Siesta Key stars, Juliette Porter and Chloe Trautman are spilling some serious tea after some shake-ups on their MTV reality TV series. ET spoke to the pair about the show’s move to Miami, castmate Kelsey Owens’ departure and more.
In the August Instagram post, Owens said she was “walking into a scene at a freaking strip club of all places and was informed that I will be cut moving forward on Siesta Key with absolutely no warning.”
Clearly upset over her apparent departure from the series, Owens added, “It’s mind-blowing and truly disgusting that after working on a show since I was 19 years old where I’ve shared things about my personal life I wasn’t always comfortable with, revolved my whole life around, and put so much effort into could come to an end in such a disrespectful manner and so abrupt.”
“She’s in this season, a good amount,” Porter said when asked about Owens’ post, in which she claimed that she was cut from the show “with absolutely no warning.”
“I don’t think there was a lot of stuff for her here in Miami,” she continued. “She came to visit, and she walked in my fashion show, which was amazing.”
While Owens claimed she was “fired” from the show after spending four seasons on the series, Porter said that simply wasn’t the case.
“She wasn’t fired, that was not exactly what happened,” Porter maintained. “And we both feel for her in that sense. The way it was handled wasn’t the right way at all. But at the end of the day, and we know exactly what we sign up for before each season, so she kind of knew what was going to happen, what she was getting herself into. But she was not fired, and she’s definitely gonna be in a lot of the episodes.”
Trautman shared a similar sentiment, adding, “We’re on a reality show to share our lives, and some people, and I’m not just speaking about Kelsey, I think this goes for everyone – people that are reluctant to share, it’s like, you’re on a show to share your life and to be honest and to put it all out there. And like, put it all out there, and sometimes the reaction to that isn’t going to be great, and you do have to deal with the consequences of that.”
She continued, “I think for a long period of time, Kelsey had a lot of pushback on sharing, and I think at some point, people are like, ‘Well, if you’re not gonna share, then what are you doing here?'”
Owens also went on to call the show “fake,” another claim both Porter and Trautman refuted. Instead, they said it was Owens who was putting on an act for the cameras.
“She was fabricating a lot of her stuff that had nothing to do with us. She was the one that was faking relationships, that wasn’t us,” Porter said. “I cannot crocodile tear, ugly cry. I’m not faking that.”
“I think when I started to really realize it, and Juliette will recall this moment, but it was last season. I think it was like, Cara’s going away, end of the summer party, and I film a scene with Kelsey, and she’s telling me that her and Max are going through a hard time,” Trautman recalled. “And I’m like, invested into the conversation, because Kelsey and I may not be super close, but I know how important Max is to her and that relationship and they seem to really work.”
She continued, “And after the cameras filmed us having our conversation and then they move on, and it’s not like, ‘Alright, that was it, now we’re gonna walk away.’ I stayed in that conversation, and I said to her, ‘Oh my God, are you OK? Have you talked to him about this? and she was like, ‘Oh no, none of that’s real.'”
It’s not only something the cast caught wind of, but MTV too, with Trautman sharing that Owens’ resistance to sharing played a part in the show’s decision to cut her from the series.
To me, it’s like when somebody made a personal decision to make herself more relevant, to fabricate her life, to make more screen time? That’s when I was kinda like, ‘Eh,'” Trautman added. “And obviously, producers, and MTV and whoever got wind of that, they’re like, ‘Well if this girl isn’t going to share the real, then we don’t need to invest as much time into her.'”
The other shake-up on the show is the move to Miami, but it’s a welcomed one, even if it’s been a “culture shock” for the pair.
“I think I can speak for both of us, moving to Miami was very much a culture shock, and I think getting used to it was hard,” Porter said. “Because it’s so different than Siesta Key. I mean, we were living in a very small town, very laid back, relaxed. And the energy here is just so much stronger, and there’s so much to do, and so many more people.”
See the pair step into a whole new world when Siesta Key: Miami Moves premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.
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