Bling it on
She was the star of the show on The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. But there’s more to Lisa Vanderpump than glitz and glamour
Take a glimpse behind the LA glitz with ex-real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump
It’s Friday, 9pm in one of those flashy Los Angeles restaurants where you need to wear sunglasses, even at night. Lisa Vanderpump – reality star, revered businesswoman, renowned dog lover and ex-pat Brit with the clipped vowels to prove it – has just stepped in, wearing what looks like a pillbox hat studded with diamonds. Or maybe it’s just a crown. Heaven, she deserves it.
“I don’t do inconspicuous,” she laughs.
We’re in SUR, her restaurant in the very best part of West Hollywood, just off Santa Monica Boulevard. All the right nightclubs (including PUMP, which is also one of hers) are over there, all the right shops are the other way, five minutes down the road, in Beverly Hills. The Sunset Strip is a steep 10-minute walk up towards the Hollywood Hills, not that anyone walks around here.
And as Lisa, 58, swishes through the first restaurant she opened in her beloved LA, after shifting here with her family following a well-lived life in London, there’s a Mexican wave of gawps and shrugs and approving eyebrow shifts (from those still capable of doing it). Sunglasses are pulled down, ever so slightly, to take a
closer look. In a town where you can spot Diana Ross picking up the contents of a chicken dinner down at Whole Foods, it takes a lot to impress. But pass the sceptre – Lisa Vanderpump (“VDP” to those obsessed by her) might just be the Queen of LA.
“Yes, I just cut through all the nonsense,” she laughs, when discussing her scene-stealing role in The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, the show she spectacularly quit just 24 hours before we chat.
But life hasn’t always been so straightforward. In a downcast tone, she admits she “had a very hard year last year”. She’s referring to the demise of her brother, who was tragically found dead in April 2018. Sadly, just days after our interview, Lisa’s mother Jean passed away.
“Life is so fragile and I have no time for negativity,” she said last week.
It was negativity that influenced her decision to leave the show that brought her brand of fabulousness to the masses and turned women shouting at each other into a multimillion dollar art form.
“The whole cast turned against me and I decided, ‘OK, this is enough,’” she reveals, adding that happiness is something she has never been willing to compromise on. “It’s been too emotional, too difficult to talk about.”
There’s no question that being the standout star of not one but two reality shows (Housewives and its spin-off, Vanderpump Rules) is impressive, but you’ve got to have considerable clout to get your Louboutins through the door in the first place. And Lisa’s clout is unique.
She is a rare thing among the Wives. Lisa is a self-made woman. Her net worth is said to be £60 million, give or take the odd million. “By the time I was 19 I’d bought my own apartment, with no help from anyone. I was making a lot of money,” she says.
This money was piling in from her phenomenally successful commercial modelling career in London during the 80s, something which she rarely talks about, more out of not wanting to bore the pants off people than anything else.
Any gigs we might remember? “Erm, well, Hamlet Cigars was a very famous one,” she says. “Maltesers, that ran for seven years. Lilt – you know the one, walking through the jungle? Britvic 55, Oil of Ulay…”
And that ABC video for Poison Arrow? “Yeah,” she laughs. “There weren’t many videos around, it was exciting. And Julien Temple directed it. It was pretty epic.”
Now Lisa keeps herself busy with her businesses in LA. She has four in West Hollywood alone – two restaurants (SUR and Villa Blanca) and another two on the more raucous side (PUMP and Tomtom). Vanderpump Rules, now in its eighth season, is arguably the world’s most successful reality spin-off. “It’s won a lot of accolades and awards,” Lisa smiles, “And there are other ideas in the works.”
There’s also her animal rights charity, The Vanderpump Dog Foundation, something that’s very close to her heart. Lisa’s never seen without at least a handful of dogs on any of her telly shows.
“The cast turned against me and I decided this is enough”
“Oh my God,” she beams, before the self-deprecation kicks in. “I’m not an animal rights activist, because I think there’s a lot of people who do way more than I do. I’ve had so many dogs and I relate to them like people.
“I encourage kindness and humane treatment of all animals, but our fight has been for the dogs, and against the Human Dog Meat festival in China. to this date we’ve rescued and found loving homes for 1,000 dogs in America and currently have 500 dogs that are being pulled off trucks in China.”
there is also her tireless work for LGBT rights, which has just earned her an award from the City of Los Angeles.
You might say compassion is the name of Lisa’s game, the reason behind her 36-year marriage to Ken todd, the charming, affable, often hilarious yin to vdp’s yang. the longevity of their marriage alone is a Hollywood miracle.
“You know what, I was having lunch with Domenico Dolce the other day,” begins Lisa with her not-showing-off anecdote about one half of fashion icons Dolce and Gabbana. “And he was telling me about his mother and her experience. And I’m not sharing a confidence here. He was telling me how she used to say, ‘we’ve got to make it work.’ And I thought that was fascinating. that old ethic of, ‘Yep, we’re going to make it work.’ we’ve definitely got through some tough times together.”
You wonder whether Lisa feels a bit adrift among the superficiality of LA. “there are some things we see quite differently,” she admits. “And our British humour. with us the handcuffs are off. America is much more politically correct. we just do whatever we want.”
I ask what she makes of her children – Pandora and Max, both of whom did the latter part of their growing up in LA – coming over all American. “Oh, I hate it when they say, ‘that sucks,’” she laughs.
“‘I spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on your education for you to come up with that.’”
that’s Lisa all over – unique, funny, fabulous and still oh-sobritish.