The drama on Vanderpump Rules isn’t scripted, but some of it has apparently been recreated for the camera.
While rewatching the hit Bravo series for her podcast, “Sex, Love and What Else Matters,” Kristen Doute dropped a surprising bombshell about the iconic season 2 cast trip in Mexico.
“I have a secret to tell you. The scene with Tom [Schwartz] and Katie [Maloney] and the drink throwing really f—king happened as you can see. However, the exact moment where Schwartz literally dumped the drink — just that one quick moment — was missed by cameras,” Kristen, 40, told her cohost and boyfriend, Luke Broderick, on the Friday, November 10, episode.
Schwartz, 41, and Katie, 36, who were dating at the time, were at odds over his efforts to include Scheana Shay on the trip. During their drunken fight, Schwartz infamously poured a glass of beer on Katie’s head.
“One of our amazing DPs — our director of photography — had set the camera down for one second or moved it from their shoulders and just missed that little moment, which was f—king insane,” Kristen claimed. “We all obviously felt so bad for the camera person because we love our crew. What are the chances, right? So the very next night, Tom and Katie had to go back to the same club and redo that one tiny part.”
Kristen clarified that only the drink throw was recreated, adding, “Everything you see leading up to it as well as all of us being there and consoling Katie — that’s all real. Because we did not go with Tom and Katie back to that bar to shoot that scene. I just feel like it’s one of those things. It was 10 years ago and I just really wanted to say it.”
Getting ahead of potential criticism, Kristen shut down potential speculation about the show being scripted.
“But I don’t want the fans or the viewers to think by any means this was fake. It was just that one split second,” she noted. “But it’s like, how do you air all of what happened in reality if you don’t have the thing that happened.”
Kristen concluded: “So f—king shout out to Katie Maloney. To go back sober and say, ‘I will take one of the team because I love my crew and I love my show. I will not sober let my significant other dump a beer on me.'”
While reflecting on his biggest reality TV moments, Schwartz previously admitted that he really regretted throwing a drink on Katie. “I just cringe. I wince at the thought of that,” he exclusively told Us Weekly in August 2021. “There’s a lot of shame. We’ve moved past that. … I’m at peace with it all. I don’t recommend it and I’m not encouraging and I’m not defending it, but, you know, I got it out of my system.”
Katie and Schwartz split in 2022 after exchanging vows on the show in 2016 and getting legally married in 2019.
“It was over months — a period of months — and I just got to a point where I was like I need to get real with myself and real with him. I kind of just knew it,” Katie said of the split in September on the “Almost Adulting” podcast. “I became emotionally withdrawn. I still loved him but the love between us — that connection — that romance was not there anymore.”
Katie said watching Vanderpump Rules helped her “detach” from Schwartz, especially after he kissed Raquel Leviss during season 10 when they agreed to date outside of the friend group.
“There was definitely a turning point where I was like, ‘I’m good.’ I think when I started watching the show and seeing how he was behaving and seeing how he was talking about [certain situations],” she added. “I was like, ‘This is so gross to me.’ I kind of started to resent him a little bit and that was a gift. That was helpful.”
