The Valley‘s Luke Broderick knows not everyone is happy that he decided to have a party at Jax Taylor’s bar.
During the Sunday, April 27, episode of Broderick, 34, and Kristen Doute‘s “Balancing Act” podcast, he was asked a fan question about a recent outing at Jax’s Studio City.
“I had an NFL draft party. I’m a big NFL guy. I had 10 to 12 friends over. We drank beer, watched football, ate wings and then after we went to Jax’s bar,” Broderick explained. “Jax has been going out of his way. He’s been very nice to me. He gave me a freezer. He has essentially taken his truck with me to Home Depot to get some landscaping stuff.”
Doute speculated that Taylor, 45, was “bribing” her fiancé “for friendship.” Broderick clarified that he was “not going to call it bribing” before Doute, 42, fired back that she did.
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“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t feel like we’ve gotten much closer through this whole thing. I still don’t feel like I know him a lot better as a person,” Broderick continued, as Doute added, “I don’t think he knows himself.”
Broderick didn’t disagree with Doute, but offered his perspective on the situation.
“That may be the case. However, he asked me if I wanted to use his bar and made a pretty gracious offer. It feels like it would have been a real d*** move to be like, ‘Nope, I don’t want to do that,’” he continued. “I look at it differently like a favor for a favor. If people came in to see me at the bar, he’s also done me favors. So I don’t have an issue with it.”
While Doute didn’t want to attend the gathering at Jax’s, she praised Broderick for checking with Taylor’s estranged wife, Brittany Cartwright, first.
“The first thing you did was make a little phone call, which I thought was so sweet of you,” Doute, who is expecting her first baby with Broderick, said before he added, “I called Brittany because I have gotten closer with Brittany and I’m not trying to come in between them. I know things are tough. Brittany said she’s not going to be mad at me. She understands. She just isn’t going to go if it’s at Jax’s.”
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Elsewhere in the episode, Doute clarified why she wasn’t as interested in speaking with Taylor.
“I like that you have a positive mentality about it and saying, like, ‘He made a gracious offer,’” she said. “I’m a little nose in the air about him right now. I’m just a little irritated. I don’t know if that’s going to change until I get to like speak my piece and talk it out at the reunion with him. Because I felt like he was using you a little bit to get people to come to the bar. It’s like how it felt to me and I know you don’t necessarily feel that way.”
Doute quipped that “boys are so simple” when it comes to their friendships. Broderick, for his part, explained that he wasn’t at odds with Taylor because his The Valley costar didn’t do anything to him personally.
“I hope I can maintain this through this whole reality TV journey. I don’t want optics to make my decision for me unless someone does something, I can’t even say it like this, truly horrible,” he continued. “Jax has obviously done some bad things. But I felt like it was more open the fact that Brittany let Jax come to [their son] Cruz’s birthday party. Things were on better terms. So I’m not trying to make his life harder. It’s pretty hard as it is.”
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Before their split, Cartwright, 36, and Taylor’s issues played out on screen as they filmed The Valley. By the time cameras picked back up in summer 2024, Cartwright and Taylor were going through divorce proceedings, and he subsequently entered a 30-day treatment program to address his mental health struggles.
Taylor left the in-patient facility in August 2024 and more recently revealed that he has been battling substance abuse issues, including abusing cocaine, for more than two decades.
While Taylor has been outspoken about working on himself, Cartwright has remained skeptical as their costars pick sides.
“I think if his job wasn’t on the line, he wouldn’t have went [to rehab],” Cartwright said during her Thursday, April 24, appearance on the “MisSpelling” podcast. “On the show, he’s like, ‘I’m going to miss out on a lot of things.’ Then, he says, ‘Going to miss out on Cruz.’ I feel like he knew that he was going to miss out of 30 days of not filming The Valley with us.”
