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Lala Kent addressed the Summer House scandal involving Amanda Batula and West Wilson on the latest episode of her podcast.
As she looked back on her experience on Vanderpump Rules, specifically her handling of the scandal that broke when Tom Sandoval, 43, was caught cheating on Ariana Madix, 40, with their friend and co-star, Rachel “Raquel” Leviss, 31, the 35-year-old cast member of The Valley spoke of the similarities and differences between the situations as she looked ahead to their reunion.
“When ‘Scamanda’ happened, everybody weighed in. We had Rihanna, who unfollowed Amanda. We got the joint statement. It was very much reminding people of the scandal that happened on Vanderpump Rules,” Lala explained on the April 20 episode of Untraditionally Lala. “The show’s airing. It’s like the perfect storm. Everybody is on 100 when it comes to the comments section … It’s extremely overwhelming.”
While many have signaled commonalities between the two scandals, Lala said the difference between them was in the way Kyle Cooke, 43, reacted with empathy.
“I have seen that Kyle has really put Amanda’s mental health on the forefront of his mind,” she explained.
Reflecting on the fallout of “Scandoval,” Lala admitted she was “out for blood” at the season 10 reunion.
“I was ready to lose my f*cking mind, and I did. You guys saw it. But then what happened is I went so heavy in the paint that I kind of set myself up for failure,” she explained.
Continuing on, Lala said that she hoped the Summer House cast would go into their reunion differently.
“My advice to most of the cast would be try your hardest to say exactly when you mean, but know that time changes everything, and the audience is not sympathetic to that,” she shared. “They look at us like we power on for a show and power off until we’re ready to film again. They don’t see us when cameras aren’t up. And, even when cameras are up, they see such a small piece of it that when cameras go down, and you’re done filming the reunion, you go back to your real life … and you start thinking about the things that are important to you, personally, and what you want … [and] things kind of calm down.”
According to Lala, having that downtime can often lead to a change of heart, which fans don’t always appreciate, especially if it “happens very quickly — in their eyes.”
She also pointed out that no one really knows what went down, and when, between Amanda and West.
“Can you even trust what they say? Will they go into the reunion prepped like Tom and Raquel were prepped?” she wondered.
Then, after mentioning the possibility of Jesse Solomon, 32, being the Tom Schwartz, 43, of “Scamanda,” Lala said the situation was particularly upsetting because the Summer House cast, like the Pump Rules cast, had a “deep-rooted history.”
Although history is often what makes a reality show great, Lala expressed concern over the fallout from Amanda and West’s romance.
“When something like this happens, the Scamanda of it all, you cannot recover, and, in return, the show is just not the same because you don’t want to film together. You don’t want to be around each other. And it happened with Vanderpump Rules,” she noted. “If the show cannot be repaired, and these people cannot go forward with filming a show after the reunion … I think we do run the risk of Summer House having another season, and then there being a tremendous shakeup.”
“I hope that this group can handle it differently than maybe our group did … I hope that they are all able to come together, have some downtime after the reunion before they pick cameras back up so that we don’t have such a shakeup with Summer House that people don’t even know what the show is anymore,” she continued.
Also on her podcast, Lala said that while Lindsay Hubbard, 39, has been encouraged to bring Lala energy to the Summer House reunion, she hoped she would not.
“I don’t want that for her. That level of anger that I was feeling, you guys, although I look back and I go, ‘That girl was a bad b*tch,’ I don’t recognize her much. I don’t recognize the Lala that I was at that reunion,” she explained.
The Valley season three airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.