Lala Kent opened up about the start of her relationship with Randall Emmett and the abortion she had when she was 22 years old while promoting her new book, Give Them Lala, on Tuesday.
In addition to denying claims of “home-wrecking,” the 30-year-old Vanderpump Rules star explained why she decided to pen an autobiography, revealed which part she “sobbed” through, and shared why she was initially hesitant to go into detail about her abortion.
“I want to say that my life story so far was so interesting that I had to share it with people, but it was more of me needing to release things that had happened to me, stories that for me were life-changing and defining, but that were affecting me every single day,” Lala told Entertainment Tonight of what prompted her to write the book. “I purged and now I’m in a whole different realm of life becoming a mom, and I can now move forward with motherhood with not a clean slate, but just feeling more light.”
According to Lala, it was hard for her to write about “the things [she] did when [she] was drunk” and even harder to reflect on the times she spent with her late father, Kent Burningham. In fact, she “sobbed throughout writing” passages about him and said it was complete “torture” recording them for her audiobook.
Now that her new book has been released, Lala is focused on the next chapter of her life, the ninth season of Pump Rules. She believes she’s “ready” to get back in front of the cameras with her weeks-old daughter, Ocean Kent Emmett.
“She’s too damn perfect not to share with the world,” Lala explained, adding that she’d like to say she’ll “be softer” on the upcoming episodes.
As fans will recall, Lala was accused of “home-wrecking” and having an “affair” with Randall after it was revealed that he was still legally married to Ambyr Childers, the mother of his daughters London and Rylee, when their relationship began. However, according to Lala, their relationship is “not what it seems from the outside.”
“When you read it in my book and from my viewpoint, it really is such a sweet, little love story, and I wish that things would have happened in a perfect timeline, but that’s not how life works,” Lala explained. She added that she has no regrets about how their relationship began.
“I can’t regret how something came to be when it’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she reasoned.
Looking back at the many months she kept Randall off-camera, Lala said it was Katie Maloney who ultimately spilled the beans about who she was dating.
“[Producers] found out about the R.E. tattoo and Randall Emmett through Katie Maloney,” she shared.
Also during the interview, Lala opened up about her decision to discuss her past abortion in Give Them Lala.
“I went back and forth with, do I write about this? Do I not? I ping-ponged back and forth and finally it was like, this is something that needs to be spoken about,” she explained. “We are where we are in this world because people are so nervous to talk about things that make them uncomfortable. So we’re mentioning it.”
During a separate interview, Lala admitted to being warned about potential backlash by her publisher.
“That was really hard,” she told Us Weekly on May 4. “My publisher even said like, ‘Are you really wanting to write about this? Because you’re, you may not get the feedback that you think you might get.’ And I was OK with that because it happened.”
After finding herself pregnant by former football player Carter Hoffman at the age of 22, Lala made the decision, along with her mother Lisa, to terminate the pregnancy.
“There are women and girls that are dealing with that and facing that choice every single day. So if I can make it a little — I don’t even want to say easier — but if I can make them feel a little bit more at peace with it, then I’m happy,” Lala said of her decision to speak candidly about the topic.
Although Lala revealed that Carter found out about the abortion after the fact, she told Entertainment Tonight she did not give him a warning about the contents of her book.
Lala and the cast of Vanderpump Rules are expected to begin filming season nine sometime early this month.
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