron and Julia McGuire.
“It was like Summer House on steroids and everybody came to have a good time and make the most of it,” Kyle promises ET, Zooming in alongside Amanda from their Manhattan apartment. The two use the words "raw" and "chaos" to describe what's soon to unfold on TV screens.
"Everyone was just ready to party and have fun," Amanda chimes in, noting that by this point it was more clear what could and couldn't be pulled off in a COVID world, versus when they filmed season 5 of Summer House during the pandemic. "Everyone gave 110 percent for two straight weeks."
"Any morning that you woke up hurting, thinking that you were never drinking again, the morale in the house, it was like, 'You can't stop,'" she adds. "It's just energy. You were like all of a sudden, I'm no longer hung over and I'm ready to drink again and you don't know how it happens."
Viewers get a chance to see this alcohol-induced state almost immediately in the premiere, as Kyle's drunken alter ego comes out to play on night one in the house.
"I mean, I will blame it on a couple of things: I was a total lightweight going into the house, so I was just not able to keep up with Craig and Austen for the life of me," he admits. "I also came in with a lot of excitement. I was just ready to actually see some friends and have a good time. We've been working what felt like 24/7 on our business and I also forgot to eat. And then when my excitement got turned into bedroom-gate, I just decided I'm going to get messed up and make a fool of myself."
"That was a decision you made?" Amanda asks, knowing just how messed up Kyle came off that night.
"Yeah," he answers. "I was like, 'Screw it. Screw it. You know what? I don't have a bedroom...'"
Yes, like all good trips on reality TV, the Winter House premiere kicks off with a fight over sleeping arrangements, with a battle for the primary suite, which ultimately does not go to Kyle and Amanda.
"There were three bedrooms in that house that had both a closet and a bathroom, and Craig and Austen took two of them," Amanda reveals. "So I wasn't going to argue with them about trying to get one of their rooms and Kyle didn't either. So we made the basement work."
"Not trying to sound like a diva, but I put in a lot of legwork to kind of like get everyone there and make it happen and I just, I was like, 'All right, I won't take the primary bedroom, but can I have a bedroom?' And instead we got the playroom with a makeshift wall," Kyle says. "But, hey, I got over it. ... I was bothered because I just knew the writing on the wall for this trip. It was going to be non-stop party and I do not sleep well. I'm a light sleeper and I was dreading how I might be if I'm low on sleep."
"Let's also just remember that Kyle slept on the bathroom floor the first night, so he can sleep anywhere if he's drunk enough," Amanda quips.
"That's why I got drunk," Kyle fires back. "The bathroom floor, by the way, was heated. Let that be known."
Those Loverboy-fueled nights also mean Kyle and Amanda will be learning about some of the goings on inside Winter House right along with the audience. That includes a much-teased moment (or maybe, series of moments) from the trailer, in which Gabby tells Julia, "Kyle was, like, hitting on me in the hot tub." Craig then says, "Gabby's, like, hellbent on lighting this house on fire."
"To be honest, I'm eager to see how that played out, too, because I don't remember," Kyle confesses. "And I don't necessarily blame the alcohol. I was just being me. I was being friendly. I'm flirty and I'm also kind of out there, and so maybe I gave her the wrong impressions. I wasn't aware of it, 'til I saw the teaser."
"Gabby and I had some really nice moments together, and she loves Kyle and I, so I'm quite interested to see what happened and if I am going to have to text her," Amanda comments, saying she too had no clue about the flirting allegation. To be fair, a good amount of flirting went down while filming Winter House because the majority of the cast was single. Kyle and Amanda were the only in-house couple, while Julia and Craig were the only other "taken" individuals.
"The chemistry was there," Amanda teases of what fans will see, though viewers will likely be disappointed to learn they won't watch just-confirmed couple Paige and Craig become a thing on camera. Craig was still with his girlfriend Natalie at the time of filming.
"They were both very respectful of each other and this situation they were in," Kyle notes, with Amanda saying Paige "only had eyes for Andrea." The two play coy on whether Paige and Andrea left Vermont as an item, but are more than open about their feelings toward Paige and Craig as an item. The duo went "Instagram official" at Kyle and Amanda's recent nuptials, sharing sweet snapshots together from the photo booth.
"We're so excited for them and we're so excited for them to be able to share their relationship with all you guys, and how it all started, and what's been going on with them," Amanda shares.
"We're all for inner-house, inner-show romance, particularly as a couple," Kyle notes. "It was just fun to see other people put a label on it and make it official. When you look back, they were just friends in the winter, and Paige was in a completely different place with her sights on a completely different man."
"It was all like, very much we were developing a lot of friendships," Amanda says. "I mean, we would talk about how much we loved Craig, and how cute he is, and just being able to build a relationship based off of a friendship first, because there was no possibility of anything more, is just a great foundation for any couple."
"I do love that Paige and I are able to connect about on different things and with similarities between Kyle and Craig," she adds. "And I also love that Kyle and Craig were friends first, so when we all get together, it's just really easy for the four of us to hang out."
The pair says it's nice to have couple of friends who also understand the world of reality TV.
"I actually give their relationship a real fighting chance because they both understand it," Kyle says. "They've kind of gone through that aspect, and any time you date someone that's not in that world and you pull them in, it is oftentimes a recipe for disaster."
"I mean, I look at how hard it's been for guys like Craig and Carl [Radke] and Luke," he continues. "All of a sudden you're bringing someone to the house and it's like a lot and it doesn't always work."
"It's hard to find someone that you think is in it for the right reasons, or doesn't have that jealousy there," Amanda says. "The two of them have shared experiences and I think it's an awesome, awesome relationship and they're really cute together."
Paige and Craig aren't the only crossover coupling spawned from Winter House. Austen finds himself in a love triangle -- or maybe quadrangle -- of sorts, as he sparks up something with Ciara. Meanwhile, Lindsay confesses to being in love with him, all as Austen claims his ex-girlfriend, Madison LeCroy, was reaching out to see if he had "moved on" yet (at least, judging by the trailer).
"There is a lot to unpack there that I'm still trying to unpack," Amanda cracks. "Austen and Lindsay had been friends, or have been friends, for years prior, too, and were hanging out a lot, and leaning on each other through the ups and downs of their own relationships."
"It wasn't until we got to the house in Vermont that I realized that both Lindsay and Austen, through their various relationships with other people, they rely on each other," Kyle says. "They talk all the time. And I was like, I had no idea. I didn't realize how close they were."
Adding another twist here is the fact that Lindsay hits it off with Jason. There are rumors the two are still together, or at least gave their romance a shot in the real world after filming. Lindsay documented a breakfast sandwich Jason made on Instagram in the weeks after filming wrapped.
"You know, the girl and her sandwiches have a history," Amanda jokes, referencing Lindsay's fight with her then-boyfriend Stephen Traverse on season 5 of Summer House over never making her sandwiches. There's more than a good chance any post-Winter House life updates were captured by Summer House cameras. The cast already shot season 6, but Kyle and Amanda won't spill on what fresh faces from Winter House might pop up in the Hamptons, if any.
"We love friends," Amanda ekes out. "We love keeping in contact with people that we've made great connections with, so there's possibilities."
"I mean, it was a good crew and it wasn't just a two-week-long fling with these friends," Kyle offers, going on to hint that the Summer House-Southern Charm universe may be fully combined now, with cast members from each popping up all over each other's shows.
Something else cameras documented: Kyle and Amanda's long-delayed wedding. The two finally tied the knot at Amanda's parents' home in September.
"It does [feel different] where there's not something to plan looming over our head for three years," Kyle says of married life.
"Yeah, it's a lighter, brighter world on this side," Amanda laughs, going on to say that they couldn't not document their big day for Bravo fans. "I think we shared so much of our lives with everyone. I feel like everyone has been in this relationship with us from the beginning. Literally from -- I mean, aside from the first time that we met -- those first eight months, everyone's been on this journey with us and it only felt right to share this huge milestone."
Now, they're just trying to keep straight what happened when. They shot Winter House, the Summer House season 5 reunion, Summer House season 6 and their wedding all in a seven-month stretch!
"Winter House being filmed when Summer House was airing, Summer House season 5, so it was just like this dynamic that was very unique," Kyle says. "It's kind of what we were going through, but it didn't really affect things all that much. It just was like, 'Wait, what interview am I going to today? What season?'"
"Yeah, I feel like for the most part with Housewives, it very rarely overlaps when they begin to film and the reunion and stuff airing. It's always like the very end. But for us, yeah, we were just right in the middle of it having to live a whole other life pretending like nothing else is happening," Amanda adds.
Winter House premieres Wednesday, Oct. 20, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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