'Summer House's Kyle Cooke on His Loverboy Breakup With Carl Radke and Season 7's 'Awkward' Start (Exclusive)

etonline.com:

Kyle Cooke admits Carl Radke's exit from Loverboy was «a long time coming.»«What people are seeing us kind of come into, that first weekend, is months of a little bit of long overdue conversation,» the  star explains to ET of how season 7 kicked off, awkward tension looming between the two pals who, for the past three years, had worked together at Kyle's canned alcoholic beverage brand.Carl was feeling unfulfilled and undervalued at the company, but Kyle felt as if he'd done as much as he could to make his buddy happy in a way that also made sense for the business.

Kyle says Carl's waning interest in the brand was felt beyond just him and his wife, Amanda Batula, who runs creative for Loverboy.«Multiple people approached me with concern,» he says. «It's not like I was holding these personal vendettas.

You know, I am trying to run a company here.… but I didn't expect our business to be everybody's business.»«I had sensed, like, right when kind he hit his peak productivity, it was almost like, boom!

He started taking a step back,» Kyle recalls. «By April [2022], I had already tried to bring in a new VP to help run things on the sales and distribution side.… I wanted to give him a chance to formally redefine his role, right?