‘Winter House’ stars Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke talk filming for the first time as a married couple

Tune in to “We Should Talk” every Thursday, where In The Know’s Gibson Johns interviews your favorite celebrities and influencers. Subscribe to “We Should Talk” here.

Winter is certainly coming once again, which means that it’s time for a new season of Winter House!

The debaucherous Bravo spinoff takes cast members from Summer House, Southern Charm, Vanderpump Rules and some new faces, and throws them all into a house in snowy Vermont to party and fight. It’s back for a second season on Thursday, Oct. 13.

Ahead of the season premiere, Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke appeared on In The Know’s pop culture interview series We Should Talk, to talk all about Season 2 of Winter House, about whether being married affected their filming experience (it did), about what they think of the whole “No. 1 couple on Bravo” fan theory and how they think about growing their lives together in relation to Summer House.

Listen to In The Know’s full episode of We Should Talk, featuring Winter House stars Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke, which appears below, and keep reading for highlights from the interview:

On filming a full season for the first time as a married couple:
Amanda Batula: It was a weight lifted off of our shoulders. We could talk about the wedding nonsense and the stress and the tension and the anxiety from it, but the fact that the planning is done. I feel like we’re back to being us. [We’re] the people when we first started dating or when we first got engaged, when there was no pressure. We were really just able to enjoy ourselves and be us again.

Kyle Cooke: It’s not like we ever strayed from who we were, but when we went in, it was the first time I had this carefree attitude in the longest time. Even if we’re in a good place, when you go into these previous seasons, we just know that normally we’d be on the weekend in the city or in New Jersey planning the wedding, but we’re filming in the Hamptons. It was just a carefree kind of mindset that I haven’t had in a long time.

On the whole ‘No. 1 couple on Bravo’ fan theory:
Amanda Batula: Other people deserve to be in the spotlight! I don’t want it to be about us anymore. I’m happy taking a back seat and giving my opinion, but I love watching Paige [DeSorbo] and Craig [Conover] together and seeing them as a couple and watching them fall more and more in love. […] But it’s wild the way fans pit us against each other. It’s like, two people — Paige and Craig — are the first cross-show couple on Bravo, which is a very fun, exciting thing for the fans! Then you have a completely different relationship of two people on the same show who have gone through the ups and downs of trying to be together, their friendship and now they’re a couple: Carl and Lindsay. I don’t think there has to be a “No. 1 couple”; I think it’s two different relationships. It’s exciting for both of them in different ways! Not one has to be better than the other, and people feel like we have some sort of jealousy but, omigod … I’m relieved.

Kyle Cooke: If we had had [other] couples in the house all along on both of our shows, a) It would’ve made for better television, because there would’ve been more drama, and b) we would’ve felt like there was less weight and less pressure. This is how we feel. I don’t think that there’s this push to be No. 1. Quite frankly, if you’re the No. 1 couple, then you’re just positioning yourself to be toppled over.

On envisioning their lives beyond Summer House:
Kyle Cooke: That’s a good question. For us to take on any more responsibility and continue to film, we probably have to find some way for the concept [of the show] to evolve.

Amanda Batula: The show can continue on based off of its roots, which is a bunch of people partying in the Hamptons every weekend, or it can evolve with all of us. Especially with Craig and Paige getting more serious, with Lindsay and Carl being engaged, us being married and Danielle and Robert in a serious relationship, it could happen. Will it? I don’t know! But, in its current state, no way. I wouldn’t want to even be pregnant in the house with the chaos and the loudness and the ruckus. I can’t even sleep now, so there’s no way I could sleep then.

On proving haters of their relationship wrong by making it down the aisle:
Amanda Batula: If we did it just to prove something, that would be a huge, terrible mistake. But that’s how it feels! I want everyone to pay up that placed their bets that we wouldn’t make it a year, because we did! Whoever bet against us owes their friends some money.

Kyle Cooke: Look, particularly me, we’ve given people reasons to doubt. The previous season of Summer House was tough to watch. We didn’t watch it together, because it was just like, “Man!” It actually felt worse watching it than it did in the moment. Because when you have everyone around [talking about it], it makes it worse than it is. Watching it back, we were obviously already married, but I was just like, “I didn’t even remember how bad it was!”

Watch the full episode of We Should Talk featuring Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke below, and tune in to the Winter House Season 2 premiere on Thursday, Oct. 13 at 9 p.m. ET, only on Bravo:

If you enjoyed this story, check out In The Know’s recent interview with “Southern Charm” stars Naomie Olindo and Leva Bonaparte here!

Listen to the latest episode of our pop culture podcast, We Should Talk: