By Kate Aurthur
Plus IconKate Aurthur
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Clifton Prescod/Bravo The other shoe has dropped in the aftermath of the “Summer House” scandal: Amanda Batula will not be returning for Season 11 of the Bravo show, Variety has learned. Though this development may be obvious — in that Batula upended her life and career by beginning a romantic relationship with castmate West Wilson, who’s also been ousted from the show — there were still those in the Bravosphere who thought that perhaps she might still be able to come back.
Yet the presence of Batula, the estranged wife of “Summer House” founding cast member Kyle Cooke and her former best friend, rising star Ciara Miller, was never going to be possible, after she shocked both of them in March when she and Wilson began dating. As Bravo executive Noah Samton put it in a June 16 interview with Variety, the cast of “Summer House” has to live with one another as friends. “‘Summer House’ is unique in the Bravoverse,” Samton said. “If you have two Housewives who hate each other, and can’t get along, they can shoot a scene, and at the end of the day go home to their own house. On ‘Summer House,’ they actually live together. So if people have a real issue with each other, you can’t live together in a house. And we wouldn’t do that to the cast.”
The controversial romance between Wilson and Batula, half-heartedly dubbed #Scamanda — though that nickname never took off the way #Scandoval did in spring 2023 — was confirmed by them on March 31 in a joint post on Instagram. The new couple then faced the music at the “Summer House” reunion taped three weeks later, and it did not go well. During the three reunion episodes, which began rolling out on May 26, they appeared to be drugged, and vacillated between a largely defensive posture along with some petulant lashing out (mostly from Batula).
They were so unforthcoming, in fact, that Bravo scheduled an extra episode, “Summer House: The Aftermath,” in an attempt to get more answers from them. “When you watch the reunion — as incredible as it is, and as great television as it is — you walk away feeling a little unsatisfied because of the way that West and Amanda handle themselves,” Samton said. “They didn’t explain themselves in a satisfying way.”
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