Growing up in rural Florida, Lindsay Hubbard’s family didn’t have the means to “hop on a plane to Europe” for vacation when she was a kid. Instead, during long roadtrips, she daydreamed about being somewhere else—knowing that she belonged somewhere bigger.
“We would get in our Astro van and drive from Florida to Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and we would go camping. Even as a child, every time we would drive past a big city, say Atlanta, my face was glued to the window, and I was like, ‘We need to go there.’”
Hubbard joined me from her new apartment in downtown Manhattan, where she recently moved from the Gramercy neighborhood. Unlike other Real World-esque reality television shows, where you get to see a group of friends for a consistent swath of time, Summer House (currently in its 10th season and starring Lindsay) is a show based around the weekends up at a—well—summer house in the Hamptons. Viewers get to see glimpses of the Summer House crew’s NYC life, but most of what we see is a “vacation” house.
If you’re a fervent Summer House viewer (like me), you’ve seen Hubbard go through countless break-ups and make-ups, start her own PR company, navigate an estranged relationship with her mother, suffer a miscarriage, get engaged, have her fiancé call off the wedding on camera, go through a surprise pregnancy, and welcome a new baby girl—Gemma. It may feel like a lot, but Hubbard felt steeled to live her life on camera.
“You know, when you’re on reality TV and you have to have such a strong foundation and internal strength to be able to be okay with haters and trolls. For me, I think again, back to my life experiences. I’ve been through so much, and I have worked very hard, and have always had this go-getter mentality and hustle mentality. Throughout all these life experiences, it really made me confident in who I am, to the point where it’s like, ‘What are you gonna do to me that’s worse than what I’ve gone through?’” Hubbard laughs as she answers her own rhetorical question, “Yeah, to be honest with you, it actually has happened a couple times. Carl breaking up with me on national television? Ending our engagement? Was not expecting that one”
In 2016, Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard started out as new friends. Their friendship hit TVs in 2017 on Summer House. Then—also on TV—they became daters, then friends again, then self-declared best friends, then a fast-and-furious couple who got engaged within a year of being official, with a wedding date planned for November 2023. In August of 2023, Radke came into their shared apartment (followed by a camera crew) and let the whole of America watch while he told Hubbard he didn’t think they should be together anymore. This was the season 8 Summer House finale. By the reunion, Hubbard was already, secretly, pregnant with her daughter, but not about to let Radke off the hook for “blindsiding” her. Even as the host of the reunion and fellow castmates tried to help her admit that the relationship with Radke was toxic and it was a great thing that the wedding was called off, Hubbard wouldn’t admit defeat. Lindsay Hubbard does not concede. Lindsay Hubbard rarely apologizes. This is part of her—sometimes frustrating—charm.
Lindsay Hubbard doesn’t give a fuck about what you think of her.
“I’m not seeking the approval of everybody in the world. The people who matter to me—my family, my friends, co-workers, and castmates—those are the opinions that matter to me.”
To me, Lindsay Hubbard is in the same reality television ranks as Stassi Schroder (Vanderpump Rules) and Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi (Jersey Shore)—icons who own who they are and pride themselves in showing that what you see is what you get. There is no different—off-camera—Lindsay Hubbard. Love her or hate her, she’s consistent.
Hubbard came into the spotlight on Bravo’s Summer House at age 29 in 2017. “My 30th birthday was on season 1 of Summer House. I felt very confident and established in my own skin and was able to walk into a reality TV setting with cameras and share my life with the world, because I already felt—to some degree—like, I know who I am.”
In a sea of countless reality TV shows, Hubbard shines. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reality television shows streaming on your devices from throughout the years, starting at the dawn of this flavor of show in 1992 with The Real World. In 2025, it’s estimated that 50 new reality television shows premiered. All of these shows have a cast of about ten people, what makes Lindsay Hubbard stand out? Well, for me, it was easy. It’s not that I am a Hubbs super-fan – I have no tattoos that say any of her most famous quotes, presented here now with no context:
“Don’t activate me.”
“How many sandwiches have you made for me?”
“I’m gonna go sleep at a guy’s house tonight. With a guy. In a bed. And how do you feel about that?”
While these are absolute gold, my admiration for Hubbard comes from a vulnerable place. Lindsay is not afraid to be who she is and experience her life, even with an audience.
I suffered a miscarriage in 2019 and it put me in this weird, dark place of shame. I didn’t talk about it at my high-powered agency job. I barely talked to my friends about it. I watched Hubbard go through a miscarriage in 2021, on camera, and saw the same heartbreak in her eyes, when she told her friends, and when—in telling the cameras—she told not only her job about her pain, but she told the world. I felt seen. I felt her pain as she navigated the emotions of wondering if she would have fertility struggles forever. These things are so rarely talked about on television, but Lindsay Hubbard isn’t scared to broach the subject. Lindsay is raw, vulnerable and incredibly relatable.
We see this vulnerability from the inception of Summer House, where Hubbard has been wildly open about her estrangement from her mother. When Hubbard was a toddler, her mother left her father and—in turn—also left Hubbard and her young brother. As her mom left her life, Hubbard clung closer to her father and her Aunt Rhonda, who viewers have come to see and know on camera.
So many families are represented on reality television (the Kardashians, the Osbournes, etc.) and while they obviously fought (hello, ratings!), they never really broached the subject of the family relationships that might be irreparable. Social media hasn’t helped with audiences only seeing the beautiful, bright parts of family relationships, and rarely the hard parts. Reality television fans around the world who haven’t always had the best or closest relationship with their families exhaled as Hubbard shared these insights about her mother, because we realized we are not alone.
“I didn’t talk to [my mom] for eight years. I talked to her at the end of that first summer, filming, and it was after that phone call, where I was like, ‘Okay, I think I need to start going to therapy, because this may be a deeper rooted issue.’”
Ten years of therapy hasn’t rid Hubbard of her abandonment issues, but they’ve given her clarity in some areas as she navigates life as a mom to Gemma, who turned one in December 2025.
“Pretty early on after I had Gemma, I just remember being like, ‘Wow, you know what? This just solidifies my decision in not speaking to my mom.’ Because I look at my baby and I think, I could never leave her. I could never not want to be around her and protect her, every single second of every single day for the rest of my life. There’s just no way. And especially Gemma being a girl, it almost validated my stance in my relationship with my mom. So, long story, long, [having a baby] hasn’t changed my relationship with my mom, but I think it just justified my decision being the right one for me.”
Navigating life as a single mom isn’t easy for Hubbard. I congratulated her for making it through the first year of motherhood and she agreed that it’s worth the congratulations. After long weekends of filming or a big event like Bravocon, “Some of my castmates would sit there and complain about how they were so exhausted and say that they slept for a week straight after we wrapped. And I’m like, ‘Good for you that you were able to go home and sleep for 12 hours. I went home after filming and had to wake up at 6am to take care of my daughter again.”
Caretakers of kids one and younger can feel the exhaustion in their bones just thinking about the lack of sleep. Hubbard says that being a mom hasn’t really changed her career path, beyond the Summer House, trying to “balance your alcohol intake with being a normal human.”
“I’m just continuing to try and build and expand on the momentum of my career and I think now is the time to do that, especially while Gemma is younger. Even though there is a certain guild around working so hard for me, I also think it’s better to do it now than even when she’s even a year or two older.”
As Hubbard navigates motherhood, she’s also trying to navigate dating as a single mom. Her romantic relationship with Gemma’s dad ended a couple months after she was born. Hubbard didn’t talk about exactly why the relationship ended, but it was widely known that Gemma’s dad refused to be on-camera and was a generally private person. Now that Hubbard is ready to find love again, she’s looking for some sort of a unicorn.
“It’s really hard to find a person that is totally fine with me being as public as I am, but is not gonna try to change me, but is also not trying to be with me for clout.”
Lindsay Hubbard trying to find love while being a mother is a big part of the new Summer House spin-off, In the City, which is set to air sometime in 2026.
“I’m obviously a single mom and trying to navigate the balance of work and being a mom and trying to make time for myself. What does that include? This is like our day-to-day lives in the city, trying to balance it all, in that next chapter of life.”
Hubbard tells me that outside of her, In the City will also feature “couples trying to figure out if they want to try and get pregnant and other adult conversations you have with your partner.” The only other married couple billed on In the City thus far is Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke, who announced their separation in January of this year. It will be interesting watching this group of friends evolve through parenthood and now a divorce through these two shows. This isn’t just 30s life anymore… we’re getting into 40s territory.
The Summer House crew is growing up. After ten summers in the Hamptons (on TV), it’s time to see what’s next (on TV).
“I’m 39,” Hubbard says, “I have a kid and a lifestyle of partying every weekend in the Hamptons during the summertime… It’s just not sustainable when you start having children.”
Not sustainable, maybe, but Hubbard is still giving it a go. Summer House season 10 premiered on February 3, 2026, and we get to watch the usual crew, plus some newbies, get cozy and crazy with each other. Hubbard comes out most weekends, without Gemma, which she calls a “perk of co-parenting.”
In the first few seasons of Summer House, Hubbard famously had a meticulously laid out life plan. She lived her life according to a five-year and then ten-year plan. Castmates and friends made fun of her plan, but she laughed along and stuck to it—or tried.
Nothing in Hubbard’s life has gone exactly according to that well-devised plan, but honestly that’s mostly attributed to just living through your 30s. Hubbard and I laughed and groaned as we traded war stories about all the mistakes and heartbreaks we made and felt in our 30s. The heartbreaks used to be caused by men, but now they also have competition with our daughters, who unintentionally break our hearts on the regular.
I hear Gemma in the background laugh and get a big hug and kiss from Hubbard before her nanny takes her out the door for a playground session. Hubbard comes back to the conversation, laughing, telling me how obsessed she is with her daughter, and forgetting where we were in the interview.
We never get back to the topic before, but she regains focus and tells me, “I could sit here and tell you I regret certain decisions, but I feel like I’m exactly where I should be.”
She’s no longer looking out a window, pining for another place. No, whether she’s in the city or at the summer house or on a red-eye flying back to her daughter, right now, Lindsay Hubbard is exactly where she should be.
Photographer: Olivia Wolf
Hair: Julius Michael
Makeup: Sophia Vallejos
Styling: Emily Men
