All late-stage reality shows face the same problem. After years in the public eye, cast members who got a messy and honest start clam up, and try to control their storylines. The conceit that we are mere voyeurs in their real lives collapses as reality stars engineer their public images to appear authentic while doing everything they can to pander to fans so they can grow their platforms to secure business opportunities and endorsement deals.
When a show inevitably reaches this inflection point, there are only two paths forward. We can keep pretending things are the same as ever, or we can acknowledge on-camera vs. off-camera realities, the impact fans have on cast behavior, and the fact that these people are not just people anymore, they’re brands. And after the first part of this season’s reunion, one thing is clear: Lala Kent is the only person who understands the new world that the show must transition to in order to survive.
Because so little actually happened this season, we first have to address a whole bunch of stuff that happened off camera. The cast engages in a pile-on of Rachel, who left the show to enter a mental health facility in part because fans were sending her death threats. Lisa is upset that Rachel has started a podcast (sotto voce: because she wanted the mess for her show).
Andy asks if they stand by everything they said at last season’s reunion, and Ariana doubles down on her comments that Rachel was “subhuman,” “nothing,” and deserved “the worst fucking shit that could ever happen to a person.” Sandoval calls Rachel a “fucking coward”, a bandwagon Schwartz hops on: “Spinning a narrative that you masterminded this and she was like, a victim, is absolute malarkey.”
Sandoval regurgitates an oft-made fan argument, that he could not have groomed Rachel because grooming implies “pedophilia” and is always targeted at children. This could not be more wrong, and Lala jumps in to correct him: grooming is any form of abuse where someone in a position of relative power manipulates another person until they are isolated, dependent, and vulnerable to exploitation.
Next, Andy asks Ariana and Sandoval about Rachel’s revenge porn lawsuit. “I don’t understand why I’m constantly being brought back into it,” Ariana sniffs. (Perhaps because she took the illegally recorded videos of Rachel off Sandoval’s phone and, by her own admission in texts to friend Logan Cochran, sent them to herself and to Rachel? Or maybe because she named a cocktail in her cookbook the “Revenge Porn”?). Sandoval, meanwhile, spouts a second Reddit argument: that Rachel’s choice to sue Ariana made him question whether she “had a fucking soul.”
Then, it’s on to Sandoval’s suicidal thoughts. He rehashes how difficult it was to be under that level of public scrutiny, and Lala and Scheana reiterate that they decided to ease up because they didn’t want to live with the knowledge that they’d contributed to a person’s decision to harm himself. Ariana says that what Sandoval was going through was not “created” by her, and that in any case he’d weaponized her suicidal thoughts, yet another fan-favorite argument. Not one of them acknowledges that not only did they endorse the mob mentality against Rachel and Sandoval last year, they all egged on the fan vitriol — but I guess that’s to be expected.
Finally, Sandoval is asked about his ill-advised comments to The New York Times that Scandoval was on par with the news cycles surrounding George Floyd’s murder or O.J. Simpson’s murder trial. Instead of a simple apology for invoking such inappropriate comparisons, Sandoval stumbles through an explanation that he meant it was ridiculous that his affair got as much media attention as far more serious events. (He was wrong for those examples, but his underlying point is correct, because Kim…there are people that are dying.) Katie tries to lecture him about intent vs. impact. Bookmark that for later.
It’s remarkable how poorly Sandoval comes off. It might even be worse than his performance last year. He seems filled with rage and resentment, frustrated that he’s been misunderstood, that he lost a potential ally in Rachel, that he’s been seen for his true self. This is approximately the hundredth time he’s been handed an opportunity by Bravo to take true accountability, but instead he is preoccupied with the injustice of what he’s gone through since the affair came to light.
I have always felt that the public reaction was hugely disproportionate to the crime (again, there’s people that are dying), but what Sandoval has never understood is that there will be no room to talk about the backlash he suffered until he first acknowledges what he did. If there ever was a lost cause, this man is one.
Earlier this season, I wondered if the fans had become the real villains of the show. Little by little, the cast (consciously or not) makes the case that yes, we are. Scheana admits to “living in the comments section” and says fan speculation that Lala was googly-eyed over Brock fueled intrusive thoughts about a possible affair. James says that Ariana’s fan-favorite status shielded her new relationship, which started less than two weeks after the dissolution of her last one, from scrutiny (Ariana can say she and Dan took “months” to get together, but she hard-launched him six weeks after Scandoval dropped).
But it’s not until the last 10 minutes that this thing breaks wide open.
It starts out innocently enough. Andy asks why Something About Her, Katie and Ariana’s sandwich shop, isn’t open yet. The two blame “red tape,” but Lisa interrupts and cites a “multitude of disagreements” and Ariana’s absence over the last year. “There’s never been any disagreement about me being away,” Ariana demurs. Unlike the seasons when Schwartz and Sandy’s was opening, we got almost no insight into what Katie and Ariana did behind the scenes for SAH, so even though I tend to think Lisa has no idea what’s going on in these people’s lives, it’s hard to judge who is telling the truth.
That is, until Andy moves on to asking Katie and Lala about their friendship. All season long, they’ve been out of sync. After last year, where they were in lockstep and Lala was Katie’s sole ally after her divorce with Schwartz, it’s been strange to watch the two women be so combative with one another. Now, it seems, we’re getting to the heart of the matter.
Katie, the first to speak, says she questioned how Lala’s newfound closeness with Scheana would affect their friendship. Lala says Katie sent her a DM about Scheana in which she apparently told Lala to “get rid of your lawyers, because what you need is a fucking therapist. You’re a fucking clown,” and was hurt by this jab at her custody battle.
I am loath to believe claims unsupported by screenshots, but that sounds like a vintage Katie Maloney Rage Text. Katie counters that she didn’t mean to reference the custody battle, to which I say, intent vs. impact, babygirl. I don’t think that’s how she meant it either, but no matter how you slice it that’s an insensitive way to speak to a friend embroiled in a yearslong custody battle with no end in sight.
They rehash their fight at Ally’s astrology party, and Lala insists that her intent was not to project but to show Ariana, “I see you.” Katie points out that Lala should have put herself in Ariana’s shoes and understood that she was miles farther along the road than Ariana had been at that time, which is what I’ve been saying.
But then, things get dicey. Scheana reminds Katie that she and Lala commiserated off-camera about how it would have been nice to get the same level of public support after their breakups that Ariana received. (I wrote about why before the season started.) Katie replies that the way she felt about the public had nothing to do with how she felt about Ariana, so she kept the two separate, calling their chat an “objective discussion.”
“Katie, I don’t like what you’re doing right now at all,” Lala says.
Andy pushes her to elaborate. And then it all comes out. Lala accuses Katie of complaining that Ariana abandoned her in the sandwich shop, was late with rent payments, that Ariana didn’t even let Katie know she was leaving for Chicago. (To her credit, Katie admits to this last bit.) Lala also calls out Scheana, Katie, and James for “living in the comments section” and chose not to go against fan-favorite Ariana as a result.
Lala says she and Katie had multiple conversations about Katie’s true feelings, and that Katie “lost her mind” at her over the phone. “You wanted me to throw [Ariana] under the bus,” Katie protests. Lala corrects her: “I wanted to film a show that we’ve been filming for 11 years, and suddenly the name of the game is different. You said to me, I’m not going to say these things because I’ve invested a lot of money in the sandwich shop, and if you’re going to fuck with my business then I’m going to fuck with yours.”
Katie furrows her brow and stammers, “What?” in the way she did when Brock revealed she’d slept with Max Boyens. She has nothing to say in response besides one denial after another, eyes darting over to Ariana to see how her business partner is taking it. In other words, she seems caught.
On the aftershow, Lala shares more detail: Apparently, Katie thinks Ariana and Sandoval surround themselves with “bobbleheads,” that Ariana should have moved out of the house, and complained that Ariana was always late with her sandwich rent. Lala claims that as soon as cameras went up Katie became Ariana’s biggest defender, and would never have stayed silent if it had been Scheana in Ariana’s position. The phone call in question was the preseason call each cast member does to inform production of what is going on in their lives, which Katie and Lala did together with showrunner Jeremiah Smith. Katie denied it all, and ended the call with a “Fuck you, Lala.” Her aftershow performance is no more convincing — she pretends not to remember the conversation at all and mumbles, “She was mad about…something…maybe something having to do with [me and Ariana]?
Since Katie copped to being upset about Ariana’s Chicago turn, which was announced in December 2023, and filming for the show began in June 2023, we can piece together that Katie spent at least six months kicking around these thoughts without saying a word.
Yesterday, Katie posted a statement to her Instagram stories all but confirming Lala told the truth. She argues that a private conversation should never have been made public, because she “went to where [she] felt safe” to unload her feelings.
From where I’m sitting, Lala didn’t want Katie to throw Ariana under the bus or “hop on the Tom train,” as she tried to spin it. Instead, she’s justifiably upset because Katie spent the season as Ariana’s attack dog, leaving it to others to say how they really felt so she could keep her own hands clean.
It makes sense that Katie was afraid to rock the boat. She’s open about her Reddit lurking, and social media as a whole (well, except Facebook) has been fanatically Team Ariana. Katie has historically been reviled by the fan base, who labeled her a bully, a mean girl, and verbally abusive. It’s only in the last year that she’s been elevated to fan favorite, largely due to her perceived loyalty to Ariana.
Just take a look at some of what the fans have said about Lala in the last 48 hours: “The most awful skank bitch ever.” “Despicable, wannabe, hostile, jealous thing.” “Talentless hack.” “Former sugar baby.” “Busted ass, unhinged, Real Housewives reject.” “Former mistress.” “Genuinely a horrid person.” “Just a HO.” “Ghoulish bitch.” “A sauer [sic] gold digger, who failed to secure a bag.” Fans have review-bombed Lala and Scheana’s podcasts the same way they submitted thousands of fake reviews to Schwartz and Sandy’s. With money tied up in the sandwich shop and a podcast of her own, is it really so hard to believe that Katie didn’t want the smoke?
Of course, a private citizen doesn’t deserve to have their venting session repeated on national TV. But Katie is not a private citizen, and there is no way around the fact that she signed up to work at, as my Twitter mutual @writerbxtch aptly put it, the “processing your life for the public factory.”
Katie’s been exactly where Lala is now, and she knows how it feels. In Season 8, her and Stassi’s friendship with Kristen took a turn for the worse because Kristen had asked them off-camera to hold her accountable in her relationship with Jobless Carter. As soon as filming began, Kristen acted like the relationship was perfect — it wasn’t until the reunion that Katie and Stassi revealed they’d been so angry at Kristen all season because her behavior on-camera had made them seem like bad friends.
Or consider Season 9, when Schwartz dispatched Katie to convey his dislike of the name “Schwartz and Sandy’s” for his and Sandoval’s restaurant, and she had to endure weeks of getting screamed at by Sandoval as a result. Lala looks like the bad guy coming out of this season for voicing what her castmates were (allegedly) also saying behind closed doors.
I’ve long been a fan of Katie’s because she tends to own her feelings, but if this is how she and the rest of the cast are moving now, the show is DOA. Reality television is far from reality — this is a world where you are paid to run toward conflict instead of away from it and expected to share your inner monologue. That is the Faustian bargain reality stars strike in exchange for worldwide exposure and the ability to build and monetize a platform, and it’s why the Vanderpump cast made nearly $35,000 an episode this year. (That’s over $600,000 for this season, for those keeping score at home.)
If cast members no longer want to mine their lives for entertainment, that’s a respectable and understandable choice — but there is no reason for Bravo to shell out that kind of money to people who hide from uncomfortable conversations.
Lala is far from blameless when it comes to this flop of a season — if she knew this was how Katie felt all along, why wasn’t it brought up on camera during regular filming? If she had insecurities about the amount of attention Ariana received compared to her, why didn’t she say so? But she seems to finally have grasped that the only thing that can save this show from an epidemic of self-production is to shatter the fourth wall, and may be the only cast member who understands how this show needs to operate from here on out.
As she spilled the tea, a vision of how this season could have gone flashed before my eyes: The cast grappling with Ariana’s massive overnight fame, jealous of the woman who has arguably contributed the least to the show’s success and is now reaping more benefits from it than anyone; Katie and Ariana addressing the inevitable tension that arises when one partner is absent, like Sandoval and Schwartz had to before them; the show’s other women commiserating about the public cruelty they experienced after their breakups; the tension between people who want to bare it all and people who are afraid of the viewers.
Imagine how compelling that season could have been. This year’s best moments broke the fourth wall: Brock and Sandoval sparring about rumors planted in the press; Scheana obsessing over Ariana’s Dancing With the Stars turn; Scheana getting harassed by fans over a Page Six article; Lala’s, Katie’s, and Ariana’s dueling perspectives on what reality television is really for. Instead, we had to watch Sandoval convulse and sputter like a dying fish. The fans may have wanted to see the women on the cast act like the Spice Girls, and if that had been how they really felt, I would have been happy to watch it. Knowing what we know now, I can’t help but feel that the cast’s fear of the fanbase robbed all of us of a great season.
Katie and Lala’s friendship may not recover from this, but that’s not my problem. After a season of pinching myself to stay awake, I finally found myself leaning forward, paying attention to every word said. At this point, the decisions and tradeoffs the cast faces in making this show are what I’m most interested in watching them work through. If Vanderpump Rules is to continue, the only way forward is to acknowledge the layers of reality these people live in. Otherwise, we may as well hang it up for scripted television.