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Southern Charm
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“Life’s been very interesting,” Madison LeCroy told Decider last week at the Bravo offices in New York City when we sat down to chat about this season of Southern Charm. While it was her first time appearing on the show, it’s clear she’s learned a lot in the four months it’s been airing. Compared to the first time we spoke, she clearly thinks before she speaks and is deliberate with her words, choosing them carefully and ending her sentences early, as the twinkle in her eye indicates she has much more to say, but knows better.
LeCroy had an eventful season on the Bravo series, which seemed like it set out to chronicle her on/off relationship with boyfriend Austen Kroll…until the crew headed to Colorado for a trip and she let it slip that she heard Shep Rose gave Danni Baird chlamydia. It’s a topic that had the internet talking and is sure to do the same in part two of the reunion. When asked about the event LeCroy says, “I think it went well.”
“I feel good,” she continued of her time on the couch with the cast. “I definitely feel like I was able to get out what I needed to. I had some time to think about it and just made sure that I went out there and was true to myself.”
Another topic sure to arise at the reunion is the existence of Kroll’s YouTube video, where LeCroy finds him with two women who spent the night at his place. When I ask about why she was so shaken once those women arrived at the finale party (on the arms of Rose and Craig Conover, no less), she responded, “They’re walking in two deep and I’m alone. They were hyped up.” She also explained that she had taken a red-eye from Utah for work, was on two hours of sleep and went straight to the party. “I had a lot of emotions that day but I think Austen and I did well at standing strong. I wanted to make sure he knew that I had his back.”
In a surprise move, it was Baird who also had LeCroy’s back at the party, helping her to calm down (and face down) the women. “That’s a very good trait to have,” LeCroy said of her. “I can learn from that because I’m not so forgiving at times. Honestly, I just drag it out.”
So, has Baird continued that forgiving streak after the two opened old wounds at the reunion? “We’re fine,” LeCroy reported of their current friendship status. “I mean, I think. I don’t know if we’ll ever be [besties]. But also Kathryn has told her about our friendship and I think she’s getting a little more understanding of that. So I think possibly we’ll move forward.”
When I asked if there’s any chance of a friendship moving forward with fellow frenemy, Rose, she said, “You know, I haven’t talked to him. I will say I feel bad for him in a way. I feel like he’s getting it a lot. And now that I’ve kinda gone through that a little bit, I know how it feels when everything feels like it’s crumbling down. In a way I have a little sympathy even though I think he’s an asshole, but hey. It is what it is. How boring would it be if we were all the same?”
That sympathy certainly lessens when I ask how she felt about him revealing that (allegedly) Kroll spelled out “butt stuff” in rose petals for Valentine’s Day and she obliged. “Pfft,” she said with an eye roll. “I’m like, really? We didn’t do butt stuff but sure, whatever. It was a joke. I just thought that was pitiful, man.” Though not everyone disliked hearing that story. “I’ve gotten messages from guys like, so you do butt stuff? I’m like, no. Are you kidding me?” LeCroy said, laughing it off.
LeCroy estimates the majority of the messages she’s receiving (not about butt stuff) are coming from women, specifically working single moms that “say I helped in a way, which is very honoring because I’ve been there.” She adds, “That’s why Kathryn and I get along, I know she’s in the middle of her things,” referring to the fellow Southern Charm cast member’s intense custody battle. “It’s good to have that positivity that I’m getting right now,” LeCroy said, admitting that it’s been “up and down.”
That includes the mother and daughter that came to her salon and requested a picture, asking if they were the first people to do so, and LeCroy fibbed and told them they weren’t — but they were. In fact, the pressure of being so public hit LeCroy just about a month ago, when she arrived with pal Patricia Altschul at Kroll’s launchparty for his beer, Trop Hop, at Uptown Social in Charleston. “I had my first panic attack,” she revealed. “I hadn’t been around people that recognized me I guess, so to have people pulling on Patricia’s hair and our clothes…obviously when everyone sees Patricia they’re like, holy shit, she’s real. I said hello, and we immediately left and went to Halls [Chophouse]. Totally worth that. But we were there, we supported Austen. I’m so proud of him. I think he’s gonna do great.”
It’s too bad we never got to see her interact with the season’s other lightning rod, Ashley Jacobs. When I ask if they’ve ever met, LeCroy tells me they did, in fact, meet at Cameran’s baby shower in 2017, where Jacobs showed up wearing white gloves.
In reflecting on the season behind her, LeCroy reveals that she “would’ve done a lot of things different.” She thinks for a moment, and says, “I do think I was provoked, but I knew better. I’m an adult and I’ve always said that I’m not gonna let someone get me to the point where I embarrass myself.”
What she hopes others take away from the experience is simply, “I hope that people can stop judging me based off comparing themselves to me. My situation and who I am as an individual is my own person. I hate that people judge and say things that they shouldn’t. I’m true to myself and I am anti-bully,” noting that when she was in school, “people definitely picked on me. People were nasty. So I’m used to it. I’ve had to have this tough shell for a while.”
Southern Charm airs Wednesday at 9pm ET/PT on Bravo.
