Kyle Richards, 50, set the record straight — Lucy Lucy Apple Juice isn’t the reason Lisa Vanderpump, 58, is on the outs with The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast. Even though the rescue dog was at the center of the Season 9 drama, Kyle suggested that this feud was in the making for years. “It was about years of this sort of like, setting things up and the truth is — I said this at the reunion, which I’m not supposed to say…you know, if it had been Lisa Rinna, I could almost understand it because they don’t like each other. They’ve had issues,” Kyle confessed on the June 12 episode of Jenny McCarthy’s podcast. She added, “But this is supposed to be one of her best friends…It wasn’t about the dog, it was just a pattern.” LVP has been accused of orchestrating drama in the past, such as accusations of her putting a spotlight on Mauricio Umansky’s cheating scandal in Season 4.
The actress then gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the on-air fight that ended Kyle and LVP’s 10-year friendship. As you recall from the April 2 episode, Kyle visited Villa Rosa and confronted the SUR Restaurant owner on rumors that she allegedly leaked PuppyGate information to Radar Online. But Kyle insisted that she felt she’d be “talking behind [Lisa’s] back” if she didn’t “go and tell her what happened.”
Although Kyle was “very uncomfortable” because she was unaware that Lisa’s husband, Ken Todd, would be in the room and “didn’t want to be having this conversation with [him],” she didn’t predict she and Lisa would have a friend breakup. “I did not think it’d be friendship ending because I had the same conversation with her In the Bahamas, where I said, ‘Listen, I think you should just come out and say, ‘I’m sorry this happened,'” Kyle explained on the podcast, referring to the cast trip in Aug. 2018. However, she made it clear that LVP didn’t need to go into he-said, she-said details.
Even though Lisa officially quit RHOBH after starring on every season — and even shocked fans by skipping out on the Season 9 reunion — Kyle admitted that she still cares about Lisa. Despite the love, Kyle also gave her former friend a slap on the wrist: “When I walked into Vanderpump Dogs and that dog [Lucy Lucy Apple Juice] was brought out to me, like ‘Look who we have,’ I knew immediately what was going on. And to me, you just don’t do that. That’s your friend and you already had a conversation.”
For a debrief of the dog drama, Lucy Lucy Apple Juice was a dog at Lisa’s rescue organization, Vanderpump Dogs. Castmate Dorit Kemsley adopted the dog, and unbeknownst to Lisa, passed the chihuahua on to a new owner because she allegedly bit Dorit’s husband and two children. The second owner dumped the dog at a shelter, which the staff at Vanderpump Dogs soon discovered — and a messy story line filled with texts, rumors and puppy drama ensued. Luckily, the pup is now with model Zandria Theis and her boyfriend, Reed Thompson.