‘The Bold Type’ Showrunner Says Kat and Eva Were ‘Always’ Meant to Break Up
In The Bold Type, the relationship between Kat (Aisha Dee) and Eva (Alex Paxton-Beesley) proved to be divisive among viewers. While Kat is a known progressive in the show, she fell for Eva, a conservative woman, in the second half of season 4 of The Bold Type. Kat officially ended things with Eva in season 5 episode 1 of The Bold Type, and showrunner Wendy Straker Hauser told TVLine the breakup between the former TV couple would have happened no matter what.
Kat broke up with Eva in ‘The Bold Type’
In season 4 of The Bold Type, Kat is fired from Scarlet Magazine after illegally leaking the tax returns of a longtime board member named RJ Safford. She did this to show RJ donated to a conservative political candidate who supports conversion therapy.
Kat then begins working at a club called The Belle where RJ’s daughter Eva is a member. Even though they have vastly different political views, Kat finds herself drawn to Eva. They become close, and at the end of the season, they sleep together.
As the relationship progressed, some fans of The Bold Type criticized Kat and Eva’s romance and threatened to stop watching the show. In the season 4 finale of The Bold Type, Kat ends the relationship over a text message. During the first episode of the fifth season, Kat admitted to Eva that she did not want to date Eva because of her political views.
Kat was always supposed to break up with Eva
While some fans might view Kat ending things with Eva because of political backlash from fans, Hauser told TVLine this is not the case. According to the showrunner, Kat was “always” going to break up with Eva. Because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and season 5 being the show’s last season, the breakup had to be rushed.
“This was always part of what we had thought was Kat’s arc of just being able to fall for somebody, have open dialogue, potentially have them learn and grow from each other and perhaps even Eva’s mind would be opened and changed on certain levels with certain things,” Hauser told TVLine.
She continued, “And Kat could see other things, and they could kind of make the world a better place, which is like the dream that we all have, I think, on some level, that we can go across the aisle and we can start to begin to repair and work together. But we didn’t have the space to finish out that storyline, and so, given the short season that we had this year, we altered things a bit and ultimately got to the same place, but a lot faster.”
Aisha Dee did not agree with the storyline in season 4 of ‘The Bold Type’
Fans of The Bold Type were not the only ones who disapproved of Kat and Eva’s relationship. In an Instagram post that was published before the season 4 finale aired in 2020, Dee criticized the Freeform show for the storyline.
In the post, Dee wrote:
“The decision to have Kat enter into a relationship with a privileged conservative woman felt confusing and out of character. Despite my personal feelings about the choice, I tried my best to tell the story with honesty, even though the Kat I know and love would never make these choices. It was heartbreaking to watch Kat’s story turn into a redemption story for someone else, someone who is complicit in the oppression of so many. Someone who’s politics are actively harmful to her communities.”
The series finale of The Bold Type will premiere on Freeform at 10 p.m. ET on June 30.
