Sutton Stracke is explaining why she was so upset by the legal letter she received about Erika Jayne amid filming on the 12th season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
After bringing up the letter amid Dorit Kemsley‘s fundraiser event on Wednesday’s episode, Sutton revealed she became “very upset” after discussing the matter with an attorney before admitting she waited for the perfect time to bring it up to the group.
“First of all, I got the letter the day before we left for Mexico. And then, when I got the letter, my attorney said to me, ‘Do not bring this up. Let me figure all of this stuff out.’ And I was very upset,” Sutton recalled on the August 17 episode of the RHOBH: After Show. “That’s why the liability thing, as a friend, was hitting me real hard. I’m a liability? Don’t think so!”
According to Sutton, Erika, who’s facing millions of dollars worth of lawsuits, said she was a “liability” to Garcelle Beauvais, she sat on the information of the letter until she got the go-ahead from her attorney.
“I had finally gotten word from my attorney, everything had been settled so I knew that I could bring it up. So when we were all sitting around after [Melissa Etheridge]’s performance, somebody said, ‘Is there anything else that we need to share with the group?’ And I said, ‘Yep, I’ve got something that I wanna talk about,'” Sutton explained.
But not everyone was in the dark about the letter Sutton had received.
“Sutton had shared this with me a while before. I didn’t think she was ever going to mention it. So when she dropped that bomb, I was like, ‘Oh God, no.’ Where’s the nearest exit?” Kyle Richards recalled.
Meanwhile, Dorit Kemsley found herself irritated at Sutton’s suggestion that she needed a lawyer to work through the situation.
“What bothers me is that she alluded that it was a lot bigger deal. She was sent an email. Nothing was official. It was kinda like, ‘Hey, do you wanna speak up?’ Because they had seen her being very vocal. There was not anything,” Dorit clarified. “She didn’t have to get a lawyer for it.”
“In order to kind of make a dig, she made something look like it was a much bigger deal. And I know it wasn’t, and that bothers me,” she added.
And Erika was just as frustrated, saying that Sutton brought up the letter because she “wanted to.”
“This is the sh-t I don’t like,” she said. “This is my life we’re talking about. I’m facing real problems. I’m tired of advocating for myself and getting the sh-t kicked out of me.”
Erika went on to say that she isn’t sure who contacted Sutton before noting that she told her RHOBH castmates from the beginning not to talk about her legal issues.
“The more all of you talk about this, the more people on the peripheral will come to you,” she recalled telling them.
“And here’s the other thing: Sutton did not know anything, and if you want to go back to the reunion, you can see me say, ‘Well if you know something, you need to tell me.’ She didn’t,” Erika added.
In addition to expressing shock over Sutton’s reveal of the letter, Kyle suggested that if she hadn’t been chatting so much about Erika and her lawsuits, she likely would’ve never gotten the letter to begin with.
“All of us here have known Erika longer, and yet none of us were contacted by any lawyers so I’m thinking, ‘I think Erika’s probably right.’ Maybe she was alluding to the fact that she knew more than she did or something last year, and that’s why they’re reaching out to her because none of us had been contacted,” she shared.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 12 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.