Here’s Exactly How the ‘Summer House’ Cast Salaries Work
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Please grab a can of Loverboy, because the time has come to pull back the curtain (the pool floatie?) and find out what the cast of Summer House is getting paid this season. And thanks to the genius brain hiding underneath Kyle Cooke's mullet, the cast is doing...very well. Unlike the Real Housewives—whose salaries are best described as total and utter chaos—Summer House’s contracts are pretty simple!
Kyle Cooke Created the Summer House Pay Scale
Kyle (who has been on Summer House since day one) was instrumental in putting together the core cast’s contract, and it is super different than other Bravo shows like Vanderpump Rules and Real Housewives.
Speaking on the Trading Secrets podcast, Kyle explained that he ran point on negotiating with Bravo, and you get paid more the longer you’re on the show. As he put it, “If you join season 3 or season 6, you’re making what we all made in our first season.”
In other words, cast members who have been around since season 1 (Kyle Cooke, Carl Radke, and Lindsay Hubbard) are making the most money, cast members who joined later (Gabby Prescod, Amanda Batula, Danielle Olivera, Paige DeSorbo, Ciara Miller) make slightly below them, and newbies like West Wilson and Jesse Solomon are on the bottom rung. But they’re all climbing the payment ladder together!
Not only does this payment structure make logical sense, but Kyle explained it ensures there’s no “fourth wall drama” due to some people making more than others because they’re “more famous.” It’s simple: the longer you stay, the more you make!
That Said, You Don’t Earn ~Real~ Money Until Your Third Season
Kyle confirmed you can’t live off a Summer House salary (at least not in New York City) until season 3 or 4, saying, “You can cross the six figure threshold— it all depends on the number of episodes per season because we get episodic fees.”
Brand Deals Are a Huge Thing
Much like every other reality star, the Summer House cast works with brands on endorsement deals. And Carl Radke pulled back the curtain during the show itself, telling Kyle that he’d already made $70,00 by summer 2023 doing “paid posts” while Lindsay Hubbard had made $150,000.
About the Bethenny Clause....
The Bethenny Clause (named after Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel) ensures that Bravo gets a cut of whatever businesses their reality stars promote onscreen. A perfect example? Kyle Cooke’s beverage company Loverboy, which is featured in pretty much every episode of Summer House.
Spritz Variety Pack
drinkloverboy.com
$49.50
“This is where I negotiated, no one had ever negotiated it in the way we did, because it was written very vaguely,” Kyle said on Trading Secrets. “I was like, I need to be able to raise money from investors in whatever businesses I’m working on and Bravo can’t have a piece of that. So we fine-tuned the language so it just applies to, you know, my share of the quote-un-quote revenue.”
So How Much Does the Summer House Cast Make, Exactly?
The Summer House cast’s contract details haven’t been revealed publicly just yet, but according to Life & Style, the range is somewhere around $10,000 to $20,000 per episode (so between $170,000 to $340,000 for a 17-episode season). Though honestly, it seems like Kyle, Carl, and Lindsay could be making more depending on how often they get raises/are able to renegotiate their contracts.
Either way, it’s a lot of money to be paid for partying all summer!
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