Credit: Clifton Prescod/Bravo
Kyle Cooke revealed a text exchange with Craig Conover – the boyfriend of castmate Paige DeSorbo – after Craig’s collaboration with a beverage company that competes with Kyle’s Loverboy. He also denied pushing his brand on Summer House castmates, and shared more details about the drama.
In a recent interview with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, Kyle shaded Craig for the collab, and he suggested he was a liar. Afterward, a front person for the competing brand suggested that Kyle doesn’t allow investors at Loverboy, and hinted that – before Craig’s new partnership – the stars had a conversation in which Craig asked to invest in Loverboy, which Kyle denied.
“I’ll be honest. Like [Andy] caught me off guard,” said Kyle on the Trading Secrets podcast, addressing Andy’s questions about the drama. “I hadn’t thought about this in a while and I let my emotions get the best of me … Andy sees that. He sees that I’m hurt, and what does he do? He digs deeper.”
Kyle said he consciously decided not to comment on Craig’s involvement with the competitor, and he wanted to keep it a “private matter” – until he made it public on WWHL.
“That was not my intention,” said Kyle, who then gave an update on Craig and Paige. “I’m friends with Paige. I’m friends with Craig. I, you know, the last thing I’m trying to do is make it awkward for any of us.”
Kyle then denied the claim that he doesn’t allow investors.
“We’ve had investors since 2019. I value them immensely,” he said. “I’ve had lots of them texting me saying, ‘What in the heck is going on?’ I could not have done it without them.”
He also said he gives equity in the company to all of his employees, consultants and partners.
“So no, I am not a sole owner,” he said before sharing that Craig “never expressed interest” in investing in Loverboy.
According to Kyle, Craig “made a point” of reaching out to him when he came into town in February. They had drinks, and before meeting with other friends, Craig “sprung” the news of his potential new partnership. Kyle was given the impression that Craig offered equity in the other company.
“The next day I text [Craig], like ‘Hey man I can’t — [I’ve] been giving a lot of thought [about] what you said about this opportunity you have, and please like hold off from signing anything. You know, I’d love to put an offer on the table to kind of counter it,’” recalled Kyle. “The irony is I’d actually talked to him a month prior to this because we’re coming out with a THC soda.”
“After a back and forth, Craig essentially said it was too late,” Kyle continued. “And that was that … Here’s a good friend of mine. You know I just thought he’d at least give me an opportunity to like hear me out … I just didn’t think one of my good friends would go hop in bed with a competitor.”
Kyle said he feared this would “impact our friendship.”
He also claimed that Ben, the founder of the competing company, DMed Kyle for a potential meetup – when he was already in talks with Craig. Kyle didn’t see the message, but later Ben allegedly bumped into him at a conference, and asked Kyle to go to dinner – which took place two weeks before Kyle’s convo with Craig.
Kyle claimed he and Ben discussed throwing a party together to “cross-pollinate” their audiences, but Ben didn’t tell him he was already discussing a collab with Craig. Ben also allegedly didn’t tell Craig that he had just spoken with Kyle, who found this “odd.”
However, Kyle said he perhaps “overreacted” to Craig’s involvement. Later in the podcast, he denied ever forcing anyone to consume Loverboy.
“I’ve never pushed this on anybody,” he explained, via Us Weekly. “Yeah, do I hope that they wouldn’t bring my competitor’s products into the house? Sure.”
He then addressed if Bravo is connected to his brand.
“No, they’re not in cahoots,” he stated. “Technically speaking, they’ll get a piece of my takeaway. If there is some type of acquisition, and I’m still on air.”
“If anything, they tell me to tamper it down,” the star added. “They’re like, ‘Kyle, please take off the Loverboy shirt.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean? That’s what I do. I wear my merch. My wife designed it.’ [They’ll ask,] ‘Hey, can you put those drinks in cups?’ If anything, they don’t want it to look like an infomercial because they don’t want people thinking we are in cahoots. So it’s quite frankly the opposite.”
“[Bravo] would never be in cahoots with one big brand … [because it] rules out the opportunity for others to advertise,” he explained. “That’s why you’ll never see one particular mass-produced alcohol all over one show, because alcohol is arguably one of the biggest buyers of ads on Bravo.”
Though Kyle stated that he “never forces” friends to consume Loverboy, he hopes they’d choose to drink it on their own.
“I always want my friends drinking it because they want to reach for a Loverboy,” Kyle expressed. “There have been plenty of times this season where I wasn’t even in the house, people arrive, they grab a Loverboy.”
According to Kyle, castmates must buy their own groceries and alcohol.
“I’ve given the house about $100,000 worth of booze over the years. That’s for us, that’s for our friends, that’s for parties,” he explained, but he clarified that if castmates film a restaurant scene, the show will have a “$50-per-head type thing because that’s them asking us to go to dinner or whatever it might be.”
He denied that his wife Amanda provided funding to start the company.
“I think there was a miscommunication between Amanda and Paige,” Kyle shared. “Paige kind of went on air saying she not only paid the bills when I was starting this because I didn’t have a source of income but she also put up her own cash for that initial pre friends and family capital requirement to start the business.”
“I’ve always had multiple sources of income. I personally, like I said, funded that first $100,000 while continuing to pay our bills,” the star went on. “But I couldn’t have done it without Amanda. She had such an impact. Her fingerprints are all over the initial branding and are still today.”
Kyle then addressed the rumor that he had Hannah Berner fired from the show because she signed a deal with a competing brand.
“I know there’s still people that think I got Hannah fired,” Kyle stated. “It’s actually quite the contrary. I told producers that I would film with her. And I have zero input on casting.”
But Kyle indeed helped with casting in season one.
“That’s why I feel so proud of this show,” Kyle explained. “I put in hundreds of hours making season 1 happen because there was a very good chance this was never going to happen, period.”
He said he “helped bring in” each season one co-star except Stephen McGee.
