Shep Rose Took a 'Step Back' from His “Southern Charm” Friends but Hopes to 'Build Our New Normal' Next Season
The reality star told 'Vanderpump Rules' alums Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright he "felt a little abandoned by some people that I thought were my friends"
Shep Rose made some major life changes.
On the latest episode of PodcastOne's When Reality Hits with Jax and Brittany, Rose, 44, told hosts Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright that he no longer has close relationships with Southern Charm costars Craig Conover and Austen Kroll following season 9, during which Kroll, 36, kissed Rose’s ex-girlfriend Taylor Ann Green and lied about it.
“Watching it back, I was really, kind of got more and more angry,” Rose said. “I feel like he treated the thing with Taylor very cavalierly and callously and I just thought, oh, screw that. And was laughing about it and snickering. I was not happy. That’s so uncool. Just felt ... hurt by a lot of it after the fact.”
Revisiting the subject at the Southern Charm season 9 reunion only made things worse for Rose. “After the whole thing that went down where I talked about it at the reunion, I just felt a little abandoned by some people that I thought were my friends,” he said.
The reality star said his costars have the “right” to their opinions. But as a result, “I just thought, I'm going to take a step back from certain relationships and give it air,” he said. “I don't want to kill them, I’m just not going to water the plant for a little bit. I’m only going to water plants that produce beauty on my end or beauty around me or love.”
When it comes to Kroll, Rose said, “I’ll give him a big hug and I’ll support him in everything that he does, but just as far as the day-to-day banter, it is not where it was at all. And that’s OK. Maybe one day it will be.”
Similarly, Rose has pulled back from his relationship with Conover, 35.
“We’re so different,” Rose told Taylor, 44, and Cartwright, 35. “I mean, we couldn’t be two more different human beings on every scale, measurable way you could ever think of … but having said that — and we laugh about this from time to time — it’s made for really good TV over nine seasons. Just us butting heads, us seeing the world in a different way.”
While the Lowering the Bar author said he and Conover “have a mutual respect in that regard” and “I’m happy to see him doing well,” that doesn’t translate to a friendship right now.
“I know that he desires a friendship and I do too, but I just took a step back from some of my show friends over the past month and a half, two months, maybe more,” Rose said. “And that's OK. You kind of have to, don’t you?”
Shep suspected the friendships might resume when filming of Southern Charm season 10 begins.
“The funny thing is, we’ll get filming again if and when it comes back, and it'll be interesting to see us build our new normal. You know?” he told the Vanderpump Rules alums. “And I know you guys can attest to this, the show can be the best therapist in the world sometimes.”
During the season 9 reunion of Southern Charm, Rose told Kroll, “I hate that I don’t talk to you." Kroll responded by saying he “thought that we needed a break” from Rose after BravoCon 2023, where Rose overindulged.
“I think Austen was so loyal to you at BravoCon ‘cause he felt he might be a reason you were spiraling,” Conover said.
Rose said on When Reality Hits that he went into BravoCon in Las Vegas with “the wrong approach.”
“I’m not blaming Vegas, I swear, I’m just saying, it was just maybe not my favorite town,” he said. “I knew that going in. I knew everything going in. I have no excuses.”
Rose acknowledged that some of his personal issues might’ve contributed to his intoxication over the weekend.
“Just a void of my own personal, whatever, journey, I’m going through,” he told Jax and Cartwright. “And you guys can attest, you’re at BravoCon, everyone’s so excited to see you, you’re making all these people happy and that’s a good thing. But, you know, you can easily get pulled into this — I don’t know, this snowball effect of just like, partying and celebrating. Celebrating the fact that you’re making all these people happy. It’s a weird incentives that go through your brain, at least my brain, and yeah, it was just, like the perfect bad storm.”
Rose insisted he “learned a big lesson” from his time at BravoCon and plans to return in 2024, should Bravo extend him an invite.
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Southern Charm can be streamed in full on Peacock.
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