Danielle Olivera went into Winter House season 3 hoping to turn up the heat on her love life following her breakup from Robert Sieber.
“My mindset was: just have fun. Going out to Colorado is one of my favorite things, so I was like, let’s see what happens — and definitely on the prowl,” Olivera, 34, tells. “It’s vacation vibes, so not looking for anything serious at all. Not even looking for a situationship, just looking for some fun and trouble. Casual at most.”
Olivera previously spent time with her chef ex in Aspen while he worked at The Snow Lodge, but she found being back in Colorado for Winter House, which filmed in Steamboat Springs, rather healing.
“I was actually in Aspen a month before we started filming, and I was fine,” she says. “It sucked when I was at his restaurant — his restaurant throws good parties, so my friends like to go there, and I wasn’t going to say no. But overall, I think that the ability to overcome being in the same place was pretty therapeutic for me and it offered a lot of closure.”
As a result, Olivera says she went into filming Winter House in a “pretty good” headspace.
“I felt like I was finally ready to hook up with new people,” Olivera continues. “I was finally ready for new, strange, bearded men. When you go to the mountains, that’s kind of top of mind.”
Olivera initially intended to remain friends with Sieber after their two-year relationship ended, but now tells they “are not in touch.”
“We will probably never be in touch,” she admits. “Aspen completely closed the door on that. He was seeing someone new, who I very much suspected and called him out for, but he said I was crazy. And so, I don’t foresee us becoming friends — maybe cordial.”
The Summer House star appreciated having fellow single New Yorkers Jordan Emanuel (from Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard) and her friend Casey Craig in the share house. Olivera says she felt “protective” of her pal Craig during her first season on Bravo.
“We’d be lying if we didn’t say how we come off is usually something that we think about, and she’s so career-oriented. She’s in the tech space as well,” Olivera says. “She asked me a bunch of questions just to make sure, and I eased her mind. [I said] like, ‘Just be yourself.” And boy is she herself. She’s so quirky and so different, and she just puts it all out there.”
However, Olivera did not want to see Vanderpump Rules’ Tom Sandoval or Tom Schwartz — who appeared briefly in Winter House season 2 — turn up in Colorado following news breaking about Sandoval’s cheating scandal.
“I’m like, Oh God — because I’m friends with Ariana [Madix, Sandoval’s ex], I’m friends with Katie [Maloney, Schwartz’s ex], so I’m nowhere near on his side,” Olivera says. “This is how it goes sometimes, I don’t know for sure who’s going to be there. There is word about Schwartz joining the house, and this is very close to Sandoval. There’s also word that Sandoval might be there, and I was like, Oh no, that could be a vibe kill.”
Sandoval, 41, didn’t make it to the Winter House this year, but viewers will see Schwartz, 41 — and according to Olivera, his presence didn’t end up killing the vibe.
“It’s one of those things that was obviously an elephant in the room and we weren’t sure if he even wanted to talk about it,” the Donne app co-founder says. “I just wanted to be in a more positive place, and so if he didn’t want to bring it up, I wasn’t going to be like, ‘Let’s sit down and hash this out.’ But we end up talking about it a little bit, just clearing the air.”
Another source of tension: Summer House’ s Kory Keefer coming into the house and downplaying the status of his relationship with Sam Feher.
“I’m friends with Sam, so I was just like, Oh damn,” Olivera says.
But after expressing her opinion about costars Lindsay Hubbard and Carl Radke’s relationship cost her her friendship with both castmates, Olivera wanted to keep her thoughts on Keefer, 33, and Feher, 26, to herself.
“I was just burned by butting into someone’s relationship and giving my opinion, so I was like, I’m going to stay out of your life,” Olivera explains. “He’s an adult, he can do and say whatever he wants. I’m going to try to bite my tongue.”
Despite the drama, Olivera says “this cast really, really loves each other” — and they threw some epic parties.
“We have this Western theme, like Yellowstone vibes, and we know my aesthetic is that, so I was so excited,” Olivera says of her favorite season 3 bash. “We met so many people in the town. We invited everyone that we met. If we were out at a bar, we were just like, ‘Hey, if you’re free, come on.’ It’s a vacation town, so everyone was free and everyone came over. It was really, really fun.”
Winter House season 3 premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
