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Lisa Rinna described Lisa Vanderpump as manipulative and clever in her just-released memoir, You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It.
As she also explained that Kyle Richards, 57, “always” gets the center diamond in the opening credits of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, recalled her near-physical encounter with Kim Richards, 61, and slammed Garcelle Beauvais, 59, Lisa said that she felt that a “black cloud” was over her during her time on the show and recalled how LVP, 65, molded her during her early seasons.
“By the time I joined the show in season 5, she was already a producer on Vanderpump Rules, so she knew the game better than anybody,” Lisa, 62, wrote. “I looked up to her, and I let her lead the way … [She’s] very smart. When I first came on the show, she called me every single morning. I was so gullible, I actually thought she cared about me. While I was drinking my first cup of coffee and prattling on about my day’s boring errands, she was molding me like clay.”
“I think Lisa Vanderpump is the Bobby Fischer of [Real Housewives], one of the greatest of all time,” she continued. “She knew how to play the game better than anyone. You cut through all the manipulation and maneuvering, and she was funny, she had the English accent and Jiggy the dog, and it served her well.”
While Lisa admitted to sitting back after her dad died and allowing her castmates to take on the heavy lifting of their drama, noting that she was “having a ball because it wasn’t about me,” she knew she’d only get one free pass.
“The producers gave me one season to recover, then it was, ‘Alright, get yer sweet a** back on board here. Don’t think you can’t show up, Rinna,'” she stated.
According to Rinna, the longer you’re on the show, the more you want to be the top dog, or the one who holds the center diamond.
“Kyle always got that spot, which was understood and was not up for negotiation. If you had a good season, you might get to stand next to her, but it was always Kyle,” she shared.
Although Lisa “always wanted to be on top,” she knew she would be demoted after Puppy Gate and “couldn’t stand that.” Still, she doubled down instead of taking accountability.
“[She] would never, ever, ever admit she was wrong … Once we really called LVP out, the whole cast pretty much turned on her, and she ran. Halfway through the season, she disappeared, and she never filmed the show again,” Lisa recalled. “LVP was the biggest coward we’ve ever had on that show. Everybody else would go head-to-head.”
Looking back on her encounter with Kim in Amsterdam, Lisa confessed she almost strangled her co-star after she suggested her husband, Harry Hamlin, 74, was hiding something dark.
“Kim started jabbing her finger in my direction and threatening to expose secrets about my Harry. ‘Let’s talk about the husband!’ she taunted. That’s when I lost my f*cking marbles,” Lisa revealed. “I nearly reached across the table to strangle her. I had a split millisecond of God saying to me, ‘Don’t touch her, you’ll go to jail.’ Instead, I screeched, ‘Don’t touch my husband! Never go near my husband! Don’t you ever fucking touch my husband!’ Then I picked up my glass, threw water all over Kim, and smashed it on the table in front of us. I mean, you could not have written that scene, but the fact that it happened in the first five minutes we were sitting there was beyond.”
“It was the setup of all setups. That moment cemented me in unhinged Housewives lore,” she added.
Moving on to Garcelle, Lisa said they don’t speak, describing her former co-star as “a huge disappointment.”
“Garcelle was fake from head to toe — and I’m not talking about her bags [and] clothes. She was not the person I knew before we went on the show,” she stated.
While promoting her book earlier this week, Lisa told Page Six that she felt like there “was a bit of a black cloud over [her] for a while” during her time on RHOBH.
“And I think that can affect the entire family dynamic,” she admitted. “Once I got myself out of that situation, the cloud lifted for all of us. I really believe that.”
Then noting that she would never return to the show and has “closed that chapter,” Lisa pointed out that she doesn’t have to be a ‘Housewife’ anymore.”
“Just put me on a new show,” she suggested.
Also during the interview, Lisa said that she doesn’t think her daughters, Delilah Belle Hamlin, 27, and Amelia Gray Hamlin, 24, who both “work really hard,” would have succeeded in the modeling industry in the way that they have if she were still on Bravo.