‘Southern Hospitality’: Mia Alario & Molly Moore Break Down the Vegas Group Trip & Newest Will Kulp Cheating Rumors

Things continued to be all about Emmy Sharrett and Will Kulp on Thursday’s (February 13) episode of Southern Hospitality. Even though the whole crew was in Las Vegas ostensibly to support Maddi Reese‘s DJ-ing gig — which was capped off with an Elvis-officiated wedding, no less — and Mia Alario making a surprise return after months away doing her pageant run, the attention returned to the relationship that’s been at the center of so many rumors this season.

This time, Will was actually there with the crew in Sin City. But whether that made things better or worse is a matter of opinion. At Mia’s suggestion, Will made the grand gesture of apologizing to Emmy in front of everyone for the rude things he’d said about her — ya know, the issue that had everyone fired up during the last group trip — but within minutes, Lake Rucker brought up the latest Will scandal: that someone, who would not be named but had a law school connection with Will and knows Austin Stephan, said Will was constantly cheating on Emmy. This led to yet another eruption of emotions.

So how did everyone feel about the newest rumor to emerge? And how did those surprises unfold? TV Insider caught up with Mia Alario and Molly Moore to find out.

Mia, whose idea was it for you to surprise everyone in Vegas? 

Mia Alario: Me! Fun fact, I’m a big prankster. I get it from my dad. I love a little prank. I love to scare people. It’s one of my favorite things to do. And Brad [Carter] was a hard scare, okay?

And TJ Dinch was the only one who knew about it?

Mia: Yeah, but he was kind of spoiling it with that big smile he had on his face.

It was good timing for you to come back because you had sounded the alarm before about Will and cheating rumors with Emmy. Were you surprised this is all still going on? 

Mia: No, I’m not surprised. No, he continuously puts her in bad situations. He continually puts the relationship in a position to be questioned. Always, always, always, over and over and over again. No matter if the rumor is true, it’s not true, it happened, it didn’t happen, what did happen is something weird, something fishy. Always. And then it becomes this big explanation, and then you only believe a big explanation so many times.

So are you still standing by your original stories?

Mia: Yeah, I do… I don’t believe this cheating rumor just because of who it came from. I don’t think it’s a trustworthy source. He didn’t have a lot of information. Listen, I came last season with text messages. I came with the girl. I knew the girl, you know what I mean? With Austin, it was just a weird, “It’s my girlfriend’s brother’s goldfish, neighbor, cousin,” you know what I mean? And he doesn’t have any proof, nothing. He came with nothing.

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Molly, what’s your read on the situation? 

Molly Moore: I have a hard time even getting a read because I don’t have a receipt to read, and I think it was very difficult navigating this whole situation and trying to understand what is going on right now, and I think everyone shared that thought. There wasn’t a lot of information to go off of other than hearsay, and it was really difficult. I don’t think that I could just say, “Oh, Will has a cheating past or a disrespectful past, so that means he must have done it this time.” You can’t really just say that. But it was a really difficult situation just overall to get a read on because there were no receipts in general, so I don’t really know what happened. I think definitely there was [a feeling that] where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I think there has to have been a situation to spark this. I don’t necessarily mean it was full cheating, but I think the only thing I can fully attest to is Will did something sketchy.

You were around for some of the meltdowns that happened earlier in the season. As a viewer, it seems Emmy has gotten more anxious. Are you guys worried about her at this point in the show with her reactions? 

Molly: I’ll give you my perspective on it because I’m not one of her close friends. Me and Mia have known each other a lot longer, but I’ll kind of give you my outsider looking in [viewpoint]. It was difficult to watch someone have this full-blown psychosis moment. It was not normal. The first one about the uniforms was a simple question. Siobhan asked her, “Hey, I’m connecting some dots. I wanna make sure this is not happening.” … I don’t know if I thought we were doing reality TV and not like an Emmy Award-winning project, but she went completely berserk, and … my initial reaction on camera, I think it shows I’m like kind of giggling ’cause I’m like, “This isn’t real, right? There’s no way that that’s happening at work. That’s not right.”

And then once you kind of sit on that and see the full length of this meltdown, it was hard. It was hard to watch. I was like, “There’s something else going on here.” I do not like Emmy at all, don’t get me wrong there, but you can still dislike someone and realize that someone is going through something hard, and it’s deeper than that, and someone needs to check on her, and she needs to most importantly check on herself. It was pretty difficult to watch. It was not a normal thing, and what was on TV was actually a little bit muted as to what it was in real life. It was difficult.

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It’s been odd this season for her to be such a lightning rod when the attention used to be on Maddi and Joe Bradley, and now they’re together. How do you guys feel about them and where they’re at this season?

Mia: Oh, I love Maddi and Joe. Yeah, they’re so cute together. I actually give big kudos to Joe because I used to clown him consistently… I’m like, “She will never like you, you’re just a puppy dog chasing after it.” And then they got together, and I said, “I’m biting my own words, congratulations, Joe Bradley, you won.”

Molly: Yeah, I love them, too. I think they’re a very, very sweet couple. I think they definitely are still learning how to love each other, and you’ll see that kind of play out. I think in general we saw that in the beginning of the season. I think they’re learning about each other in a romantic way, and I think that’s a really beautiful thing to see on a television show. I think that’s a really happy part of it. But I think they’re adorable. It’s like when a kid wins first place participation in the art show, that’s how it makes me feel. “Congratulations, Joe!”

Did no one know about the wedding thing that they were planning? 

Mia: No, no, nobody knew.

Molly: Not even the wedding planner knew. I’m like, “Hello, I could have helped y’all. Come on.”

Mia: I took over. I was cleaning it up.

Molly: I was doing like, “Okay Mia!” I forgot I’m on vacation.

Going to Vegas, with Lake, I know it had happened at her birthday that things kind of turned away from her, but then she kind of did the same thing to Maddi at the table bringing up the cheating allegations just after Will had kind of apologized. What was your reaction to Lake kind of throwing that out there at that moment? 

Molly: Lake is — and this is gonna sound like a dig, but it’s not supposed to be a dig — young, and she acts young. I think a good comparison is Michols and her are the same age, but they carry themselves and approach situations in a completely different way, and I think her maturity is a little bit lacking. So a lot of times, her comments don’t seem appropriate, and her thinking doesn’t really seem thought through, and that’s, I think, just because she is so young. Not that we have a huge age gap, but, in my opinion, there’s a huge maturity age gap, and there’s a huge maturity age gap between her and the rest of the friend group. And so I think that’s a perfect example. It wasn’t right. It didn’t hit the way that she thought it was going to because she didn’t think it through, but yeah, I mean, she did do the same thing. She did the same thing that happened at her birthday, and I think it just attests to maturity levels.

Mia: I think she wanted to just do something to come back at Emmy for kind of messing up her birthday party, which is a very immature thing to do. But I think if she wanted to address the cheating rumor, she should have looked down there and looked at Austin and said, “Hey buddy, what did you say? What did you say to everybody else?” I can understand how Emmy felt attacked at that moment because Lake just brought that up out of nowhere. And yeah, it was weird. It was weird to be there, and I don’t think she’s been in the scene very much. And when I say in the scene, I mean in the friend group scene. I’ve been in it for over five years, and I think that definitely wasn’t the way to handle it, and then everybody had like a bad taste in their mouth after she did that. And I was like, “What are you trying to do here?”

Mia, speaking of your history with the group, you didn’t work at Republic after Lucia left. Do you have any thoughts about going back? 

Mia: I think I actually would not have an issue coming back to Republic. I think it’s the position that I would have. I think I’d have more of a social position. I don’t think I’m a great worker in food and bev, can I just say that? And I think that’s very apparent. I like to party, I like to have a good time, and I think that personality or my personality in nightlife is a good one for a social chair position. I love to party. I love to go out. I don’t think it’ll ever end. And I do think Republic is a really fun place, and Leva [Bonaparte] also owns three other amazing restaurants and bars and clubs on King Street. So I would love to come back, and I would love to maybe try something else out, and I think I’ll be really good and not drink on the job.

What made it the right time to talk about Grace Lilly and Oisin in Vegas?

Molly: I think it was approached a lot differently than Lake’s was… I also know all the facts with that situation, and it’s not shown on screen, but me and Grace did have another confrontation at Michols’ party, and she completely avoided it. And this was the next time that I saw her, and we had gone around the table saying, “Who do we trust the least?” And she’s saying me because she thinks we got off on the wrong foot, and I’m like, “Girl, no, we got off on actually the right foot, and I actually forgot to add some details. So let me bring this up.” She almost kind of did it. And she just said we got off on the wrong foot. Of course we did. You messed up! You hurt someone that I really care about, and I’m the type of person where if you mess with my friends, you mess with me. I feel personally attacked, and I’m gonna go to bat for my friends, and so I think bringing that up at the dinner table was just prompted by her trying to come at me when I’m like, “Let’s not get this twisted. This is what happened. You need to own up to it and not try to make a small dig at me. I’m not even here, okay?”

Are we gonna see more cracks in that friendship between Maddi and Grace Lilly as the season goes on? 

Molly: Yes, definitely. Grace knows how to push that boundary with friendship, and it’s, again, another heartbreaking thing this season to see unfold: the fact that Grace Lilly has a really difficult time taking accountability for things that she does. She likes to hide behind her ayahuasca, and she likes to hide behind her “wavy baby,” but there’s a point when you can be “wavy baby” all you want, but if you’re hurting other people, you need to own up to it, and you need to apologize for your actions. We don’t all live on cloud nine. That’s not how real life works.

And so I think that their friendship will be put to the test, and accountability will be brought up throughout the next few episodes.

Is there more to come from this dislike you have with Austin? 

Mia: I don’t know Austin very well. The interaction that we had was it. This was before I even worked at Republic. And I thought that interaction was fun and friendly and nice. I called him handsome. We were chilling. Then I got drunk one night and I was like, “Hey, by the way, I don’t need you.” And what’s wrong with that? So for him to sit at this group, this big dinner, I really don’t even know what was going through his head because one, half those people there are like my really, really close friends; two, they all were quiet because they knew that I was going to come back. I don’t think that he knew that I was going to come back. And so I think that’s why he felt so comfortable saying that at that table at Lake’s lake house.

So when I came back, that’s the first thing I’m gonna address. How are you going to talk about me when I’m the only one not in the room? So then we talk, he apologizes to me, and the apology kind of seemed a little bit like, “Here’s your bone and whatever and f**k off” The next morning he called up the person that — there was like a rumor that he had heard about me, and I think that’s where he got most of his information about me from. He called the person that night after the dinner in Vegas, and the next morning, he finds me at breakfast, and he apologizes to me — actually heartfelt apologizes to me, and he was like, “I’m so sorry, the information I heard was wrong.” Spoiler alert. So we squashed it, but him and I will never be friends, and we were never friends.

What else can we expect from you two for the rest of the season?

Mia: Holding people accountable. Oh my, what happened to that? What happened to that golden commandment, holding people accountable? Everyone’s just going around talking behind each other’s backs, and there’s this weird game of telephone, and nobody knows what actually happened, and people are just spewing rumors out of their mouths. When you say something like that, when you call people names, and you say rumors about people’s relationships, those things have consequences. And if you are not ready to face the consequences, don’t say the rumor.

Molly: I think me and Mia share the same approach to conflict: Squash it or just [deal with it] head on. I thank God Mia came back because I was getting tired of telling people to be honest. I took the load off her back for a second and put it on mine, and then we kind of switched off … I think we just take the head-on approach. You gotta do that when you’re on a television show… You need to own your s**t, and things would be a lot different for a lot of people if that were the case, but I guess you can’t get everything you want.

Southern Hospitality, Thursdays, 9/8c, Bravo