Lisa Rinna has one thing she’d change about her eight years on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”— and it’s all about how she made her exit in 2023.
On the debut episode of her “Let’s Not Talk About the Husband” podcast on February 14, the former Bravo star admitted she really wanted to quit the show on camera but was too nervous to do so.
On the podcast, Rinna and her husband Harry Hamlin reminisced about their time on the show as well as Rinna’s sudden departure at the end of season 12. “I had to go and I did,” Rinna explained. “I almost resigned on the reunion. …I wish I would have now that I looked back on it.”
Rinna added that she contacted producers later that evening. “I did it the minute I got home that night. But I was going to do it on camera, and I wish I had done that,” she said. “That’s the only thing I wish, only thing I would do differently. I wish I just said it right there like, ‘You know what guys? This has been a great run for eight years, I’m going to go now.’ I wish I’d been brave enough to do it.”
Lisa Rinna Sent an Email to Producers Immediately After Taping the Season 12 Reunion
BravoRinna said she doesn’t regret leaving RHOBH, which she starred in from 2015 to 2022. “I feel great about it,” she said of cutting ties with the show. “I have mixed feelings about it. It’s been two years.”
She admitted that she hesitated to drop her exit bombshell during the reunion because she didn’t want to regret the decision. “You’re like, ‘Oh my God what if I change my mind’ or whatever was going through my head,“ she said. “But I did it right when I got home. I literally, I think the timestamp on that email was like 12 something.”
In January 2023, Rinna shocked fans when she announced her exit from RHOBH after eight seasons. At the time, she issued a statement to People magazine to say, “This is the longest job I have held in my 35-year career, and I am grateful to everyone at Bravo and all those involved in the series. It has been a fun eight-year run, and I am excited for what is to come.”
The exit was described as a “mutual” decision between Rinna and Bravo. But many fans assumed she was fired after a volatile season. But during the season 13 premiere months later, a photo of Rinna’s resignation email was shown onscreen.
In a January 2024 interview with Cosmopolitan, Rinna said she was happy that producers decided to do “the right thing” by showing her email, which read: “I will not be renewing my contract, and I will not be coming back to RHOBH. Thank you so much for 8 years!!!! All the best, Lisa.”
“Nobody gave me a heads up,” Rinna told the outlet about the screenshot of her message. “Somebody sent it to me because Bravo had sent out a preview of the episode. So I thought, ‘Wow, look at that.’ Because, of course, everyone thought I’d been fired. But no, I made that decision. …It was the right decision to make, at the time, absolutely the right decision.“
Lisa Rinna & Harry Hamlin Thanked Kim Richards & Garcelle Beauvais
While she had a rocky road on RHOBH, Rinna and her husband have a lot of gratitude about their years on the Bravo reality show.
The title of their podcast alone can be credited to former co-star Kim Richards, who cryptically used those words about Hamlin during an argument with Rinna that took place during a cast trip to Amsterdam in season 5.
“So hence the title of this podcast, which is ‘Let’s Not Talk About The Husband,’ uttered by Kim Richards in a moment of rage in Amsterdam and has evolved over years into this,” Hamlin said. “So everybody out there, thank you Kim Richards for giving us the title to our podcast.”
Hamlin noted that other RHOBH stars also deserved thanks. “I have a lot of people on that show to thank for various things,” he said. “I mean, I can thank Garcelle Beauvais for giving me this sauce business that I now have because had she not loved the sauce and then made a whole thing about [it]…”
Rinna chimed in to recall a RHOBH lunch she hosted at her house, for which Hamlin made his famous spaghetti Bolognese and received rave reviews from Beauvais and the other Housewives. “That was an iconic lunch,” she agreed. “That lunch has created a whole business. Now you have Harry’s Famous Sauce.”
“I have the Open Food Company, which came out of that moment,” Hamlin said. “It’s amazing how things happened,” he added of the 2024 launch of his brand of jarred pasta sauce, Harry’s Famous Sauce.
As for Rinna, she also looked back on her successful two years since her RHOBH exit. The former Bravo star, wjo participated in multiple runway shows in 2023 and 2024, said she never set out to become a fashionista, but that it just happened.
“I don’t know how that happened,” Rinna admitted on her podcast premiere. “I think by saying yes to my universe has been very handy for me since I left Housewives. Because, you know, you never know what’s going to happen when you leave Housewives, if you’re ever going to work again.”
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Lisa Rinna Reveals 1 Thing She Wishes She Did on RHOBH