We Had Drinks With ‘Southern Charm’ Stars Shep Rose and Craig Conover And Talked About…Randall Emmett

“Can I ask about Randall?” I asked Shep Rose and Craig Conover as we made ourselves comfy at The Bar at The Spectator Hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. It was four days after the #Fofty debacle played out online between 50 Cent and film and TV producer Randall Emmett, a friend of the Southern Charm stars, and perhaps best known as the fiancé of Lala Kent from Vanderpump Rules. “Sure,” both replied, all of us unaware that this would turn into the central topic of our conversation this afternoon. I sat across from the guys who were seated on the black leather couch as we sipped on specialty cocktails including the gin-based Bee’s Sneeze, the picture-perfect The Delish made with pineapple rum, and The Safety Meeting, which is infused with CBD oil, even though the setting was already quite relaxed. I’d gotten my burning Southern Charm Season 6 questions in with the guys the day before, followed by a fairly late night of drinking in downtown Charleston, so it’s no wonder the vibe was chill for this round.

And so after the guys took a moment to watch the latest Instagram video from Cardi B on Conover’s phone (neither were impressed by it), the conversation turned to their own on-screen adventure in 2018’s Reprisal, a film produced by Emmett. “You watched it?” Rose asked incredulously when I confessed I had. “Cheers to you,” he said, admitting even he hadn’t seen it. “I watched the end,” Conover said, which is where their scene is located in the film. “Well, the premise was dare I say improbable. It had something to do with diabetes? I don’t know. A thriller about diabetes,” Rose said. He’s not…entirely wrong. Reprisal is your standard straight to VOD action flick starring Frank Grillo as a bank manager who teams up with his neighbor, Bruce Willis as an ex-cop, of course, to get revenge on a thief. It’s Grillo’s daughter in the movie who has diabetes and affords Rose and Conover their moment to shine. Well, at least for one of them.

“I was so pissed!” Rose exclaims. “I was like, ‘I’ll do the movie if I get a bigger role than Craig,’ and they’re like, ‘Okay, we’ll give you a speaking role,'” and with that, Rose was in. “I became the ambulance driver and Craig was a cop. I’m no cop though, come on,” Rose laughed at the thought of him even dressing up as law enforcement. “I’m just like an idiot ambulance driver, makes a little more sense, not much more though. So I say my line which is, ‘When’s the last time she ate?’ and I’m like, okay that was really funny, I’m glad I did this.” Until it was time for his friend’s big scene. “[With] Craig, they’re like, ‘Okay, Bruce Willis runs toward you and you hand him a shotgun.’ I’m like…that’s pretty fucking cool. That’s pretty cool! They do one take and Willis turns around to the director and goes, ‘Have him throw me the shotgun,’ and I was like, ‘Noooo!’ It rendered that role way more impactful than my line.” Though Rose has kept a reasonable perspective on the pair’s big screen debut. “If we had any lines more than, ‘When’s the last time she ate?’ we would’ve blown the whole thing.”

Perhaps his positive outlook is also due to the fact that these two enjoyed their experience in a way that will surprise no one that’s watched even a fraction of Southern Charm’s six seasons. “It was so fun, we just tore Cincinnati apart for 48 hours and left,” Rose said.

“That was a wild experience. We had a blast,” Conover confirms, also adding that they played craps all night. When it comes to pursuing more acting opportunities he said, “Yeah, I would love to. I thought it was a great time. You just play dress up and then —”

“Throw guns,” I offered. Conover also expressed enjoying the fact that they got to observe the whole process during their short time on set.

“Yeah, it was more educational,” Rose said. “I did it to see what the hell it was like.”

And if Conover thought he was dealing with difficult personalities in his Charleston friend group, he learned a real lesson participating in Reprisal. It turns out, Willis was only there to do his job, and didn’t spend a whole lot of time chatting with anyone except for the director on-set, instead allowing his stand-in to handle the less glamorous moments of shooting a movie. “He only comes out for when the cameras were on,” Conover said of the film’s star.

“Randall was gracious enough to offer that to us,” Rose said of their brief roles in the film. “He’s a funny guy, he’s very exuberant. I sometimes laugh at some of his Instagram posts because he’s like, ‘Alright, ready for the day!’ I’m like, Randall, we’ve had a lot of fun together, don’t try to motivate me.”

I ask about Rose’s thoughts on Emmett’s relationship with Kent and he says with a smile on his face, “They’re totally open and they’re funny. They’re wide the hell open and they’ll tell you some kinky shit,” Rose laughed. “I’m like, hell yeah, lay it on me, I want to know what other people are into. I think they really love each other and I think they’re happy, I hope they’re happy.”

And even though it may seem as though Rose and Conover lead spontaneous lifestyles, Emmett likely has them beat. “One thing Randall does [is say], ‘Hey I’ll be in Canada tomorrow, dude get here!’ and you’re like, what? I can’t get to Canada on a day’s notice. And then he gets mad. He got mad at us for not going to visit him in the Bahamas.”

“By the way, Whitney [Sudler-Smith] does the same thing,” Rose revealed of their Southern Charm friend and producer. “He’s like, ‘I’m going to the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow, I’ll be there for three days.’ I’m like, that sounds like a five thousand dollar decision, at least.”

That’s not to say the guys I’m sitting across from haven’t indulged in the good life from time to time. “I’ve flown with [Emmett] three times and one time he waited for me for an hour and a half on the runway on my birthday,” Conover said of the infamous private jet that Kent is often heard discussing on Vanderpump Rules.

“Can you imagine that??” Rose asks in a way that lets us all know he would never do the same for his pal.

As Conover starts to discuss the series of events that led to this moment, Rose interrupts him, saying, “This story does not paint you in a good light, Craig.”

“Why?” Conover asks him.

“Because you screwed over Austen,” Rose replies, referring to their Southern Charm pal Austen Kroll. The two explain that while Kroll and Conover were in Los Angeles, Emmett offered them seats on his private jet back to the east coast. Except that morning, Kroll found himself pounding on Conover’s hotel room door to wake up his pal in order for them to catch the private flight. When Conover didn’t respond, Kroll jumped on his previously booked commercial flight to get back home as Emmett made it clear, “We do NOT wait on the runway.”

Except he did. Conover rolled up late, hopped on the waiting flight back east, and when Emmett and Kent got out in Georgia, Conover planned to rent a car and drive back to Charleston — only Emmett told him, “For your birthday I’m having the pilots fly you back to Charleston.”

So Conover was already back home when Kroll called him from his commercial flight layover in Charlotte asking him how he was getting back home, believing Conover was probably just waking up from oversleeping in LA. Kroll was annoyed to learn his pal’s luck found him back home first, and Conover didn’t help matters either. “I put this post up, I was by myself on the jet and there was a thunderstorm and I was like, man I really wish someone was with me, this is a little nerve-wracking, and Austen’s like, ‘I hate you.'”

Rose and Conover continue to express their admiration for Emmett, with Rose stating, “I’m always surprised by all his connections,” and Conover adding, “He’s very generous and I always have fun with him.”

Which brings us to the most fun the internet’s ever had at his expense: the #Fofty scandal, based on a text typo Emmett sent to pal 50 Cent after the rapper demanded he pay him the million dollars he owed, expecting the “money by Monday.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t a total, ‘Hey look at us’ thing,” Rose speculated about it all, adding, “And if it is, that’s brilliant, by the way. If it’s fake, I love it.”

“A lot of people were saying it’s for publicity but he went in pretty hard,” Conover said.

“I don’t see Randall welching on anything to 50 Cent. I don’t see anyone doing that, that would not be smart. If you have the money, pay the man!” Rose said. When I ask if he reaches out to Emmett when he sees something like this bubbling up online he quickly replies, “Definitely not. I stay out of almost everything.” Rose admits he did have to reach out to Emmett when he heard Howard Stern mention his name in passing on his radio show. “Howard Stern’s a hero of mine. He has made my life exponentially better just as I drive.” His fandom also something he has in common and celebrates with Andy Cohen. “Andy’s obsessed with Howard too so when I’m on Watch What Happens I’m like, ‘Tell me about the last time you were at the studio, I want to know every little detail.'”

Meanwhile, Conover’s dream talk show to appear on is The Ellen DeGeneres Show, despite the fact that she doesn’t feature a ton of reality TV stars with the exception of the Kardashians. But six seasons of a Bravo series is nothing to sneeze at, and there are few other shows to really compare Southern Charm to, though MTV phenomenon Jersey Shore comes up. “Well, we’re a regional show so we’re not unlike them in that manner,” Rose reasons. “We represent a certain demographic of a certain geography. People want to peel back the curtain and see, what is the Jersey Shore? What is Charleston? It’s definitely a peeking in the window kind of thing.” Conover said that for people unfamiliar with the series, he’s more likely to describe it as “basically Laguna Beach in Charleston,” pointing to MTV’s early aughts series which he admits he enjoyed watching.

When it comes to the unique appeal of Southern Charm, Rose said, “This is all Whitney’s vision. If you know anything about Whitney and our relationship, we give each other a hard time and so I would never kiss Whitney’s ass, but goddamn it if he didn’t start this whole thing and I want that to be known. Thank you Bravo, but this is his baby, he saw it all in his head. Now, he’ll tell you that he envisioned it a different way, he’ll be cantankerous and combative, but he saw something.” His initial pitch was Southern Gentlemen, which was a much more male-focused show, but Bravo liked what they saw enough to encourage more women be added into the cast. As it is, Southern Charm has a higher number of male cast members than many other shows on the network — and males that are often responsible for generating much of the drama each season.

The way this series ultimately came together was by Sudler-Smith throwing parties — not quite auditions, but certainly an opportunity for him to observe personalities at work. “I met him on a rooftop and we had the wildest night ever and he was like, ‘You need to be on the show,'” Rose remembered. And clearly Sudler-Smith was right with the majority of the ensemble: “Thomas and Kathryn, I mean babies were born on our TV show, that’s crazy,” Rose marveled at the thought.

Rose looks at his Bravo contemporaries on Vanderpump Rules and says, “Everybody’s married or dating each other, you’d think there was literally eight people in the whole town of Los Angeles. I’ve been in a position where I feel like, okay I could date you and it would be good for everyone involved but that doesn’t compute to me. I can’t live a lie.”

“It gets us in trouble sometimes,” Conover chimes in. “Shep refuses to lie. He actually doesn’t lie.”

“You’ve come a long way, you used to lie all the time,” Rose said to his pal, their brotherly camaraderie clearly on display in this moment.

“I’ve grown a lot,” Conover acknowledged.

“Craig has come a long way,” Rose agreed sincerely. “We used to fight about it, I was like, dude you’re fucking hilarious but you’re eccentric, you’re things that I want in a friend, honestly, but just own it. Be weird because the world appreciates weird.”

“Yeah, Shep does say that. Recently he’s like, ‘Your delivery’s horrible, Craig. It doesn’t make any sense at the time but damn if what you said wasn’t exactly the situation. What you said was right, but you had no means of articulating that to anyone, you just yelled about it.'” Rose points to the Season 5 reunion last year, where he found many of Conover’s remarks about ex-girlfriend Naomie Olindo to be “irrational and mean-spirited” even if he ultimately did agree with the points Conover was making.

Besides the exception of the juicy drama ahead on this season of Southern Charm, what other adventures do the guys see themselves getting involved with? Conover revealed he recently bought into a restaurant group in Charleston because “I was always jealous of what Shep had,” which is not the first time he’s followed in his friend’s footsteps. Rose currently has ShepGear where he sells t-shirts and hats sure to appeal to Southern Charm fans, and Conover launched Sewing Down South in April, capitalizing on his love for sewing and the storyline that the show has put on display for the past few seasons.

For his part, Rose has recently launched his podcast, Enough About Me, but Conover’s thinking more about a visual series with his pal. “I would want to do more travel stuff with Shep, I think adventure stuff would be fun.” In fact, the pair came awfully close to making that dream a reality. “We were supposed to go down to the Bahamas and do a day on the water with Shep and Craig,” Rose tells me, which would consist of, “Us arguing, drinking, laughing, just goofing and island hopping. And it got all fouled up.”

“Anything that I see for myself in the future, I would like to intertwine with these guys,” Conover said of his Southern Charm castmates, and specifically Rose. “We’re in a very unique situation where it works out that we have each other because he’s spontaneous too, he doesn’t quite settle down.”

Photos by Paul Cheney.

Southern Charm airs Wednesdays at 8pm ET/PT on Bravo. 

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