It’s true: Jennifer Lawrence was the Bravo superfan who helped with the Summer House audio leak investigation.
On April 24, the network had launched a full investigation into how audio footage from the April 23 reunion special taping made its way to social media well before it was set to air. The three-part reunion didn’t begin airing until late May — and concluded on Tuesday night.
Only days after the leak, on April 26, Bravo concluded their probe, and fired the individual who was described as being “involved in the production of the reunion” for their role in the leak. Bravo executive producer and reunion host Andy Cohen condemned the violation, and also shared at the time that a Bravo superfan “who you’re gonna hear more about cracked the case [and] delivered crucial information.”
On Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live! Tuesday night after the conclusion of the reunion, he confirmed that Lawrence was indeed that person. At the time, Cohen sounded very excited about this fan — and Bravo and Cocktails reported that it could be Lawrence; but the network never confirmed.
“There’s been a lot of speculation about who that superfan was, including the wild theory that it was actress Jennifer Lawrence,” Cohen said Tuesday night. “I wanted to personally thank that superfan. Folks, that superfan was indeed Jennifer Lawrence. Her online sleuthing helped our team solve this mystery.”
The unauthorized recording that had leaked was footage of the castmembers at the center of the show’s off-camera scandal — Amanda Batula, West Wilson and Ciara Miller — arguing back and forth about the events that led to Batula and Wilson coming out with their secret relationship and defending it, despite Batula being married but estranged to castmember Kyle Cooke and Wilson being Batula’s friend and Miller’s ex-boyfriend. Batula and West cited an alleged video of them together as prompting their statement about their relationship.
That footage, however, never made it to the final cut. Josh Brown, vp of current production for Bravo, explained to The Hollywood Reporter during a series of reunion interviews that the leaked audio was raw footage during the 10-hour taping and “we’re never going to play the whole 10 hours. Choices need to be made. We didn’t really pay attention to what was in the leaked audio versus what we would normally do. We just made the episodes utilizing the normal creative process. I don’t feel like there was anything left out, and I’m not even talking about the leaked audio, but I don’t feel like there was anything big that the viewer missed.”
At the conclusion of the reunion on Tuesday, Bravo announced a forthcoming bonus episode. Summer House: The Aftermath will air July 16 and will feature three conversations to cover the unfolding scandal since the reunion taping. The sitdowns were filmed three weeks after the reunion: “Lindsay gives Amanda some tough love while Kyle seeks honesty from West. Ciara meets up with Meija in-person,” reads the logline.
About the bonus episode, Brown told THR that the castmembers in the sitdowns “definitely get to a new place” after what could be seen as an unfinished reunion, given all the questions still swirling around the West and Batula romance. “I think it’s too simplistic to say ‘closure,’” he said of the bonus episode chats, adding, “These are issues that are going to take a lot of time to work through, if they ever get worked through. I don’t really know where it’s going to go in the future, but it definitely got to very interesting new levels of understanding where the other person is coming from. I think viewers will find it pretty fascinating.”
The season 11 cast, meanwhile, is still on track to be set by the end of June, with filming early July. Though Brown admitted that “it’s going to be very tough to get the full cast back together” after everything that’s happened. Still, he said they aren’t looking at season 11 as a reboot. “We feel like this is evolving,” he said. “It really comes down to what the show is, which is obviously about a summer share in the Hamptons, and in real life, every summer, there might be a core group but the group does evolve in real life share houses. So these things evolve. We can’t say exactly how many people are returning or exactly how many new cast members are joining, but there’s always new people to freshen the dynamic and we were planning for that before any of this scandal hit.” Read his full interview here.
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