The current season of Southern Charm might be the strangest yet as fans will be able to see it as the point where everything changed for cast member Kathryn Dennis. Prior to this season, many of her fellow castmates had written Kathryn off as volatile and paranoid, but this season, on and off camera, fans of the hit Bravo show are starting to see that things were going on behind the scenes to make her angry and concerned that there were people plotting against her. After the nanny for Dennis and her ex, Thomas Ravenel, went to the Charleston police to accuse him of rape, fans have been bingeing the early seasons of the show and watching them through a more skeptical lens.
Last week Kathryn chatted with Kate Casey on her podcast Reality Life With Kate Casey to discuss how things changed this season and what fans can expect this week on Southern Charm . Dennis says that she had developed coping skills in order to exist on her own with few supporters in past seasons.
This year is different because Dennis says that she had the support of several of the other cast members, including a group of ladies that made her feel included. Kathryn hints that this new bond will be critical to this week’s episode on a trip to Hilton Head, where suddenly nobody thinks she’s the crazy one.
“Connecting more with the girls, I really have been able to be myself. People are coming to my side to be there with me…because they see how difficult it is, I suppose.”
This week, it’s Ravenel’s latest girlfriend who is the conductor of the “hot mess express.”
“Everything is about to change.”
Kathryn explains that she didn’t realize how fixated Ravenel and his girlfriend this season, Ashley, was until she watched the episodes. Ashley started out pretending that she respected Kathryn’s position as the mother of Kensie and Saint, and little by little pulled a Single White Female as seen in one of the final scenes of the season where Ashley tells Kathryn she’s more of a mother to the kids than Kathryn, and that Dennis is simply an “egg donor.”
In many of her interactions with Thomas and Ashley this season, Kathryn explains that she almost goes numb and stays emotionally distant as not to fully engage with the negative energy.
“This year, it’s very different with Ashley. Watch them talk about me and my kids and I’m getting to understand how involved she was. Meeting her on the show was really weird because a normal person would have told the mother of their children they were dating someone new, but Thomas used the show as the platform to tell me. It was very surreal in that meeting with her at lunch. I was so emotionally removed because I’ve been forced to be that way with him.”
Kathryn also says that she has bonded with some unexpected Southern Charm cast members, like Cameran (considering that Cameran is now a mom, they have many new things to talk about) and Whitney, who she says is a lot of fun.
But perhaps the strangest new ally is Whitney’s mama, Southern Charm matriarch Patricia Altschul . A serious rift developed between Patricia and Thomas which made her re-evaluate all that she knew about Ravenel, which made her take another look at Kathryn. Now fans can check out the social media accounts of both ladies and see that they are constantly “liking” each other’s posts. It seems Kathryn is right, everything is changing on Southern Charm .