Nothing marks the advent of fall like crisp 50-degree weather, pumpkin spice lattes, flannel shirts, and maybe a new Taylor Swift album, if we’re lucky. Last October, however, I decided that the coziest time of year doesn’t really start until the premiere of one of the greatest shows currently airing on television.
No, I’m not talking about HBO’s House of the Dragon, but Bravo’s far more superior Winter House. (Yes, “winter” is in the title, but the scheduling and fashion choices are purely autumnal).
For the uninitiated, Winter House is a spinoff of the Hamptons-set reality show Summer House, which is itself a spinoff of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills offshoot Vanderpump Rules—and maybe the most niche content Bravo has yet to offer. The series features the cast of Summer House, sans Carl Radke (for now, at least), Danielle Olivera, and a few others. Rounding out the crew in their absence are some members of Southern Charm as well as a few professional models.
In Winter House’s inaugural season last year, we watched this hodgepodge of conventionally hot and equally annoying people (mainly, Austen Kroll) shack up in a fancy lodge in Stowe, Vermont, where they spent two weeks shotgunning beer, making out in jacuzzis, and frolicking in cheap costumes from Amazon. It was a perfect hour of—and I mean this in the best way—brain-melting television; a mix of Jersey Shore-esque debauchery, mundane surveillance footage you’d see on The Real World, and the swift and intense romantic scenarios of Love Island.
Call this formula contrived, if you will. What reality show in 2022 isn’t? But it’s clearly worked in Bravo’s favor, as Winter House, which aired only six episodes last year, returns for an extended nine-episode season tonight.
For Summer House (and Winter House) cast member Kyle Cooke, the announcement of a second season didn’t come as a surprise, especially considering the ease of production and the simplicity of shooting a show (mostly) in one location. The self-contained nature of the series, he tells The Daily Beast, makes for an ideal filming scenario in a post-pandemic world.
“[Season 1] was enabled by the pandemic,” Cooke, 40, says over a Zoom call. “I’m sure Bravo was sitting down thinking, ‘What can we actually film that doesn’t have to stray so far off course because of lockdown?’ Season 1 of Winter House was literally filmed pre-vaccine. We had insane testing protocols every single day. It was real. We shot it self-contained. And that was part of the beauty of it.”
“It’s cool that we got to do a second season,” fellow Summer House cast member and Cooke’s spouse, Amanda Batula, 31, chimes in. “It’s a fun show to film. We just get to hang out and party. And we’re in this beautiful house in Vermont for two weeks, just drinking and being silly with each other, not working. So it’s a nice vacation. We just feel lucky that we’ve been involved in it.”
That feeling of luck speaks to the fact that Winter House could easily have been a one-and-done show. The same, after all, could’ve been said about Summer House, which premiered in 2017 to low ratings and little fanfare. However, thanks to some word-of-mouth marketing and a swell of drama over its last two seasons, Summer House—which follows a group of young Manhattan professionals on their weekend trips to the Hamptons—has become one of the buzziest programs in Bravo’s current lineup. One could even argue that it’s begun to eclipse its beloved predecessor, Vanderpump Rules; two of that show’s stars, Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz, even pay the Winter House lodge a visit this season.
“The Vanderpump Rules comparison…” Cooke pauses. “It’s flattering. I mean, those guys are legends. I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Still, Batula and Cooke have done an impressive job of maintaining and even elevating Summer House’s brand as the cast and overall premise of the show has evolved. The couple’s bumpy relationship has been a steady throughline over the series’ six seasons, the last of which ended with their long-awaited nuptials. They’ve also been able to extend the show’s reach by way of their popular sparkling hard-tea brand Loverboy, of which Cooke is the founder and Batula is the creative director. Notably, Batula’s contributions, as the brain behind the drinks’ feminine, Barbie-core design and popular merch, has helped build a fanbase with the same sort of cult-ish fervor as LuLaRoe (minus the MLM scheming).
Batula and Cooke have long credited their intertwined personal and professional lives with exacerbating the normal conflicts couples have, on top of being filmed for 24 hours a day. The last season of Summer House saw their bickering reach a toxic peak, prompting their castmates to intervene and ask Batula if she actually wanted to get married. Looking back now, Cooke chalks up last season’s tumult to the stress of wedding planning.
“It just was like the pressure cooker was on high,” he says. “It was so expensive. It was so stressful. And when you film, it’s very easy, when it all plays out, for little speed bumps and flare-ups to become such a bigger deal. And so I think about the Winter House, going into the second season…”
“We were just happy we didn’t have to plan anything,” Batula laughs.
Based on tonight’s premiere episode alone, it looks as though Batula and Cooke may get a break from being in the hot seat this time around. Much of the promo for Season 2 has focused on a newer couple, Paige DeSorbo from Summer House and Craig Conover from Southern Charm, specifically Conover’s rowdy behavior and conflicts in the house. Batula, though, is more excited to be surrounded by love as opposed to watching another couple get ripped apart by viewers.
“I have someone I can relate to,” she explains. “I’m not the girl with the boyfriend. So I love it from that perspective. I also think being surrounded by people that are in love reminds us why we love each other and why we got married. We’ve been around single people for so long that we’ve tried to play it cool. And it’s just nice to see people in love again.”
Given that Winter House is a total vacation without work (as opposed to Summer House, where the cast members’ hectic weekdays are sometimes part of the story), the couple had a significantly easier time filming in Vermont.
“I didn’t feel any pressure,” Cooke admits. “The only pressure I ever felt on camera is to just make sure everyone’s having a good time even when I’m tired or hungover.”
I should note that, in addition to Cooke’s role as a full-time cast member on Winter House, he’s also the official host of the titular lodge—which is why he’s designated himself the group party-starter. (The same goes for Summer House, which originated around his friend group.)
The entrepreneur makes it clear, though, that although the spinoff takes place in his family’s native town and he’s the organizer of the trip, he’s not pulling any strings behind the scenes—a common inquiry among fans of the show.
“I think there’s a little bit of a misconception that I’m a producer and I have a say in casting,” he says. “I can always refer friends. And I always have preferences, but I have no say at the end of the day. They always look for people that have a connection to the cast.”
Likewise, this season of Winter House welcomes at least one familiar face, Rachel Clark, the last-minute florist for Batula and Cooke’s wedding. We’re also introduced to gym owner Kory Keefer, who tags along as a friend of Conover and is sure to be someone’s love interest or, at the very least, an object of flirtation. And model Jason Cameron, from Winter House Season 1, invites newbie Rachel Stocker, a Metaverse entrepreneur.
“Kyle’s just as involved as any of us,” Batula says with a smirk. “He involves himself. He’s not being asked to get involved. He likes to just share his opinions and try to involve himself. But he has no say.”
“No say, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try to help,” Cooke jokes.
Some fans might actually find it comforting if Cooke was operating the franchise. In six seasons, it’s transformed from a show depicting a “work hard, play hard” lifestyle among a tight group of friends with Cooke as the ringleader, to a mix of O.G.s and younger, sometimes out-of-place newbies who don’t always mesh.
Summer House’s last reunion, for instance, underscored an awkward divide in the household. And there are currently rumors circulating that the show’s central BFFs, Lindsay Hubbard and Olivera, are not on speaking terms after shooting Season 7 this past summer. Batula remains tight-lipped about that situation, given the season doesn’t air until next year.
“People are in a different place than they were at the reunion,” she teases. “Some for the better, and some are just in a different place. I know that’s very vague. But there’s a lot that went down this summer.”
“It’s a weird time loop,” she says about reliving the drama of two separate shows. “It’s like we’re either filming or watching ourselves from a few months back. And then you’re also living life. It’s just a weird cycle.”
While revisiting old conflict year after year may sound like a nightmare to some, Cooke is seemingly up for more. A user in Summer House’s subreddit recently suggested a workplace reality show, à la Vanderpump Rules or Kandi & The Gang, starring the Loverboy team. When I brought this up to the couple, it seems like they had already heard this proposal a million times before.
“Kyle talks about this all the time,” Batula immediately responds. “And I’m like, ‘I can’t take on another one.’ But this is Kyle putting on his wannabe producer hat. I think he’d love to have something that’s showing our events and the more interactive stuff, especially now that the world is opening up again full-speed. We are starting to break into more events and more parties and more fun visual things with our team. But you’re just going to have to watch Kyle at a standing desk on Zoom calls all day.”
“Yeah, I think I do a little bit more than Zoom calls,” Cooke jokingly butts in before launching into a smooth, seemingly thought-out pitch.
“Look, traditionally there were business shows,” he says. “And then there were lifestyle shows, if you want to lump most of Bravo into ‘lifestyle.’ I think there’s something to be said about something somewhere in the middle. At this point, so many people are entrepreneurs. They realize that they can be creators, or they can join the gig economy. And they can keep up hobbies that might generate income. I think people might be fascinated to see what it’s like to build something from scratch because you only scratched the surface on Summer House.”
If Loverboy Hive is any proof, the demand is certainly there to watch Batula come up with her immaculate designs and Cooke attend pop-up events around the country, like a hard-tea evangelist. For now, fans can enjoy the formerly chaotic couple engage in some lower-stakes but still lawl-worthy shenanigans on Winter House.
