Pool floaties meet pandemic when Bravo’s Summer House returns for season five with a new home in the Hamptons and a fresh face joining the “quaranteam.”
After working in an ICU during the COVID-19 pandemic, travel nurse and model Ciara Miller makes a splash this season as she enters the house with friend/more-than-friend Luke Gulbranson. (Fans will recall he had a summer fling with fellow housemate Hannah Berner last year, so it should be, let’s just say, interesting to watch them all live together for six straight weeks…)
So, who exactly is the new kid on the Bravo block? Women’s Health caught up with Ciara ahead of the Summer House premiere, so here’s everything you need to know about her, straight from the newbie herself:
Ciara is currently back in her hometown of Atlanta.
“I’m not really cut out for the New York winter,” she tells WH of her decision to head back South after filming Summer House. The move also benefits Ciara’s modeling career, she adds, since “a lot of my agencies are in Atlanta and Florida—Miami, specifically.”
Before filming Summer House, she treated COVID-19 patients in a Brooklyn hospital.
As a travel nurse, Ciara works at different hospitals across the country, usually for eight to 13 weeks at a time, depending on the contract. Before filming began, she took an assignment working in the ICU at a hospital in Brooklyn. “I was like, ‘What the hell? I’m just gonna go out there and see what it’s like,'” she says. “I honestly ended up loving it, and just being in New York altogether.”
When she arrived at the hospital, COVID-19 cases had plateaued, so “it wasn’t super crazy, but it wasn’t calm either,” she recalls. “We—the travel nurses—came in as a relief for the staff nurses. They had been going through the ringer [with the pandemic] and honestly needed a break; they needed to take some vacation time.”
Seeing COVID-19 patients firsthand changed Ciara’s view of the pandemic.
Having worked in multiple ICUs over the years, Ciara is no stranger to the toll an illness can take on a person, but this was different. “COVID-19 has accelerated the amount of deaths that I’ve seen in the ICU. You talk to [patients], and then the next day they’re intubated, or they are not here,” she says.
She adds that working in the ICU during the COVID-19 pandemic was “a humbling experience” and changed how she viewed the virus as a healthcare worker. “I will admit, at first, I and a lot of the people I worked with, we did think COVID was kind of like a more serious flu—until we saw just how aggressive and how differently the virus affected everyone.”
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Ciara always wanted to work in medicine.
“I always knew that I wanted to be in the medical field; I just didn’t know in what capacity,” she says. “After I finished my first year of college, I was kind of feeling lost. I was convinced I was going to take a year off, and my mom was like, ‘No, you can’t live at home if you’re going to take a year off.'”
That lit a fire under Ciara, and with her mom’s help, she applied to nursing school. But she didn’t decide to go until her mom “dragged” her to an open house for the school, and she ended up loving it. “So I was like, ‘Fine, I’ll go,’ and I haven’t looked back since.”
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Besides working as a nurse, Ciara is also a model.
It can be difficult balancing both careers, she says, but Ciara finds a way to make it work. “Full-time nursing is three days a week. So, when I’m not at the hospital, I am trying to book other gigs through my agent,” she says.
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Of course, that’s been difficult amid the ongoing pandemic. “It’s hard for me to model to the capacity that I would like to because of COVID,” Ciara explains. “I’m supposed to be overseas [for a modeling job] currently, but I can’t due to the virus and international travel restrictions for Americans.”
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Ciara discussed the racial reckoning over the summer with her fellow housemates.
As the new person in the house and a Black woman, Ciara says she and the rest of the cast “definitely had a dialogue” about the countrywide protests for racial justice and against police brutality that took place over the summer. “It was kind of hard not to [talk about it]. I definitely felt the weight of everything at times, and more so than others,” she explains. “But it was a good experience getting to talk to my housemates and getting their perspective on things and having them ask me questions. It was honestly just really open, which I appreciated because I didn’t know what to think going into the house.”
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“Obviously, that’s something I think about—I’m going to be in a room full of white people,” she continues. “I mean, I’m used to it, but the times being what they are, it’s like, ‘What are these people’s political views going to be? Where do they stand? What’s their moral ground?’ That’s something I think about, but honestly, it ended up going great, and we ended up having similar views on a lot of situations.”
She still keeps in touch with the Summer House cast.
The group chat is alive and well, says Ciara. “We all talk in our group chat, and then I text people individually,” she adds. Ciara and Hannah have even “chatted a little” about the newbie appearing on the Bravolebrity’s podcast, Berning In Hell, but nothing is set in stone yet. (They have been commenting on each other’s ‘grams, though.)
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As for a potential Summer House reunion IRL, it’s in the works. “There are some plans to get together. We’re just trying to figure out the best time and how to do it safely,” Ciara says.
Ciara is big on running, but not at-home workouts.
Staying fit is a key part of both her jobs—in fact, Ciara says she’ll walk “anywhere from six to eight miles” during a 12-hour shift at the hospital. When she’s not working, she loves to go on runs. “I have a gym in my building, so I’ll just go there and run a couple miles on the treadmill,” Ciara says. But when it comes to at-home workouts, she’s quick to admit that she’s “the worst.” Instead, she’ll occasionally exercise with a personal trainer friend (safely, of course).
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And she’s a self-described “clean eater.”
“My friends always tease me that I eat the healthiest of everything all the time, but I have my occasional cheat days, burger days, whatever,” Ciara says. “But I’m definitely a pretty clean eater.”
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Ciara sticks to a dairy-free diet and mostly avoids bread due to a gluten intolerance. “I get really bad wheat belly, so I don’t even really buy bread,” she explains. “I find myself eating more potatoes. And then I’m big on vegetables.”
Ciara loves her cat, Jasper.
Not only is he mentioned soon after she arrives in the Hamptons, but Ciara’s love for her furry friend is well-documented on her Instagram. Case in point:
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She plans to return to New York… at some point.
While she loves living in Hotlanta during the winter, Ciara doesn’t doubt she’ll venture back up to New York sometime in the future. “I’ve been in Atlanta for a while now, so I’m itching to go somewhere else,” she says.
Perhaps that means she’ll be back for season six of Summer House?
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