Camille Meyer unpacks her now-legendary dinner party, 14 years later.
To love Bravo is to have an encyclopedic knowledge of its most memorable and jaw-dropping episodes, as well as the quotes that gave life to hilarious memes. This Month in Bravo History explores those iconic Bravo moments with new commentary and intel from Bravolebs, producers, and more.
Across all of the Real Housewives’ seasons, there’s been no shortage of drama. But few episodes exist as a microcosm for all things Housewives — with multiple conflicts, unsolicited opinions, surprise guests, and one memorable e-cigarette — than The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills soiree at Camille Meyer (then Camille Grammer)’s Malibu home. Season 1, Episode 9 first graced our screens on December 16, 2010, making the episode the perfect holiday gift to fans then and the perfect treat to revisit 14 years later. The infinitely quotable evening has stood the test of time in pop culture. From “Enough!” to “the morally corrupt Faye Resnick,” it’s likely your group chat has been flooded with memes and GIFs even non-Housewives viewers hold dear.
“You couldn’t write this stuff,” executive producer Bill Fritz said at BravoCon 2019 about the priceless clapbacks the ladies slung at each other during the episode. In a RHOBH retrospective special, producers recounted how many of the memorable moments captured occurred after a seemingly normal dinner was wrapping up. “It was like the reality gods conspiring to deliver the perfect episode of a show,” Andy Cohen said. Even the host herself was surprised at the outcome. “I had no idea,” Camille told Bravo Insider.
If another Housewives dinner stirs up any chaos — see our list of episodes below! — they’re always measured against the original. In a look at Bravo’s most historic moments, Camille is pulling back the curtain for Bravo Insider on her famed gathering.
Setting the table — and the standard – for a Real Housewives dinner party
Following The Real Housewives of Orange County, New York City, Atlanta, New Jersey, and D.C., The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills premiered October 14, 2010. The series forged a new path as the Housewives franchises entered a new decade. Known for lavish homes, closets, and cars, RHOBH truly thrives on its cast dynamics and personal stories. As an early Real Housewife and member of the original Season 1 cast, Camille described those initial days as “very raw.” “Nobody really knew what we were getting into,” she told Bravo Insider.
After a rocky start to the season, specifically for Camille and Kyle Richards, the dinner party at Camille’s home was meant to be an olive branch — with perfectly curated flowers, a fired up pizza oven, and polite conversation over cocktails. Camille hoped an intimate evening might help mend some of the tensions that existed. “It was my first go around, first season,” Camille said. “I felt kind of teamed up on … and misunderstood.” Of course, at the time, Kyle and Camille were fresh off their fight in New York, which stemmed from Camille accusing Kyle of saying no one would be interested in her without her then-husband, actor Kelsey Grammer, which Kyle denied.
“It was gonna be women, so I want it to be pretty,” Camille said. “It takes a while and it’s expensive to put an event together: the catering services, the servers, the flowers. I spent a lot on flower arrangements for the table. There’s a giant flower arrangement in the kitchen too.” She also picked out a seasonal color theme and planned an elaborate, multi-course meal with appetizers, an entree, and dessert.
“Some of the guests came enjoyed the food,” Camille said. “Some might’ve enjoyed the cocktails.”
The guests in attendance included the cast members of Season 1: Kyle, Lisa Vanderpump, Kim Richards, Taylor Armstrong, and Adrienne Maloof. Kyle brought along her friend, Faye Resnick, with whom she had made plans before receiving Camille’s invite. Lisa summed up Camille’s two other guests in a confessional interview as “her best friend” and “her sidekick, I mean psychic,” referring to D.D. Whitt and Allison DuBois, the latter a professional medium who inspired the NBC series Medium starring Patricia Arquette.
“Allison wanted to go, too,” Camille said. While Allison and D.D. were not witness to all that had transpired between Camille and group up until that point, they were aware. “We would talk about what was happening in the show and just how I felt,” Camille said. “The girls were just being unfair and so [Allison] knew that, but she didn’t know specifics.”
“There was no discussion of her going in to go after anybody,” Camille said. “I thought she would make for a very interesting guest [and] interesting dinner conversation. I thought, you know, there’ll be some funny antidotes that come from that – something interesting, but I never expected what happened and how far it went.”
After the episode first aired, viewers may have felt differently, but Camille said she was merely invited because she found Allison to be an interesting person — and to subtly promote Medium, of which Kelsey was an executive producer. “He thought it’d be a good opportunity to promote the show,” Camille revealed. “It was really Kelsey’s idea to have her on.” The revelation that Allison was a medium took center stage, with the group’s focus turning to her psychic abilities. “I don’t think they were paying attention to the food as much as they really wanted to get readings from Allison,” Camille said.
When the ladies started asking Allison to do a reading, Camille thought it was going to either trigger or tick her off. “I was afraid of that,” Camille explained. “I told every one of those ladies, ‘Please, she’s my guest … She’s not here to do a reading,’ because I didn’t want her to be the show pony and that wasn’t her thing.” At one point, Lisa asked Allison if her late grandmother was present. Faye and Kyle also pressed for a reading, which led to an uncomfortable take from Allison on Kyle’s marriage: predicting her husband Mauricio Umansky would “never emotionally fulfill” her.
A more polite route Camille envisioned was guests simply asking about Allison’s life, similar to typical party conversation. Instead, the conversation moved toward the women doubting Allison’s psychic abilities.
“[The dinner] wasn’t there to question her skills and it became that,” Camille said. “It became them questioning, ‘Are you really a medium? ‘Cause you won’t read me’ and it got nasty.”
Camille believes some of the women’s “pretty demeaning” questioning of Allison’s ability, mixed with the “giant cocktails,” made for the particularly sour result. “The nastiness came from them initially and you don’t see that,” Camille said, recalling it was really two or three party guests in particular and not the entire group.
Camille herself, however, did not imbibe that much. “Going into a dinner party, I’m not a big drinker. I will order one cocktail but I’ll sip it. I will nurse one cocktail the whole evening,” Camille said. “I don’t need any alcohol to be the first one to dance on a table.”
Rather than dancing, the night turned into an exchange of insults. “I was calling Kelsey. I’m on the phone with him, like, crying, oh my god. This is so horrible. These girls are horrible to me. It’s a mess. Everybody’s fighting,” Camille said. “That was the behind the scenes what was going on. I was on the phone with him ‘cause he was checking in on me to see how things were going and he called me when all the shit hit the fan and I ran to the kitchen and I was talking to him on the phone”
In addition to Allison’s psychic abilities and the group’s unfiltered comments, Allison’s use of an e-cigarette became a defining image of the episode. At the dinner, the ladies quickly took notice of the e-cigarette. “And I’m thinking that’s Jack Nicholson from The Shining,” Kyle said in her confessional interview, imitating Allison’s smoking.
“The e-cigarette was something else. It was iconic, ” Camille said. “They kinda blew up after that. I’m not saying it was because of the show, but the e-cigarette, people were saying, ‘Oh your psychic friend with her e-cig,’ you know? [It] became a big thing. It was trending … it added to the character that she was on that episode.”
When Real Housewives dinners end with more insults being served than actual dishes, what happens to all that food? “There was a lot of food left over,” Camille said. “I gave [some] out and I kept some for myself and my family.” She also found herself giving several of the floral arrangements to friends. Despite her focus on the details of the evening, Camille realized most of her guests didn’t notice. “I think when everybody’s caught up in the moment, they bypass that,” she said. “I remember Kyle mentioning something like, ‘Oh, these flowers are pretty.'”
The events of the dinner party had a negative impact on Camille’s friendship with Allison. “We were friends. Not close friends, but we were friends back then and it was unfortunate, we no longer speak,” Camille said. “She blames me for that whole disaster, thinking that I set her up, but I really did not set her up because I had no idea, hosting that event, what turn it was gonna take.”
Less than a year after “Dinner Party From Hell” aired, Camille and Kelsey divorced. They haven’t spoken in over a decade, with the only communication through third parties like an assistant or lawyer. Camille married David C. Meyer in 2018 in a wedding where Kyle was a bridesmaid. Despite their rocky start and this memorable episode, Camille and Kyle managed to mend their friendship.
Camille also attended Kyle’s cannabis-infused dinner party in Season 13 — one fans were quick to anoint as a second “Dinner Party From Hell.” “That was fun,” Camille said. “I come in as a guest and it’s easy breezy. I can sit back and enjoy and just watch the fireworks happen and giggle.”
Camille and Kyle also caught up in as Season 13 moment viewers didn’t see, chatting about Camille’s mother’s death, the meanings behind Kyle’s tattoos, and where Kyle’s life was shifting. “It was actually a nice catch-up conversation,” she said.
While Season 1’s landmark dinner party will always hold a special place in fans’ hearts, there’s always another iconic moment around the corner. For one thing, both Camille and Faye are set to appear later this season on RHOBH.
