Chrisley family reacts to Chase’s arrest during parents’ prison time

On the new Lifetime series The Chrisleys: Back to Reality, the various members of the titular TV clan are baring all — including their reactions to Chase Chrisley’s headline-making arrest for allegedly slapping a bar employee earlier this year.

Chase, 29, is the eldest son of Chrisley Knows Best stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion in 2022 and sentenced to years in federal prison. In January, nearly two years into Todd and Julie’s respective 12-year and seven-year sentences, Chase had his own run-in with the law when he was taken into custody and charged with simple battery after allegedly striking the manager of an Atlanta-area sports bar in the face.

As seen on The Chrisleys, the incident took a toll on family morale.

“It was just like, ‘Dear God, can I change my last name?'” Savannah, Chase’s sister, reflects in episode 2 of the show, which premiered Monday. “I feel like Chase’s behavior continues to go further and further downhill, and all that does is just damage our relationship even more.”

Todd and Julie were granted pardons by President Donald Trump in May, but in an earlier call from prison included in episode 2, Julie discusses her son’s arrest. “The worst possible thing as a parent that you can think of is the thought that he is conducting himself in a way that is leading down a bad path,” she says. “It breaks my heart.”

Other family members — including Savannah, Nanny Faye (Todd’s mother), Harvey and Pam Hughes (Julie’s parents), and Chase himself — are played a portion of the original 911 call that led to Chase’s arrest.

“There’s a guest I’m trying to ask to leave politely,” the victim of the alleged crime says in the recording. “He’s being a little aggressive, and he actually assaulted me with his hand, now he’s in my face.”

In his own call from prison, Todd admits, “I don’t know that I was shocked, because I had been warning Chase for years to stop with the drinking. There’s nothing in a bar that won’t bring you no good fortune.”

Echoing her son’s sense of humor about the incident, Nanny Faye remarks that when she first heard of her grandson’s arrest, she “probably said, ‘Well, go ahead, stupid, putting some money in some G-string.’ I said, ‘Now, if I’d been climbing the pole you could have put the money in my pocket, but I wasn’t.'”

For his part, Chase says of the evening that led to his arrest, “I don’t remember a lot of it.” But he does insist, “I wouldn’t slap somebody. I’d get my money’s worth. Everybody there says I didn’t put my hands on anybody, but it ended up with me with a mug shot. I just I think I kind of just hit rock bottom.”

Savannah reveals that she set her brother up to visit a treatment center for his drinking, “had already bought him a plane ticket, we had already gone through the whole intake process, and then he told me to go f‑‑‑ myself.”

Chase says he doesn’t feel he needs rehab because he’s “not the type to drink every day and wake up wanting a drink, or craving a drink, or anything like that, it’s just like, whenever I go, I go.”

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But Savannah isn’t so sure: “Chase says that he’s sober now. Do I believe it? No. Because if he was, he wouldn’t look the way that he looks. It’s just the reality of it. He does not look healthy. When the cameras are on, he can turn it on for as long as he needs to, and that is the scary part.”

New episodes of The Chrisleys: Back to Reality air Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Lifetime through Sept. 16.