Lala Kent claimed that a “Vanderpump Rules” executive producer encouraged her to blow things up after Ariana Madix refused to film with her estranged ex Tom Sandoval. The incident took place during the season 11 finale episode filmed at Kyle Chan’s Gold Bar Whiskey collab event in San Francisco in September 2023.
On the November 29 episode of the “Scheananigans With Scheana Shay” podcast, Kent alleged that EP Jeremiah Smith gave her the okay to “break the fourth wall” regarding the cameras.
“I sat at that finale, and I was like, ‘I’m not bringing it. I refuse, y’all better make something happen. Because I ain’t the one,’” Kent told host Scheana Shay. “You know my back hurts. Not the [expletive] one. And then Jeremiah makes his way over to me and I’m seeing commotion, and he goes, ‘Everything that you felt, I want you to demolish the fourth wall.’ And I certainly did.”
On November 26, Bravo announced that “Vanderpump Rules” would be rebooted with an all-new cast for season 12.
Lala Kent Called Out Ariana Madix in a Finale Rant
In the season 11 finale, titled “Plot Twist,” Kent delivered a friendship-ending monologue after Madix refused to film with Sandoval following his cheating scandal with their former co-star Rachel Leviss.
After Madix walked out of the filming event, Kent told Sandoval, Shay, and Tom Schwartz, “I have my own point of view that I’ve been biting my tongue because it’s very hard to do this without break…It’s a lot of breaking the fourth wall, so I’m going to do it now.”
The Give Them Lala Beauty founder claimed that Madix turned into “Beyonce” after “the world rallied around her.” “It’s bull [expletive] that she can’t film with someone that she stays under the same roof,” Kent ranted. “It’s a lot, it’s a lot that she’s saying don’t [expletive] with Tom Sandoval… But, I’m gonna sleep down the hall from Tom Sandoval. … I never in my life experienced someone who gets cheated on and suddenly she becomes God!”
On Instagram, fans reacted to Kent’s claim about Smith instructing her to speak out.
“I think we all pretty much knew production was pushing for everything that happened the last season, it’s just now finally being confirmed since their vpr contracts are over,” one commenter wrote.
“Even if Jeremiah did tell her to break the fourth wall, it doesn’t really matter. By that point, she had already been trash-talking Ariana on and off camera. Whether or not Jeremiah told her to do it doesn’t excuse the way she treated Ariana—she had already crossed the line,” wrote another.
Scheana Shay Claimed a Producer Warned the Cast to Bring It During Season 11 or Show Would Be Canceled
This isn’t the first time a “Vanderpump Rules” cast member accused a producer of giving direction regarding a storyline. Shay previously claimed executive producer Alex Baskin issued a warning to the cast.
“I know Alex Baskin has said that midseason, the show was not in a good place,” Shay alleged on an episode of her “Scheananigans” podcast. “It was, you know, ‘X, Y and Z needs to happen. Or we’re going to have a short season and the show’s going to be canceled and that’s it.’”
Shay claimed she was under “a lot of pressure” to deliver, hence Kent’s finale spiel. “We don’t want the show to get canceled,’” she further explained. “Not just for ourselves and our families, but there’s a crew of 80 to 100 people who work on this show. And I said this at the reunion — which you didn’t see — but I was like, I feel like we’re doing our jobs also for all of these people. We want to keep this going.’”
In an interview during Variety’s TV FYC Fest, Baskin downplayed Shay’s story. “I think that was a pretty dramatic, heightened account of what happened,” he said.
Baskin did acknowledge that he had a chat with the cast. “We did get the entire cast together, and we thought we had hit a point in the season where I actually think that they were impacted by what was happening on social media,” the “Vanderpump Rules” producer explained. “We basically were telling them to drown out the noise, and to make the show that they had made over the previous 10 seasons — and that didn’t mean we asked them to manufacture anything. It didn’t mean that we gave them any specific talking points.”
