When Paige DeSorbo graduated from college in 2015, she scored a full-time position at a TV station in her hometown, Albany, N.Y. She’d always wanted to be an on-air personality, so the job seemed perfect, at least on paper. As her mom put it at the time, Ms. DeSorbo could work her way up to anchor, get married, have kids, and live down the street.
But she imagined something different for herself.
“I remember just getting the biggest pit in my stomach of like — no, that’s not my life. No way,” Ms. DeSorbo, now 32, said in a recent interview.
Instead, she persuaded her parents to foot six months of rent in New York City so that she could try to find something better. She took a job as an executive assistant at ABC before landing a role on “Summer House,” a Bravo reality show that follows young New Yorkers as they spend debaucherous summer weekends at a shared house in the Hamptons.
“I called my dad crying when they offered it to me because I was like, ‘I think I’m actually too sensitive to do this,’” Ms. DeSorbo said. “And I remember him saying: ‘Do it for the first summer, and if you hate it, we’ll get you out of it. You never have to go back. And if you love it, you’ll never wonder, Oh, imagine if I didn’t do this.’ And honestly, after the second weekend, I was like, ‘I love it.’”
So began Ms. DeSorbo’s unexpected career as a reality star.
To date, she’s appeared on three Bravo shows — “Summer House,” “Winter House” and “Southern Charm” — despite the fact that, in many ways, she’s the antithesis of the modern-day reality personality. She has a New Yorker’s authenticity: direct, assertive and unafraid to voice her opinion even if it might make her look bad. She lacks pretense and showiness, which has earned her fans.
Ms. DeSorbo is more like the reality TV stars of yore — think the first few seasons of “The Real World” rather than the last few seasons of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” — serving up memorable one-liners not (just) because they make for good TV, but because that’s genuinely her personality. There are occasional missteps, like a podcast comment in 2021 about the skin tone of Regé-Jean Page, for which she apologized, and there are moments dramatic flair, but there’s no performing for the cameras: What you see is what you get.
Seven seasons into her run on “Summer House,” Ms. DeSorbo has fashioned herself into the ultimate millennial multihyphenate: a reality TV star, a style influencer, an author, and a co-host of a top comedy podcast, “Giggly Squad,” with her best friend and former “Summer House” cast member, Hannah Berner. Ms. DeSorbo recently introduced her own shoe collaboration with DSW, and, alongside Ms. Berner, hosted the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party livestream. In March, the two capped off a multicity podcast tour, selling out venues like Radio City Music Hall.
Now, they’re publishing a satirical self-help book, out April 15, called “How to Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously.”
Ms. DeSorbo said that her and Ms. Berner’s publisher, Simon and Schuster, insisted that, unlike other reality TV authors, they not use ghost writers so that the book could be authentically in their voices.
“I was like, ‘I can’t wait to tell all of my English teachers from Grade 3 to 12 that they were wrong and I do know punctuation,’” Ms. DeSorbo said.
Much like the topic of the book itself, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. “It’s for the casual reader,” she said. “I really pictured the girls like, going on vacation, grabbing this book, throwing it in their bag. Maybe they pick it up on vacation — but maybe they don’t even open it.”
Though the book tackles questions about love and relationships, it was written before the ending of Ms. DeSorbo’s own: In November, she and her boyfriend of three years, the Bravo star Craig Conover, officially called it quits. Ms. DeSorbo announced the news on “Giggly Squad.”
The former couple made some pointed remarks about each other on shows that aired in recent weeks — Mr. Conover said on a “Southern Charm” reunion that he was shocked by the breakup, and in a conversation with Ciara Miller on “Summer House,” Ms. DeSorbo asked, “Am I dating a secret hater?” — but Ms. DeSorbo downplayed the drama between them.
“No one did anything,” she said. “It wasn’t a bad thing. I think we both were just being really mature and saying what we want and what we didn’t want, and I think that’s extremely powerful to be able to voice how you’re feeling in real time and what you want for your future.”
The breakup of one of the network’s most beloved couples generated plenty of online commentary and speculation, especially as it happened just ahead of the premieres of the new season of “Summer House” and Mr. Conover’s show, “Southern Charm,” which follows the lives of young people living and working in Charleston, S.C.
Every on-camera interaction between the two suddenly became fodder for dissection. On one episode of “Southern Charm,” Ms. DeSorbo and Mr. Conover, who had not yet broken up, discussed her increasingly busy schedule, and how that conflicts with his desire to have her move to Charleston and start a family.
“It makes me feel like if I get more and more successful, it’s a bad thing,” Ms. DeSorbo says in the episode. “Like, if I don’t make you the No. 1 priority, I’m going to feel guilty.”
The scene is awkward to watch, especially with the knowledge of where the relationship ends up. Mr. Conover, who has discussed having purchased an engagement ring for Ms. DeSorbo, seems to want the life that Ms. DeSorbo ran away from in Albany all those years ago. But her refusal to give up her dreams, and to instead commit herself to the career she’s worked so hard to build, has stood out in the typically unfeminist world of reality TV.
“I’m proud of myself for making a tough decision even though the public was like, ‘You’re wrong, you’ll never find another person again,’” Ms. DeSorbo said. She said she had been heartened by the reaction of many of her female fans, who have written to her expressing how grateful they are to see a woman on TV willing to stand strong in what she wants. “I am really thankful for the women that supported me and saw what I was going through,” she said.
Though the love story between her and Mr. Conover may be over, the one between her and Ms. Berner is not.
“It really is true that there is nothing better than your best friend in moments like that,” Ms. DeSorbo said. “I feel like I was processing the breakup so differently because I had those months where she allowed me to say every single thought that came into my brain about relationships, being someone’s wife, being someone’s mother. Like I had said everything I could, even I could think in those months. And so then once, like the public found out, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be fine.’”
Now that she’s single, Ms. DeSorbo is focused on continuing to grow the career she’s fought for. “I definitely feel driven and focused,” she said. “I wanted something, so I’m working toward it.”
And the fact that her success has come in tandem with Ms. Berner’s only makes it that much sweeter. “Hitting these milestones in your career is so exciting,” Ms. DeSorbo said, “but hitting them with your best friend is like a different level of happiness.”
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