THTH’s Kayla Richart Has Spoken To Seb Since Their Viral Breakup

As anyone who’s even glanced at TikTok recently knows, Kayla Richart has been through it. The Too Hot To Handle star seemed to have the perfect relationship with her boyfriend of over two years, Seb Melrose (whom she began dating on Season 4 of the Netflix show), until a trip to Fashion Week threw everything out of vogue earlier this month. But there may still be hope for the couple after their viral breakup.

“We talked for four hours,” Richart says, revealing she finally spoke to Melrose on Sept. 24 for the first time since the split. “We cried together. We laughed together. And ultimately, we found peace in the situation.”

The exes have finally gotten closure, something Richart didn’t expect to happen a few days earlier. On Sept. 17, Richart put Melrose on blast in an explosive TikTok rant outlining all the boundaries he’d crossed during his recent trip to New York Fashion Week. In particular, Richart felt uncomfortable with how many photos her boyfriend was posting with Love Is Blind star Micah Lussier, whose management team he had partnered with for NYFW influencer events.

“I didn't understand that brand direction. We're a very public couple, and he doesn't know Micah,” Richart says. “It's not like, ‘Hey, I'm going to New York Fashion Week with one of my good hometown friends.’ They'd never even met.”

Richart’s TikToks about the situation all received millions of views (the highest currently sitting at 9 million). Here, Richart gets real about where she stands with Seb after the TikTok drama, whether they’ll ever get back together, and why you should never piss off a woman who knows how to isolate a voice in the background of a noisy Instagram video.

Elite Daily: After Too Hot To Handle, you and Seb put a pause on your relationship, then got back together. What was going on at that time?

Kayla Richart: We were together for a few months after the show, and then the long distance just got to be too much, but we never really stopped dating. We took the label off of things and took a step back, because we were only on the show for a few weeks and fell madly in love, which was a lot. That's not normal. That doesn't happen in real life. So we decided to really date each other and get to know each other on a deeper level.

He asked me to be his girlfriend again in Peru that March after the show was released [in December 2022], and then we were together ever since — up until two weeks ago.

ED: You two seemed like the perfect couple online until recently, but of course, social media never tells the full story. Were there issues before the breakup that fans didn’t see?

KR: We did have a pretty good relationship. We've had our blowout fights, but it was just normal relationship stuff that we've worked through together. Nothing crazy like what just happened.

ED: In your TikToks, you spoke about how Seb previously shared romantic-looking photos with a woman in Paris. Was that the first time he crossed a boundary with you?

KR: We talked about it at the beginning of our relationship, so he knew that was a boundary for me. After the Paris situation, he reassured me and said he was in love with me. I don't think he cheated on me at all. I know that for a fact, but we're in a public relationship, and I felt very publicly embarrassed.

ED: It felt like you were saying the issue was more him projecting this image that he might be cheating on you, not that he actually was.

KR: Yeah, exactly. That image just wasn’t necessary, in my opinion. Also, most of the posts in these situations were not even made by him — they were made by the people around him. It says a lot about people if they’re not respecting your relationship, and in turn not respecting you.

ED: When Seb left for Fashion Week, you knew he would be at some events with Micah. When did things start to feel weird to you?

KR: When he told me the management team wanted photos of them together. My management team has other clients as well, but they're not going to pair me up with them if it doesn’t make sense.

ED: How common is it for Netflix reality stars to do this kind of collaboration together?

KR: People collab and do their own things, but it's mostly with cast members you were on the same shows with, so you know each other already. But they weren't on the same show, so I found it kind of strange.

I feel like Micah making a seven-minute video talking about somebody else's relationship was very unnecessary.

ED: Both Seb and Micah posted TikToks responding to the situation where they claimed everything was strictly professional between them. What did you think of those videos?

KR: I felt like both of their TikTok responses were quite unnecessary. In my first TikTok about our breakup, I kept everybody's name out of it. It was just a blanket statement of what happened. I feel like Micah making a seven-minute video talking about somebody else's relationship was very unnecessary.

ED: What do you think was the worst thing Seb did?

KR: Not fight for me.

ED: Have you spoken to him at all since posting your TikToks?

KR: We actually talked in person yesterday for the first time.

ED: How did it go?

KR: It went really well. I have been having so much anxiety. We were in love, and all of a sudden it's over like that; it just felt so strange. I heard he was coming to LA, so I decided to reach out to him. If anything, we need that closure because you can't just go from a two-and-a-half-year relationship to absolutely nothing but internet drama.

So he agreed to meet up with me. If you had asked me if this was going to happen four days ago, I would've said absolutely not. I was in my anger stage. Seb can affect my emotions like nobody else. I really didn’t think a talk like that would happen, but it was probably the best thing that we could have done for each other.

ED: Does that mean you two could potentially get back together?

KR: Right now, no, because everything is still very fresh. I also ended up feeling guilty for the hate I brought on him online, because I don't want to hurt him. I just wanted to be heard. And he completely understands where I'm coming from now, which is a little too late. But maybe when the dust settles, we revisit that conversation. If it's meant to be, it'll be.

ED: What was your mindset in making those TikToks explaining the breakup?

KR: I didn't want to sugarcoat anything. I didn't try to bash anybody, but the internet was making their own stories up. I didn’t want that anymore — I wanted everyone to know exactly what happened and then to never talk about it again.

A mad woman is the CIA, literally!

ED: The most impressive part was how you isolated someone’s voice in the background of a video of a noisy club to find out if Seb was flirting with Micah. That’s a whole new level of social media sleuthing.

KR: A mad woman is the CIA, literally! That audio really pissed me off. When I found that video, I went full-on FBI mode. I was fully scouring the internet, picking at straws because I was so upset.

ED: What's the main thing that you've learned from this whole situation?

KR: To respect and reassure your partner no matter what. Even if you don't agree on something, you need to be able to say, “I love you. I'm here for you. I will fix this.” If that doesn’t happen, like it didn’t in my situation, then things will fall apart very quickly. Love is just one part of a relationship, and sometimes it’s not enough.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.