Madison & Ashleigh Detail What Happened After Their Big SLOMW: OC Fight

In true MomTok fashion, battle lines have been decisively drawn on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County. By the end of the spinoff’s first season, Madison Bontempo had iced out her former bestie, Ashleigh Pease, after discovering Ashleigh learned unrevealed information about her relationship with her husband, Kyler Fisher. But both women say the drama has apparently died down in the months since filming wrapped in July.

“Ashleigh and I have worked through a lot since the show has ended,” Madison says. “We couldn’t really communicate how we needed to on the show because of how production worked, but we chatted it out on a five-hour plane flight, and we understand each other a lot better now.”

Ashleigh also points to that “beautiful” conversation on a long airplane commute as the reconciliation they’d been needing. “She expressed a lot of things she was paranoid about, or thinking was happening, and we were able to come back to trusting our intuition of just how much we care about each other,” Ashleigh says. “I’m hopeful there’s going to be a new slate for us.”

The catalyst for their rift was gossip that Ashleigh contacted Madison’s sister to get personal details about Madison and Kyler’s marriage, which many of the SLOMW: OC cast had expressed concerns about. When Kyler convinced Madison to cut Ashleigh out of her life, Ashleigh responded that she did not seek out this seemingly damning information, but was simply told it by Madison’s sister.

Ashleigh blames “initial filming nerves” for some of this confusing drama, but also admits that she and Madison share a similar trait that exasperated the tension.

“Madison, by nature, is a people pleaser. And I’m the same way,” Ashleigh says. “And it is hard to really express how we’re feeling because of that. There are great things about being a people pleaser, and then things I know I want to work on, and I hope Madison also feels like she has a voice people want to hear, and can really come into that. It’s been a growing experience for all of us.”

While Ashleigh feels she’s in a good place with Madison right now, she’s a little less sure about her relationship with Kyler. She’s not writing him off, though.

“I never think anything is broken beyond repair,” Ashleigh says. “I’m always going to be open if people want to try to fix things. I see the human in people, and I’ll always be there for a conversation and for growth, no matter how that looks.”