When Nile Lundgren told his family he was going to be on a Bravo reality show, they responded, "What took you so long?"

His family loves Bravo — Housewives and Below Deck are favorites — but soon, another show will be added to their list of must-watches. Nile is a cast member on Camp Getaway, a new Bravo reality series that follows eight social coordinators at an adult summer camp in Kent, Conn.

Think of the social coordinators as like, camp counselors meet Below Deck second stews meet Below Deck deckhands meet professional party-starters meet errand-runners, all crossed with a dash of well-meaning host or hostess. The series follows Nile and his fellow cast mates/ social coordinators as they deal with the drama that each new weekend brings ... because each new weekend brings hundreds of adult campers looking to relive their childhood dreams.

Nile describes the social coordinator role as follows: "Our job is to make sure that we're inclusive and we bring people who don't know each other into the fold and have them meet other people. We're kind of the glue that helps some of these people stick together," he says.

After chatting with Nile for about 30 minutes on the phone, it's easy to see why his family wasn't surprised he made his way on reality TV. Nile's energy is so contagious that I could feel it even though we were three miles apart (and, you know, despite the fact that we don't know each other at all). He's easy to talk to and he's open and honest — three qualities that any excellent social coordinator, and any reality star, should posses.

They're also personality traits that any great salesman should have, and what do you know, Nile works in real estate. He represents buyers and sellers of properties in New York City, he tells me, but welcomed the reprieve of camp over the weekends last summer. And going back to Connecticut, where camp is, feels like going home.

Nile grew up in Milford, Conn., and went to high school at Kent School, which is very close to Camp Getaway (it's actually called Club Getaway when it's not talked about in context of the show). "I was a half a mile away from camp [when at school], so I kind of knew about it and I got in touch with Bravo, and things kind of worked out for the best," he says.

It wasn’t all fun and games to start, though. Getting used to being filmed 24/7 was a process (“there are cameras in the cabins, even when you’re sleeping,” he says) but, silver lining! Nile says he loves the camera.

“The first Friday I was there [at camp with the cameras], it’s a shock. It’s a shock for sure. You have to increase your awareness, because everything you do would be under scrutiny,” he says. “It just allowed me to really focus on creating a present sense of awareness for myself.” By the end of the season, he felt very comfortable, and “was constantly just trying to be as proactive as I could with shooting and everything. It was a lot of fun.”

In the first episode, Nile and his fellow social coordinator Neely Fortune get “in trouble” for bringing a cake out too early (Neely told me all about cake-gate, and you can read it here), and we also see Nile tell his fellow social coordinator Randall Klein, who may or may not have been hitting on him, that he has girlfriend.

Nile and his girlfriend live together on the Lower East Side, and “she’s been 100% supportive” of his role on and at Camp Getaway, even though it was, at times, a little stressful. Since he was working full-time during the week and then heading up to camp on the weekends, there wasn’t much down time together. But, she visited him at camp for a couple of weekends, and now they’re “back to normal and feeling good about it” and looking forward to the show, he says.

There’s a lot to look forward to when it comes to seeing Nile’s friendship with his cast mate Glen North really blossom, and his friendship with his cast mate Dr. Monica O’Neal, really … not. “Glen and I, we just had a great relationship throughout the entire summer and it really grew and I really appreciate him as a person,” Nile says.

But if Nile had to kick someone off the island, so to speak, it’d be Monica. “If you’re going to put a put a gun to my head, I’d say myself and Monica were at odds a couple times during the season, and you’ll see that. But she’s also a good person. But yeah, if I’m going to kick somebody off, it might be her.”

Nile’s quick to add, though, that “every single one of us is a good person. We might have our differences, but we’re all really good people.”

Right now, he and his cast mates are stuck in the eye of the hurricane, as he describes it. They’ve filmed the show — it’s done, it’s in the bag — but until the previews and commercials, no one really knew about it. Soon, though, people will start to recognize them as those people from Camp Getaway, and preparing for that change has been weird, but Nile is ready. He’s taken advantage of the time in quarantine (he had the Coronavirus, but he’s recovered now) to steady himself in the calm before the storm.

It’s “a time to just mentally prepare and recharge and reset. And then, once it all kind of goes down, my expectation is to really focus on social media, and promoting the show, and promoting my fellow cast members,” he explains. “And that’s kind of where I’m at.”

That said, he might not even need to prepare for his new, public role as a reality star. His family has always known him to be a very outgoing and confident person, “so for them they were like, ‘We always expected this. Thank God it happened!”

And his family has their eye on they prize, too. “They’re all asking, ‘When can we come on Watch What Happens with Andy?’ They’re freaking out. They all want to be the bartender. It’s crazy,” he laughs.

Camp Getaway airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on Bravo.

Read more about the Camp Getaway cast:

• Neely Fortune Is An Ultra-Marathoner Who’s Training To Be A ‘Camp Getaway’ Reality Star
• ‘Camp Getaway’s Nile Lundgren Was Born To Be A Bravo Reality Star
• Adam Is Preparing For ‘Camp Getaway’ In One Way: “Therapy”
• ‘Camp Getaway’s Dr. Monica Talks Transition From Normal Person To Reality Star — And Reveals Which ‘Housewife’ Came To Camp
• ‘Camp Getaway’s Sophia Says The Show’s Trailer Was “Hard To Watch”
• Randall From ‘Camp Getaway’ Talks FOMO, Reality TV, & The Advice She Got From A ‘Below Deck’ Star

Feature image: Bravo Media