This year, fans of the hit Bravo TV reality series, Southern Charm, have been asking why Kathryn Calhoun Dennis is seemingly missing in action this season. Last week, the network appeared to confirm Dennis had been on a kind of hiatus for the first time.”Fans haven’t seen as much of Kathryn Dennis in Southern Charm season eight as they’re used to, but that changed this week,” Bravo announced.
Now, South Carolinian news outlet FITSNews has reported speaking with an anonymous source working in production for the show who alleged Dennis showed up with a visible black eye and swollen jaw when filming season eight. They claimed to have asked Dennis what happened, but she said she was not permitted to talk about it. The reality star would not confirm if she was assaulted or had an accident. The source provided three images of Dennis FITSNews published in the article, each a close-up face shot displaying bruising under both eyes, with the injuries slightly more pronounced above her right cheekbone. The outlet noted, “Dennis declined to discuss the images – or the injuries – but confirmed their authenticity and did not object to their publication.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
The production source said that Dennis had “on an unusual amount of foundation in an effort to cover the area around her eye when the network first noticed the injuries.” Management then arranged an on-set meeting between Dennis and one of the show’s producers. According to the source, this conversation occurred in a car with closed doors and windows rolled down. “I couldn’t hear what was said, but Kathryn was tearing up during and after the conversation,” the source claimed.
While FITSNews said the source alleged NBC is investigating whether they are liable for Dennis’ injuries, “Dennis told us she ‘couldn’t’ talk about the photos, but she would comment on her absence from blocks of time on Southern Charm, calling the situation ‘disappointing.’” She said the Sept. 15 episode in which cast member Shep Rose’s girlfriend Taylor Ann Green claimed Dennis could not attend a group trip to St. Simon’s Island because “has the kids,” is false. “I didn’t have the kids, and they knew it,” she said. “I was just cut out of shooting for that period of time.”
The “kids” are Dennis’ two children with former cast member Thomas Ravenel, Kensington Calhoun, and St. Julien Rembert Ravenel. As Dennis and Ravenel battle in court for custody of their children, their relationship continues to be explosive. Following sexual assault allegations against him emerging in 2018, Ravenel left the show. At the age of twenty, Dennis, 31, entered a relationship with the disgraced politician, who is 31 years her senior.
According to Dennis, she was upset and unnerved by the way the network treated her. “I wanted to film,” she said. “I wanted to take the trip to Auldbrass and St. Simon’s Island, but I wasn’t included by production.” Dennis was absent for several events, including a dog wedding thrown by Southern Charm matriarch Patricia Altschul, and a cast trip to Auldbrass, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lowcountry plantation. FITSNews reported the current season’s reunion set to air on Bravo in October is expected to be very “volatile.”
