‘Southern Charm’ Star Austen Kroll Believes He’s No Tom Sandoval
As Season Nine of Southern Charm gets underway, Austen Kroll can’t help but feel a bit nervous — and anyone who has watched the trailer for the season, or even just the first episode alone, can understand why. The season’s main storyline revolves around an alleged hookup between Kroll and his best friend Shep Rose’s ex-girlfriend, Taylor Ann Green. Messy.
But that bit of drama hasn’t even started yet. Instead, the season kicked off with Kroll attending the wedding party of his on-off ex-girlfriend, Madison LeCroy (you know, the one who found A-Rod in her DMs and might or might not have accidentally contributed to the baseball player’s split with Jennifer Lopez). The party also happened to be attended by yet another one of his exes, Olivia Flowers. Sounds a bit awkward, right?
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“It was a lose-lose situation,” Kroll tells Rolling Stone. “In any normal circumstance, let’s be honest, I would not have been at that party.”
Don’t forget the optics that come into play here. Not only is he quite literally contractually obligated to attend certain filming events, but had Kroll decided to skip out on the party, he would have been slammed online by fans accusing him of still having feelings for LeCroy despite her now being married.
“When she texted me to invite me, she was like, ‘Look, I understand if you don’t want to come.’ And I’m like, yeah, but if I don’t come, it’s going to look like I’m bothered. Fans love to jump to those sorts of conclusions, and I could absolutely see them being like, ‘Oh my god, man, he can’t even go because he’s so in love with her.’ Rip out my hair out, no. So the only thing to do was to try to be as normal as possible while I also navigate the landmines of seeing my other ex,” he says. “So I was like, sure, and let’s film it.”
And for once, Kroll and LeCroy actually managed to play nice for a few hours. There was, of course, that awkward moment when LeCroy asked Kroll to give a speech (who wants their ex to even speak, ever, much less at your own party?), but other than that, it was a pretty harmless interaction. The real surprise sour moment came between Kroll and Flowers, who wasn’t able to slap on a happy face quite as easily: “I thought that she was gonna be just fake cordial, but then she got salty quick, and I was like, ‘Oh, boy.'”
For those not as familiar with Kroll and Flowers’ history, they started dating during Season Eight, but by the time the reunion rolled out, they had already called it quits due to Kroll’s inability to fully commit. During the premiere episode, Flowers accused Kroll of disappearing from her life completely and without warning. Now, one could argue a breakup should count as a warning, but feelings are feelings. “When we ended things, I took a major step back out of her life,” he says, adding that he thought that was the “respectful” thing to do. “But you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.”
So that leaves us with two awkward exes and one shit-storm brewing on the horizon with Green. It’s not looking great for Kroll.
News first broke of Kroll and Green’s hookup earlier this year, with rumors swirling about them getting together shortly after Green and Rose split following a two-and-a-half-year relationship. While the teasers for this season have yet to reveal just how the alleged hookup came to be, Kroll admitted that something did, in fact, happen between them — he just won’t say what. And in recent weeks, the definition of the word “hookup” has been hotly debated among cast and fans. It all feels very middle-school, but essentially, whether they had sex or not has yet to be confirmed. “I want to make a T-shirt that says, ‘Define Hookup,'” he jokes.
While he’s able to laugh at the PR game he has to play for now by not just explaining the full situation upfront, Kroll says he understands why people, especially Rose, might feel betrayed by his actions. “Obviously, we’re talking about a good friend here,” he says of Rose. “And so, that is something you wouldn’t think your good friend would do to someone you love or loved. There is a culpability to be taken here on my part.”
But as much as fans might want to crucify him for getting involved with a friend’s ex, those are the same fans that started shipping them last season and during the reunion when he was seemingly the only person willing to stand up for Green as Rose started mistreating her (and eventually, cheated on her). Dear fans: you can’t have it both ways.
And coming off the heels of Vanderpump Rules‘ Scandoval, Bravo fans are ultra-sensitive to major cast hookups and betrayals. But Kroll wants to make it clear that while what he did was certainly breaking all sorts of bro codes, there was no infidelity involved, and he should not be compared to the Tom Sandovals of the world.
“I thought about our friends’ and past partners’ feelings more than you would think,” he says. “That definitely came into play for both of us. We thought about the fact that we could ruin friendships. And so that was in my head more than I guess the average person might think.”
One solution for Kroll to avoid all this drama? Maybe stop dating and/or hooking up with people on your show.
“Trust me, I know,” he laughs. “But I want to be able to date people who understand my life and who I can talk to about the show and about Bravo and everything that comes with it. So what do you do?”
And in his defense, Kroll has really only dated one person who was already on the show when he joined: Chelsea Meissner (she eventually left after a few seasons). LeCroy didn’t join the show until after she was already dating Kroll — in fact, she would never have joined the cast if it wasn’t for their relationship. And when Flowers was brought on last season, her main connection to the cast was Kroll, and the possibility of them dating was introduced from the jump.
“I get criticized for it, and then it’s like, OK, do you want me to not show my dating life?” he says. “If I start dating someone, whether they are on the show or not, people will eventually want to see it, which means then the girl is on the show. You want me to share the mishaps of my dating life and give you something entertaining to watch and/or cringe at and laugh at.”
So while Kroll might often come off as a womanizer who can’t seem to stop dating his castmates, when you zoom out, he’s just a guy who is unlucky in love and willing to let the world watch him as he falls down and tries to get back up again. And if he ever did stop putting his dating life on display, Southern Charm would get a whole lot less interesting to watch.
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