In a wide-ranging interview with PEOPLE, the 'Vanderpump Rules' star opens up about her love of entertaining, season 2 of 'Vanderpump Villa' and the future of 'VPR'
Lisa Vanderpump’s latest project is one very close to her heart.
The Bravo star and restaurateur is partnering with Kroger grocery stories to debut Vanderpump Blooms x Bloom Haus, a new floral collection featuring bouquets in various colorful palettes launching Sept. 4.
“I'm at a stage in my life where I've really been authentic with everything I do,” Vanderpump, 63, tells PEOPLE, exclusively. “And I think flowers have been such a part of my life. On camera, off camera, you always see me arranging flowers, doing flowers in the restaurant, going to the flower market, a weekly visit for me.”
The collaboration with Kroger was a natural fit for Vanderpump, who says she’s all about “affordable luxury.”
Some of the floral arrangements can be styled by following video tutorials. A selection of ready-made bouquets sold inside signature vases or urns will also be available.
“I think a lot of people are scared of flowers,” Vanderpump observes. “They think, ‘Oh, I don't know what to do with them.’ So I'm making it simple and just adding the beauty to life.”
The reality maven is known for her love of entertaining at her sprawling Beverly Hills mansion, Villa Rosa. She says creating a "sanctuary” helps her unwind from her fast-paced life running her hospitality empire with husband Ken Todd and starring on Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules and Hulu’s Vanderpump Villa.
For those who want to incorporate some of her luxurious home’s touches into their own abode, she suggests buying “whatever flowers you can afford.”
“A dog makes a home as well, or whatever animal you can have,” adds Vanderpump, who created a non-profit dog rescue, the Vanderpump Dog Foundation, with her husband.
Vanderpump shares her favorite place to be in her house is her kitchen.
“I love cooking,” she says. “I don't think of it as a chore. I think I've ordered takeout — apart from Indian food, which I love ordering takeout — probably 20 times in my whole life. I enjoy the whole process at home. And I like setting a table and having people over.”
She brings her passion for hospitality to the French countryside in her latest show Vanderpump Villa, which follows the staff at her estate Chateau Rosabelle. The show was recently renewed for a second season after premiering earlier this year.
Vanderpump says she’s already started filming the new episodes, and while she can’t share many details yet, she promises that they’re “very exciting” and “very intricate on many levels, just the setting, the decadence and the beauty of all the visuals.”
“I think the cast in Vanderpump Villa this season will definitely surprise you,” she teases.
Vanderpump revealed earlier this month that Vanderpump Rules alum Stassi Schroeder will be joining the show for its sophomore season.
“She was always fascinating to me on television,” she says of Schroeder. “I loved her energy. I loved her naughtiness. I loved her cheekiness. I loved her ambition.”
Schroederand co-star Kristen Doute were fired from VPRin June 2020 over past racially insensitive actions involving cast member Faith Stowers, which they later apologized for.
Vanderpump says she’s "excited" to see Schroeder, now 36, back on TV and that she's “in a good space.”
“I think it's been a while, and I think she's gone onwards, and upwards, and been successful, which I'm really pleased to see, because she always had a lot of potential,” Vanderpump says. "And I think she's realized that.”
“But also as a boss, sometimes it can be a lot of chastising, reprimanding, supporting, giving, organizing. It's quite nice to have somebody that's equally playful to me and to see her grown up,” she continues. “Everybody makes mistakes, and I just don't ever believe that everybody's sitting there wagging their fingers and everything. People make mistakes, people learn from it. I've always been about that.”
Vanderpump reflected on how her management style has changed since she began appearing alongside her staff at the West Hollywood spot SUR on Vanderpump Rules in 2013.
“When you spend time with people like you do on a reality show in that close proximity, you see their vulnerability often comes out before the cameras, and their emotional challenges. I always feel that I am the matriarchal figure in the best sense of the way, where I try to listen and understand,” she says.
Vanderpump, who shares daughter Pandora, 38, and son Max, 32, with Todd, adds that she tries to think of what advice she’d give her employees if they were her own children.
“But sometimes they're really f---ing annoying and I do kick them in the a--,” she admits. “I mean, that's life, isn't it? It's like, if they get it wrong the first time, okay, let's talk about this. I'm going to show you once. But fool me once, not twice.”
Vanderpump Rules took a break from filming this summer after an intense 11th season in the wake of Scandoval: cast member Tom Sandoval’s highly publicized affair with co-star Rachel “Raquel” Leviss while still in a relationship of nine years with partner Ariana Madix.
Vanderpump says she hopes the cast has “moved on a bit” from the cheating scandal.
“Everybody needed to stop talking about the same thing,” she says. “And also, I was very pleased to see Ariana doing well. I've always been quite close to Ariana because we've talked about mental struggles and depression, and our love of horses, so we were always pretty close.”
“Some people felt like I took Tom's side,” she continues. “I never took Tom's side. He was a thousand percent wrong, and he damn well knew it. But it was about trying to forge an element of forgiveness and cohesiveness between the group because he talked about suicide ideation. And that always worries me, having lost my only sibling.”
Vanderpump’s brother Mark died by suicide in April 2018.
“I talked about that very openly, very honestly,” she says. “I'm not in reality to not give you the truth, because no, people can sniff bulls—, and so can I.”
Another reason for the pause in production was that Vanderpump has been busy this year. In addition to opening restaurants in Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas, she was competing on season 2 of Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum says the experience was “so different” from filming her other shows.
“I have the utmost respect for him because coming out of our homeland, and probably arguably being more successful than any other chef ever, how can you not?” she says of the British celebrity chef. “But he also has this kind of sense of humor, as do I, that very aggressive British sense of humor. We had a lot of fun doing it.”
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