Venita Aspen Stays Winning

Venita Aspen has been awake since 3:30 a.m., and not because of an alarm. “My body was like, ‘Let's go,’ and I was like, ‘No, baby, we've got to go back to sleep,’” she laughs, lounging easily on the couch at Blonde Studios in Chelsea, Manhattan. The 32-year-old recaps her morning with her head propped on a throw pillow, wearing a brown sweater and baggy jeans, with red-bottomed heels kicked up on the opposite armrest. Aspen is fresh-faced and glowy, with understated makeup and bouncy curls pinned back from her face. “Let’s relax,” she jokes as we settle in for our interview after her photo shoot. “There’s no need to be stuffy, days are hard enough.” I match her energy by lying down on the second couch facing her, like we’re two girls at a sleepover catching up after everyone else goes to bed.

Southern Charm Season 11 is airing, and though she’s been watching the Bravo show back — her fourth season as a full-time cast member — Aspen is blissfully unaware of the online discourse related to current storylines. She’s not at all stressed about what might be asked here today. “I feel the most secure in everything I've said this season. I'm not afraid of what's to come on the other side,” she says, before pausing. “It’s nice, but it's almost like damn, what's about to happen?”

This season has put the Charleston, South Carolina, native in the spotlight, focusing on a fallout with Craig Conover and subsequent tension with bestie Salley Carson. It’s Aspen’s first time at the center of the drama, and it comes just as she’s finally ready to face it. Joining the cast as a friend-of in 2020, she was nervous to open up to a group of people she didn’t fully trust. “I knew the majority of the group, but not fully in depth. That made me nervous, because people will use your vulnerability against you most of the time,” she says. Five years later, all bets are off. “Now I'm like, whatever, use it against me. I'll get you back.”

This is the closest we've been as a group, including boys and girls, ever.

Before Southern Charm, Aspen was a fashion influencer in Charleston, building a following for her classic preppy ‘fits and vibrant aesthetic. Growing up, her mom influenced her love of all things girly. “My mom was such a diva. She didn't leave the house without lipstick and earrings,” she says. “It didn't matter what time of night, she was putting on a pair of heels to go do anything — pick someone up from the airport, go to the grocery store. So this is all her fault.” Aspen always had a sense that something big would happen to her. “I just knew that when it did, I had to stay true to myself, no matter how big the opportunity was or what room it put me in.”

That opportunity arrived in a different way than she expected. Aspen was brought onto Southern Charm by friend and former castmate Leva Bonaparte, whom she’d known since she was 19. Aspen signed on before she knew what she was getting into. “I think I said yes before I even knew what it was, because I was just like, ‘I love Leva. I'll do whatever she asks.’ Then she told me about it, and I was like, ‘Ooh, should I take my answer back?’”

I'll never give her advice on a man again.

Despite her initial hesitation, Aspen has stuck it out and become a fan-favorite, staying (mostly) out of the fray of the show’s most emotionally charged arguments. She still gets surprised by just how big her public profile has grown. “I was in London last weekend, and I walked by this flower shop, and the lady was like, ‘Oh my God, you're Venita from Southern Charm.’ And I'm like, ‘In London?’” she says, then grins. “I’m international. Mrs. Worldwide.” Her younger self would be thrilled. “The girl who has been practicing her signature since the fourth grade is so proud,” she says.

Aspen considers herself the “peacemaker” of the group, and says that despite how it looks this season, the cast as a whole is mostly all friends. “This is the closest we've been as a group, including boys and girls, ever,” she says. Still, it “doesn’t feel good” to see how things transpired with Carson this season. The two kept clashing after Carson expressed romantic interest in Conover, which Aspen thought was an ill-fated idea and said as much. “I was trying to make sure I was looking out for my best friend, and I don't think it was reciprocated well,” she says.

She’s received some criticism from viewers for her delivery, but she has no regrets. “There were some moments I could have dialed back a little bit, but I was very disappointed in the fact that my best friend at the time was so willing to date a man who had nothing nice to say about me,” she says. While she has faith that she and Carson can get their friendship back on track, there's one condition: “I'll never give her advice on a man again.”

As for Conover — who went off on Aspen in an explosive moment at the end of the season, telling her “you don’t exist in my world” — she has no intention of reconciling. “It's sad because he's never given me the time of day. Since I got into this friend group, it's been like, ‘Oh, she's not important,’” she says. Their current beef originated when Aspen showed support for Paige DeSorbo, Conover’s ex, after the two split in late 2024. “I'm going to take the girl's side in any breakup. My bad. Is that so wrong of me?” Aspen says. “Why am I siding with a man that doesn't even know my birthday? He’s not trying to be my friend at all.” (Aspen has also said that behind the scenes, Conover was refusing to film with her — a threat to her security on the show.)

Her relationships outside the Southern Charm bubble have proven more reliable. Aspen and Summer House’s Ciara Miller have been tight since she sent Miller an Instagram DM in 2020 welcoming her to the Bravo universe. “Now I'm at her house every time I'm in New York,” she says, which is often these days — Aspen has been back and forth between cities nearly every week.

I might trickle my way over to Summer House. We’ll see.

She and Miller frequently post with each other, poking fun at their very different aesthetics. Fans in the comments are clamoring for a spinoff, and Aspen is extremely down. “They want it, and I want to do it. We just have to figure out the best plan of action,” she says. For now, she’d be happy to show up in the Hamptons for an episode or two. “I might trickle my way over to Summer House. We’ll see.”

In December, Miller came to Aspen’s defense on TikTok, calling out the way Black women are held to an impossibly high standard by their cast and viewers. “I texted her and thanked her because I don't know how to speak on those feelings without getting so sad or angry to the point that I just flip out on everybody,” Aspen says. “It's nice to know that she had my back, but it's also sad that no one else from my cast is going to say anything like that.”

Aspen, who is the only Black cast member on the show, prefers to stay off social media while the show is airing, and for three additional weeks after the reunion — something she’s been doing for the last two seasons, as many of the comments she gets are overtly racist. "It's awful," she says. “Some of it is just like, ‘I don't like what you said.’ That's fine. You're entitled to that. But some others are like, ‘You act so white, you should bleach your skin,’ or ‘You want to be the only one, you want to be the token.’ No, I don't actually.”

During this time, she's still active on platforms — from a distance. She curates photos and captions and sends them to her team to post for her. But she asks them not to delete the nasty messages she receives. “I want other people to see that this is what I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis in this space.”

Aspen is down for lighthearted debate from fans of the show, but draws the line at attacks on her personal character. “People are like, ‘Well, you did this, so I can say whatever I want.’ How does that even make sense?” she says.

In the free time she gets from not scrolling, she builds Lego sets — a hobby she’s so excited about that she sits up on the couch to tell me about it. “Right now I'm building the Nightmare Before Christmas set, and I actually went to a Lego event in Charleston this past weekend,” she gushes. “Lego will do this Bloom Bar, where they take the Botanical Collection and… I feel like I'm nerding out.” She frequently brings BrickHeadz figurines to put together on planes: “I can do them in like an hour.”

She’s also doing a bit of dating, but keeping her “options open” for now. “I don't want to tie myself down or put my eggs in one basket,” Aspen says. She made headlines by going on a date with Summer House’s Carl Radke last fall, but right now she says the two are just friends. Radke said that the distance could be a problem for him at an event in January, which Aspen was unaware of until she read his quotes in People magazine. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ It makes sense, but I just wish he had said something to me.”

As for Miller, Aspen wants to see her settle for nothing less than Jacob Elordi. “Dating is horrible, and we're both such catches,” she says of her bestie. “I don't know what's going on.” If Aspen does get into a relationship, rest assured that it won’t change her. “I'm not one of those girls that's going to be like, ‘The boy is everything about me.’ Even when I was dating my ex-boyfriend, he wasn't the center of my life.”

She’s for the girls and plans to stay that way, no matter how much flak she gets from her castmates and online trolls. As for the people who criticize her? She’d dare them to try living her life. “I just tell myself if the roles were reversed and they had five minutes, they'd take my five minutes to be where I am. So I'm winning.”