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Credit: Bravo, Instagram
Kyle Cooke addressed if he “saw any of this coming” – after his estranged wife Amanda Batula confirmed her romance with his good friend West Wilson. The Summer House star also revealed his “toughest episode of all time,” the status of his Loverboy company, and where he stands with Amanda today.
On March 31, Amanda and West released a joint statement confirming the rumors of their romance. Before this, Kyle denied the rumors and defended Amanda. But in the new season, Kyle blew up at her (and their costars) in a shocking episode, after previously sharing that his business was struggling financially.
“If you were to ask me if I saw any of this coming, I absolutely [did] not,” said Kyle of the romance controversy on Trading Secrets. “But such is life. Gotta learn from everything and move on.”
“The toughest episode of all time for me is yet to come on season 10,” he added, presumably referring to his controversial rant in the recent episode, after his costars confronted him. “I basically hit my breaking point. I spiraled, and I just felt so misunderstood.”
Host Jason Tartick asked Kyle how his business is doing.
“My SBA payment every month [is] $55,000,” he said. “I literally need to make $100,000+ a month just to break even on paying this SBA loan payment. The episode where I talk about the financial stress of the business was the same exact day — [you] can’t make this stuff up — that Amanda and West put out their joint statement.”
“When I talked to [my costar] Carl about only having enough cash to keep the lights on for another couple months, we saw a spike, huge spike [in customers],” said Kyle. “Everybody that went on our website and continues to go on our website is playing an active role in saving this brand. Honestly, thank you everybody for supporting us.”
Later on, Kyle addressed his split with Amanda.
“Ultimately, I want to handle this in the classiest way possible,” he said. “I still have so much love for Amanda. There’s a lot that goes on in a marriage in the other 10 months that we don’t film. There was really no point and no gain in dragging our marriage through that to kind of expose more and tell my side.”
“I was already in the mindset [of] let’s just try to have an amicable split because we have so many friends on so many different shows, including our own, that had a pretty horrible public breakup and it took years to just be in the same room,” he added. “When everything else unfolded [between Amanda and West] in April, we [had] an insane amount of submissions of people saying, ‘You should do F-Boy, you should do Lover Girl, you should do Team Kyle, you should do Team Ciara.’”
But Kyle said he feels this would be “stooping down” to a “lower level.”
