Ava Dash Has Heard The Rumors

Ava Dash is having a very Next Gen NYC week. On a sunny Thursday afternoon, she strides into The Odeon restaurant in Tribeca, Manhattan, fresh off a sleepover with her Bravo castmates. “Yesterday, I woke up and did an interview, and then I went to Gia [Giudice]’s Pilates collab event,” she tells me. “Then I went to Soho and stopped at Shai [Fruchter]’s house because he just got a new place, and then I went to Emira [D’Spain]’s because the girls all had a little slumber party.” She smoothes her pale pink mini dress and tucks a can of yerba mate under the table. “I forgot not to bring this in here,” she says conspiratorially. “It’s like my security blanket; I can’t live without it.”

The Odeon isn’t a random pick. Dash grew up in Tribeca and has lived in a string of apartments around the neighborhood, including one directly above the restaurant. “We used to come here like every single day as a kid. They have the best french fries,” she says. “My dad would get a cheeseburger before he was vegan. It was always a really cute daddy-daughter date spot.”

Settling into the booth, she’s quick to volunteer that yesterday’s hangs weren’t orchestrated for the show. “We’re not even filming right now,” Dash says. She’s just a girl in her 20s living her dream New York City life, one that sometimes gets taped for national television. “I was actually friends with these people beforehand, but now I can get paid to hang out with them. That, for me, is the best part of all this.”

As we order our lunch (two summer salads, fries to share, and a spritz for Dash), the 26-year-old model tells me more about how her reality TV career came to be. She’s sharing her life with Bravo audiences again in Next Gen NYC Season 2, which premieres June 24 — and with a rookie season behind her, she’s hitting her stride in terms of feeling confident to speak her mind. “The No. 1 comment I got from the fans was like ‘We want to see more of you,’” she says. “Now they will, and they can’t take it back.”

Dash, who still lives a few blocks from where we’re meeting, doesn’t have the television background of many of her famous peers — including Brooks Marks, Giudice, Ariana Biermann, and Riley Burruss, whose moms are all Real Housewives legends. But she comes from her own family legacy. Her father, Damon Dash, is the record executive who co-founded Roc-A-Fella Records with Jay-Z. Her mother, Rachel Roy, is a fashion designer whose clients have included Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey.

As a child, Dash had the vague sense that her parents were famous, but she didn’t really understand why. “I have this vivid memory of me and my dad walking, and paparazzi coming up to my dad for a photo, and me being like, ‘Why do they want a photo with you?’ My dad would always go, ‘Because I’m a rock star,’” she recalls. “Now that I’m older, I understand that my family has touched many people, but at the time as a kid, I was just like, ‘Hello. You’re not Lady Gaga.’” She’d come with her mom to concerts and fashion shows. “Having a female role model as a kid was so inspiring and fun to watch,” she says.

Getting stopped on the street comes with a new wrinkle now that her friends come with famous mothers attached. “Every time I go out with Brooks, Gia, or Ariana, people are like, ‘I love your mom,’” she says. During last night’s slumber party, the group walked out for Greek frozen yogurt in their pajamas. “People would take a close look and be like, ‘Oh, my God, you guys are the New York City kids. Oh, my God, we love your parents.’ It happened at least four times on our little walk.”

Dash loved the freedom of growing up in the city. “I didn’t have to ask my mom to drive me anywhere. I could walk wherever I wanted, go to the park, take the subway, or go to a friend’s house. The world was literally at my fingertips,” she says. Moving to Los Angeles as a teenager, she had a rude awakening. “I went from being able to do whatever, whenever to having to ask my mom, ‘Hey, can you drive me to so-and-so’s house?’ Maybe she’d be busy, and I was like, ‘Hello? What do you mean you have to cook dinner? I have places to go.’”

She credits Chanel Iman, a friend of her older brother, as the reason she got interested in modeling. “I would have sleepovers at her house, and I remember seeing all of her Vogue covers and being like, ‘Oh, my God, I want that,’” Dash says. “I really do credit Chanel for putting that image in my mind and realizing it was possible by seeing someone that looked like me killing it.” Dash was scouted while working at Brandy Melville in high school, then signed with DT Model Management at age 17. “I started modeling and was making way more than $11 an hour, which was what the f*ck I was getting paid at the time. So then I was like, ‘Bye, Brandy.’”

The landlord and I still text. She wanted me to extend my lease. She watches the show.

She moved back to New York after graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 2022, falling into a friend group that included Marks and D’Spain. When Marks approached her to join the upcoming series, Dash was intrigued. She loved reality dating competitions like Love Island UK and Love Is Blind, and had dabbled in watching Bravo’s Below Deck. Plus, the filming process was easy since the group was already friends. She signed on, unsure what would come of the show. “I think I speak for the whole cast when we had no idea people would like it as much as they did.”

When Season 1’s trailer dropped, the reaction wasn’t promising. “All the comments were like, ‘We didn't ask for this. Why do we need more nepo babies?’” Dash recalls. “Then at the end of the season, everyone was like, ‘OK, I was wrong. Love this show.’” Next Gen became Bravo’s most-watched series premiere of all time, and the cast was shocked (and mildly horrified) to learn that Michelle Obama was a fan. “We were all so embarrassed, like, ‘Michelle, turn it off.’ She doesn’t need to see me taking a tequila shot.”

Unlike her castmates who are well-versed in the Bravo world, Dash has had to adjust to sharing so much of her life on camera. During Season 1, she was newly dating a guy who didn’t want their relationship spoken about on TV. She also couldn’t film any scenes in her apartment, per the building’s rules, or film her meetings with modeling agents. “It was really hard to be able to show a more intimate side of myself because there were a lot of obstacles for me,” she says.

In Season 2, she’s ready to be way more unfiltered, with a new apartment, new modeling agency, and no boyfriend. “Now I’m single, so I can do and say what I want,” Dash says. She’s coming in hot to clear up rumors about herself, including one that she was evicted last summer due to her father’s financial troubles. “We were late on rent payments, and then we paid them and everything was fine,” she says. “The landlord and I still text. She wanted me to extend my lease. She watches the show.”

She also starts the season on rocky ground with Biermann and Giudice over the way they spoke on podcast interviews about her after Season 1. She says they’re all fine now, and attributes the misunderstanding to not knowing each other well enough yet. “They didn’t know how I worked, and I didn’t really know how they worked,” Dash says. “Now that I understand more where everyone else’s head is at, I know that their intentions weren’t malicious.”

I would never talk badly about my friends, especially not in public.

She tries not to talk sh*t about her castmates’ lives without their permission. During a recent interview, she texted Biermann under the table to ask what she was comfortable having shared. “My intention is never to spill someone else’s tea or hurt someone else’s feelings. I would never talk badly about my friends, especially not in public.” Still, despite their (mostly) loving dynamic, the cast stays beefing, and their group chat is proof. “You can tell the people who are salty in the chat because they don’t really say anything,” Dash laughs. “There are some interesting dynamics in there.”

The drama she didn’t see coming was Charlie Zakkour’s crypto scandal, which broke a week before the premiere. “First of all, are you f*cking kidding?” Dash recalls thinking. “Selfishly, we’re all like, ‘How dare you ruin the show for all of us?’” She called her dad. “He was like, ‘Ava, no press is bad press for you. Watch, it’s going to give you guys numbers.’” Three weeks later, Next Gen NYC was the most-watched series premiere in Bravo history.

For the most part, Dash loves being on reality TV, and she’s not scared of backlash from hypercritical viewers. “I know what I signed up for. You have to have a thick skin to be on reality TV because the fans are so invested, and the whole point of these shows is to comment on them,” she says. “I get that because I love reality TV, and all I want to do is kiki with my friends about it.”

She even shrugs off weird Internet rumors, including one originating on Deuxmoi that she hooked up with Summer House’s Kyle Cooke in March. (Cooke shut down the chatter on Watch What Happens Live, saying they were at a “friendly” dinner with other people.) “When that came out, I had met him once, and he posted a photo of us and the caption was like ‘next gen and old gen.’ So dad-coded,” Dash says. “I’m like, ‘This is not a thing.’ Now, I know him better, and he’s great, but at the time I was like, ‘Are we OK?’” She wouldn’t rule out dating a guy from Bravo, though. “I’m open to it. If I met the right guy, sure. I feel like Bravo men don’t have the best rap.”

For now, Dash would rather focus on hot girl summer. “In my opinion, New York is the most fun city in the world to be single because every time I go out, I meet someone new or I’m reconnected with someone old,” she says. She’s traveling back and forth between here and the Hamptons, and manifesting a trip to Ibiza when Next Gen press calms down. “I want to welcome in any opportunity that’s meant for me,” she says. “I’d love to manifest a billboard anywhere, but ideally somewhere in New York.”

As for Next Gen, she hopes the fans can embrace it for what it is: silly entertainment. “My favorite thing in the world to do is sit with my girls, have a glass of wine, and die laughing at the screen. I hope people are able to do that with our show,” she says. Either way, she’s going to keep doing her own thing. “Love it or hate it, you’re going to see more of me.”