Paige DeSorbo and Ciara Miller sit down with ET to unpack their latest group trip to Vermont and the upcoming season of 'Summer House.'
Summer should be fun, and winter should be... wild?
Fans will find out as season 2 of Bravo's Winter House plays out; Paige DeSorbo and Ciara Miller are back for a ski resort repeat, sitting down with ET in New York City to preview the journey ahead.
"Just buckle up, you know?" Ciara cracks, with Paige chiming in to add, "It's just a fun time for all."
The trip served as the longest stretch of time Paige and her boyfriend, Southern Charm star Craig Conover, spent together, uninterrupted: 17 days. The two usually live together -- at most -- a week, alternating between Paige's home base of NYC, and Craig's of Charleston, South Carolina. As Paige confessed in the premiere, she was "terrified" the extended stay could end their "honeymoon phase," seeing as they were only six months into their relationship.
"He passed," she admits with a sign of relief. "I think I put so much pressure on myself because I have never lived with a boyfriend, and I feel like that's a big step, like, I don't take moving in lightly, so I was like, what if I just find out that there's certain things I don't like? And things I was worried about I feel like never were a problem. It was the things I wasn't worried about."
"I mean, I never thought like, 'Oh my god, this is going to be a fail!'" she clarifies, "but it is a different relationship to navigate when your partner is also friends with your friends, has his own relationship with them, and if they get into a disagreement, you know, what is my role? And so, I think I leaned on Amanda a lot."
Amanda is Amanda Batula, Paige and Ciara's Summer House housemate, whose roller-coaster relationship with her now-husband, Kyle Cooke, has been a major through-line on all seasons of the House shows. Craig joked in the premiere that he and Paige could be an example of what a "healthy" relationship actually looks like for Amanda, Kyle and the rest of the crew.
"We were in the first six months of our relationship, so I think that is the most fun time, the most blissful," Paige offers in his defense. "I think if we weren't so good in the first six months then, what are really doing? What's the point? So, I think that we were great in Vermont, in terms of our relationship, but also Kyle and Amanda were newlyweds, so it was so nice to see them in that phase of their relationship and so happy and so cute, so I think there's a lot of good relationships."
Ciara entered the ski chalet single, proclaiming on her drive into town that she was "not interested in boys" after her failed fling with Craig's Southern Charm bro, Austen Kroll, which began on Winter House season 1, spilled into Summer House season 6 (where it imploded, thanks to Austen's dueling make-out sessions with Ciara and Lindsay Hubbard) and briefly resurfaced on the latest season of Southern Charm, albeit as an off-camera hookup.
"Look, I honestly don't regret anything that I have ever done with anyone, especially my romantic partners," Ciara says. "I really try not to, because I feel like they are all lessons learned. I feel like, OK, I gave love, and you gave me love in that moment, and you probably needed it. We both probably needed it in that moment and that is just kind of how I look at it. If I lived with regrets, I would be so miserable. So, no, it was a learning lesson."
Ciara also claimed to not care that she'd be around Austen for a little over two weeks while filming Winter House, having mentally prepared herself for the experience beforehand.
"Here's the thing about dating in a group of friends: you know that you are going to see that person again," she notes. "They are not, like, just as soon as we end things, I am not done with him completely. So I had the approach of, I do want to try and be friends and that was kind of what I was sticking to. I knew that whatever we had was dead and gone, but we can be friends. We have to be here for two weeks, and we did get into it a little bit, but I mean, me and Austin also just have this banter where it's like, we are going to laugh at each other."
Ciara admits she no longer considers the Kings Calling Brewing Co. owner a friend, teasing that her reasoning for that plays out over the course of the season. This is all hinted at in the trailer, when Ciara calls Austen out for putting her in "uncomfortable situations," as he labels her (and seemingly everyone else in the group) a "hypocrite."
"Oh, this man..." she huffs. "Without saying too much, we were playing a game and there were some questions that were asked, and so when you ask a question, be prepared for the answer -- and if it's something that you are really, truly not ready for, don't ask the question. So, he asked a question that he should not have, and he got an answer and then called us hypocrites, but don't worry, I said my piece about him calling me a hypocrite."
Ciara calls Austen "so stupid," but as a compliment, confessing she's grateful for their time together.
"Austen, he did teach me things that I wanted in a partner," she shares. "Now I really do want someone who is so freaking funny and who will make me laugh at the drop of a hat, so I learned something from it. I got something from it, you know?"
Paige also learned some things from Craig, albeit not so applicable to future endeavors.
"He gets out of the shower, walks around fully wet," she deadpans. "Not a towel that dried any spot of him. I am like, the process is you dry yourself in the shower then you step out. It was a lot of water everywhere. ... Someone could slip! That is a hazard."
It's worth noting, Craig refutes this claim -- and actually describes it as potential character assassination. That said, he also took some lessons from Paige, as she's converted him to a "bed person," meaning someone who spends a large amount of their waking hours lying down. However, this comes at a bit of a cost to Ciara, who no longer gets to share a room with Paige.
"I told Craig from the beginning, I was like, 'You might be staying here, but this is my room, and I will be in this bed,'" she recalls. It helped her keep her BFF's boy in check.
"I hold Craig to a very high standard," Ciara explains. "He does have to prove himself. I am the one that keeps him humble. You know, Craig, we work on him. We're on him every day. There are some moments where I am like, I don't know why you are with my friend, but I love you, so we are going to see this through, and she likes you, so I kind of have to."
Craig made big swings in the first episode, handing out cash as bribes to avoid drama over bedroom selections (Paige says she felt like Meadow Soprano during the exchanges) and getting loud with Amanda during a game night. He also owned up to not exactly gelling with housemate Luke Gulbranson, setting up drama for episode 2. In a teaser for this week's episode, Luke appears to pack up his belongings and leave the house after an altercation with the Sewing Down South founder -- seemingly setting up his decision to not return to Summer House for season 7.
Winter House set up more shifting dynamics ahead of the summer, as Lindsay and her then-boyfriend/now fiancè Carl Radke popped in for a weekend visit, seemingly to clear the air between Lindsay and Austen. The two fell out as Winter House season 1 aired, largely thanks to an episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, on which Austen chose Ciara over Lindsay more often in a game that pitted the two women against one another.
"Lindsay and I have come to the terms where we put last summer behind us," Ciara shares. "I will say in Winter House, when they came, we were not on speaking terms. We didn't speak the entire weekend and I really didn't make much of an effort to even observe their relationship, and we kind of kept it very separate. But coming into the summer it was like, OK, if we are going to share a house again, then we do kind of need to reconcile things."
"We have a growing relationship, just trying to get to know each other more and hear each other," she continues, "but yeah, it's definitely something to work on."
Paige feels somewhat similarly to Ciara, after she gave Lindsay the cold shoulder at the season 6 Summer House reunion.
"Lindsay and I are always Lindsay and I," she says. "Like, we didn't fight at all this summer. We had no words. We are always copacetic with each other. I mean, we don't dislike each other. I don't dislike her at all. We are just kind of Paige and Lindsay. The same we always are, the same we always are every summer."
There are big shifts when it comes to Paige and Ciara's relationship with Lindsay's one-time bestie, Danielle Olivera, whom Paige and Ciara would love to have on Winter House season 3, alongside Mya Allen.
"We made a lot of progress over the summer," Ciara teases. "I am grateful and thankful that we were able to reconcile and, like, bounce back from last summer and really just put everything behind us."
Season 6 of Summer House saw Danielle and Ciara get into a near-physical altercation, in which Ciara threw wine (and its glass) at Danielle as Danielle attempted to moderate an argument about Austen between Ciara and Lindsay.
"My relationship with Danielle and getting to know her again, or newly, has been so fun," she gushes. "Me and Mya and her, we went to Montauk a few times, a couple of times and then hung out in the city here. So, yeah, we're trying."
"You get a very different Danielle this summer," Paige adds. "I feel like I know her so much better -- and I have known her for five years -- and I feel like in the past three months, I have gotten to know her more than in five years. She is great, we love her."
They're also big fans of the Winter House newbies, Kory Keefer (Craig's college buddy), Rachel Clark (Kyle and Amanda's wedding florist turned friend) and Jessica Stocker (a "Metaverse realtor" and acquaintance of returning roomie Jason Cameron).
"Don't ask me anything about the Metaverse," Ciara pleads.
"We listened about it, but we don't know," Paige says. "It's hard living in this world. We can't go into another one."
Along with her somewhat confusing job, Jessica is also a dead ringer for Lindsay.
"I think it was [Tom] Schwartz walked in and was like, 'Hey, Lindsay, I haven't seen you in a while...' and she was like, 'I am not Lindsay,'" Paige recalls, shouting out one half of the dynamic duo known as the Toms from Vanderpump Rules. Tom Schwartz and Tom Sandoval show up for a little fun, too.
"They were a good mix," Ciara says. "I think they brought a great new energy to the house. Schwartz just really wanted to have fun, kind of let his hair down a little bit, and I think he did just that... and we kind of got him drunk a little bit."
Of the new additions, Ciara and Paige agree Kory was a seamless fit -- and there are hints of sparks between the gym owner and Ciara.
"Kory is cute," she confesses. "He's obviously attractive. He's got the abs, the muscles, the pearl necklace. He's so funny. He's definitely, like, he's a catch."
"Look, it's kind of hard to not be interested in boys," she also shares. "I am in the stage where I am looking for something a little bit more serious. I am not into the casual dating, fling, or anything, so when I am getting to know people, I am looking for a relationship. It's not at the forefront of everything I am doing, but when I am meeting people, I am like, yeah, I am looking for a relationship. I am not interested in the New York casual scene."
"Happens when you least expect it," Paige notes. "Or if you film a TV show."
Paige and Craig's romance sparked just after filming season 1 of Winter House. They just celebrated their one-year anniversary with a trip to Aruba.
"I have never really celebrated an anniversary, so this is my first one," she beams, but notes she's not putting any pressure on year two.
"We have only been dating for a year and, if you think about it, that is not that long," she says. "I am just about to turn 30. I love my life the way it is. We did just have a huge relationship milestone and I gave him a closet in my apartment. I cleaned out a hall closet."
"The one with the boots?!" a shocked Ciara asks.
"Yes," Paige clarifies. "That, to me, that is engagement."
Winter House airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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