We are gathered here today to mourn a friendship — that of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Vanderpump Rules star Lisa Vanderpump. Please bow your head for a moment of silence.
The rift between Vanderpump and Richards stems mainly from “Puppygate.” This is a source of drama into which I personally (as a Vanderpump Rules purist) have only gotten a brief glimpse; the glimpse happened when it came up in talks of a possible Vanderpump Dogs project in the works at Bravo. “When Vanderpump’s RHOBH costars — Erika Girardi, Lisa Rinna, Teddi Mellencamp, Dorit Kemsley and Kyle Richards — got wind of the project,” “Page Six” wrote, “they gathered for dinner at Craig’s in Los Angeles to discuss how ‘extremely unhappy’ they are that Vanderpump was allegedly given a new project to work on at their ‘expense.’”
Puppygate, to put it briefly, is the theory shared by members of the Real Housewives cast that Lisa Vanderpump sold a story about how Housewives co-star Dorit Kemsley’s adopted dog (which she adopted from Vanderpump Dogs) ended up, post-adoption, back in a kill shelter. (This is terrible and I’d like to state for the record that I am on the alleged side of Lisa Vanderpump and dogs everywhere.) Richards and Vanderpump argued about this, and that argument was portrayed in a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills episode that aired earlier this month. Vanderpump clarified in a blog post on Tuesday, April 16, that the aftermath of that argument — or lack thereof — was the official end of their friendship.
“The next day, I received a text sending me a birthday greeting from KR, a hollow statement, it felt insincere to me — there were no flowers, no phone call, no messages of retraction,” Vanderpump wrote. “She knew I was reticent to celebrate my birthday this year so soon after a family tragedy, I was insulted that she chose to discard our friendship, as if it was insignificant.”
Vanderpump, whose brother died in April of last year, continued, “And so, I declined to ever entertain a text from her again and I pressed the BLOCK button … Problem solved. She threw our relationship down the toilet and I flushed it!”
And there it is — the official end of Lisa Vanderpump’s friendship with Kyle Richards, who is a person from her other TV show. I think the important takeaways here are: (1) Don’t let a dog end up back in a kill shelter after you adopt him, (2) Relationships are so hard, and (3) Lisa Vanderpump has a blog (????) that we should have known about before, and now will be checking it regularly.
Amen.