Kyle Richards: ‘Many Times I Wish That I Hadn’t Gone on the Show’

NYmag.com:

Tonight, Bravo will wring the last drops of drama out of the epic first season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills with a director's cut of the infamous dinner party. With so much tension lingering at the end of the reunion shows, we wanted to know if the housewives had actually since achieved any closure with each other. So we called Kyle Richards, whose rage increased exponentially as the season progressed (anger at Camille Grammer, her sister Kim, medium Allison DuBois, even that lady who once danced with her husband, Mauricio ... ). We reached her on Valentine's Day, when she was in a good, romantic place, and asked her to reflect on her various feuds, update us on the status of her relations with her fellow Housewives, and give her frank encapsulation of the Bravo experience. And because we knew Vulture's Real Housewives fans would settle for nothing less, we are running the conversation as a virtually uncut Transcript: No explanation of Camille's behavior has been left on the cutting-room floor.


So, why do you think you clashed with Camille right off the bat?
It started off-camera. I didn't know about the personal things she was going through that made her more sensitive. I think she was overly sensitive. I wasn't aware of what was going on in her life. But we speak different languages.


Do you think you acted insensitively toward her, though?
No, I don't. I was only asking her normal girl questions: "Is your husband meeting you [in Hawaii]?" I was just making conversation, because I didn't even know her well yet. I had only met her a couple of times. I was just trying to chat with her and make conversation, and I'm not sure how it happened but it all went wrong and that set the tone for the rest of the season. [Editor's Note: This is when Richards made the comment that Grammer famously interpreted to be, "Why would anyone be interested in you without Kelsey there?"]


Obviously, Camille was slightly paranoid that you were out to get her.
Right, and I tried telling her. [When she accused me of saying nobody cared about her without Kelsey], I said, "That's not how I feel, that's not how other people feel, that's how you feel." But that didn't go over too well either.


You also called her a "fucking liar."
I can be direct, which is maybe not a good combination with Camille. But [as far as the Hawaii comment], I didn't think like that. I don't think most people think like that. Maybe she's been around people who do think like that. At that point, she was not really sure about her marriage. Maybe she'd dealt with things like that before — with being people more concerned with Kelsey than with her. So I didn't really know how to tell her that. I wasn't attacking her. Really!


Do you think she has self-esteem issues?
Yeah. I kept thinking, You have everything. I don't know why you feel like this.


After that whole thing happened with the Hawaii comment, by the end of the season, it still seemed like you were really passive aggressive toward her.
Every time I tried to fix it, it just became worse. So it definitely became both our faults. We were clearly not friends and I didn't know where to go with it. She was saying things about me. It snowballed into this ridiculous thing. It never should have happened in the first place. I kept thinking, We're not going to be like the other shows. We're not going to clash, we're not going to have problems. Ha! The next thing you know, it happens. And I was like, "How did this happen!?"


Did you really think you guys would be the one cast who didn't fight?
I didn't think we would fight. I said before, I'm a girl's girl. Contrary to what you see on the show, I really don't clash with people. Yes, I clash with my sister sometimes. But I thought we'd be great on the show and have fun. Because we all have a lot going on in our lives, we wouldn't fight. We wouldn't need that in there. It just naturally happens. You stick six women together and put them in situations where they have to be together and they're in the same circle, and that's what happens, I guess.


Why do you think that is?
Well, if I think something looks like a toxic situation, I don't put myself in that environment. But when you're filming a show together, you really don't have a choice, so I guess it's harder to just bite your tongue and walk away.


At the reunion, you were called a bully. The medium also said that you probably bullied girls in high school. Have you ever been called a bully before?
Oh my God, never in my life, never in my life. I've never been a bully, ever. The medium — maybe that's where Camille got that word from.