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The season eight reunion for Summer House is yet to air, but the cast has already opened up quite a bit about their feelings on how the summer went. In particular, there has been quite a bit said about Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard‘s split and how he handled it. Now, Carl is expressing how he feels about the situation, and he’s also talking about some of the hardships he’s handled since being on the show.
Fans will note that Carl, just like Lindsay, is one of the founding cast members of Summer House. However, the world first saw him in an episode of Vanderpump Rules, which served to introduce Summer House.
Recently, Carl sat down for an interview with the New York Times to discuss his time on reality TV as well as some of the demons from his personal life that have plagued him. He starts by talking about what his life may have been like had he not ventured into unscripted television.
Carl says, “I feel like I would probably be married and have a family, but living a very, like, a lower key life.”
The conversation then turns to the show itself, with Carl discussing the early seasons. In particular, he notes how much the cast drank early on. He highlights one weekend in particular at an oyster farm.
“There are weekends during Seasons 1 and 2 where they completely don’t show because we were so drunk.”
Carl continues, “We were so drunk at the oyster farm, there was no story. Nothing was being really moved along. And just us shucking oysters and drunkenly saying stupid things.”
However, he offers reassurance that the cast’s decision to drink and party was their own, and he does not blame Bravo or the producers.
“With the volume of drinking, only we decided to do that. We loved to party. I’m telling you, they took drinks out of our hands.”
The interview then shifts to the middle seasons of Summer House and Carl getting sober. He admits that seeing his behavior play out on television was a deciding factor in cleaning up his act. He decided to get sober before season five of the show, which was during the pandemic.
Carl says, “Every other Bravo show, you film a dinner or at a party, and then you go home, in separate places. We go home, back to the same spot, where there’s more microphones and more cameras.”
While getting sober and filming the show, he learned that his brother had passed away. Unfortunately, he resumed drinking after returning to the house and after a short break from filming the show. Sadly, it was after filming ended that he became even more anxious.
According to Carl, “I went back to New York City, to my old SoHo apartment, and that’s when I just, like, started spiraling. Drinking and using by myself. And just the fear of like, ‘This is going to play on TV.”
Still, he goes on to say that the show still helped him.
“I’d like to think the show saved my life — seriously, I don’t know if I would have ever seen myself behave. I always thought that it was like, fun, people liked being around me, but over time, that wasn’t the case.”
Naturally, the conversation progressed to discussing him ending his engagement to Lindsay and now being single. He admits that he could have been more direct with her.
He says, “I’m not proud of how I was handling the situation and how I was treating her. I mean, I was clearly frustrated and, you know, so I wish I had really been more direct. You can clearly see I’m struggling to communicate my feelings, and that’s not on her, that’s on me — I’m seeing myself blame and play victim, and I don’t want to be either.”
Regarding filming season nine of Summer House, Carl says, “I’m looking forward to this summer because of my friends and getting back to having fun. Got one more summer before I’m 40.”
There will be two parts of the Summer House season eight reunion. The first will air on June 6, and the second will grace TV screens on June 13.