'Bling' is back! The stars of Netflix's 'Bling Empire' weigh in on season 2's cliffhangers and hint at what's to come comes next.
Spoilers ahead! This article discusses plot points from season 2 of Netflix's Bling Empire.
Bling is back... and not all that glitters is gold. Season 2 ends with more questions than answers, but thankfully ET got the cast on the record to fill in some of those gaps. Read on for what Kane Lim, Kevin Kreider, Kelly Mi Li, Kim Lee, Christine Chiu, Dorothy Wang, Anna Shay and Jaimie Xie have to say about the state of their circle after the events of season 2.
The cast weighs in on Kelly's ex, Andrew Gray, making a shocking return in the finale, the worsening of Christina and Anna's Beverly Hills beef, whether the group can trust Kane, Kevin and Kim's failed attempt at dating, Dorothy abandoning Los Angeles for a New York City-set show of her own and more.
Oh, and if you're looking for answers about Chèrie Chan and Jessey Lee's abrupt exit from the show, click on over to this article.
What Does Kelly Think of Andrew's Last-Minute Return?
The finals seconds of Bling Empire season 2 deliver quite the shock: Kelly Mi Li's ex-boyfriend, Andrew Gray, shows up to Anna's house unannounced, flowers in hand. "Kelly's Andrew?" Anna asks her friend, Maria, who opens the door. "What's he doing here?" Andrew steps in, asks how Anna is doing and then... the finale cuts to the credits. Kelly says she had no idea about the scene.
"I can't control him," she reacts to the idea of him showing up out of the blue. "I think that if Anna [and] him want to be friends, they can."
"I wouldn't say that there is a relationship, but I will say that everybody makes mistakes," Anna offers when asked about the status of her friendship with the Power Rangers actor. "Everybody judges people too quickly sometimes. And when I look back at this whole first season, I thought about it. There were certain things that just really bothered me, that didn't make sense."
Kelly and Andrew's relationship troubles punctuated all of season 1, with the then-couple flipping from intense passion to intense fighting. The series premiere featured a tense trip to Europe with Anna, which apparently left Anna confused.
"Was it contrived?" Anna asks of what unfolded in Paris, including Andrew missing out on excursions with her and Kelly. He would claim to have been left out, but Anna tells ET she always made sure he was up to speed on the itinerary.
"I would leave a note, for example," she recalls. "I would wake somebody up and say, 'Yoo-hoo, I'm going to shopping over here.' There's so many things."
"Did they want to fight?" Anna asks. "I don't know. I don't want to know, because I don't want to get into their gossip. However, I just think that nobody's perfect and everybody makes mistakes and everybody should be given a second chance and then we'll see what happens."
Kelly gave Andrew that second chance at the end of season 1, reuniting with him after a break. The couple ultimately called it quits, though, after season 1 premiered, and Kelly says there's no getting back together now.
"For me, I think we've already said our peace and I wish him nothing but the best," she shares.
Who's Telling the Truth: Anna or Christine?
Season 2 ends with a chilling face-off between the two queens of the Beverly Hills social circuit, Christine confronting Anna -- or maybe it's the other way around -- over a comment a "trusted friend" allegedly passed along to Christine. "The verbatim was, 'I'm gonna end her,'" Christine previously confessed to Kane. "What does that mean?"
"If I was going to say something like that, I would say to her, to her face -- and that? She should know me by now," Anna tells ET. "If it was really meant that I had said something like that, she has to be careful. Because defamation is not a good thing."
"Well, the truth does come out in the very end and the truth will prevail," Christine proclaims. "I have no motivation or incentive to come up with this huge debacle, especially after losing my mom and having to deal with grieving and the loss. I hope that viewers will watch with an open mind and know that the truth always wins and the truth will prevail."
When the two ladies sit down to hash it out, Anna comes in hot and asks Christine, "Who the f**k are you, Miss Wannabee, to tell people, 'I'm so afraid?' 'Anna wants to do something to me.'" Christine fires back and says the comment did scare her, especially because she has a family to protect.
"Of all the things that she could have said, I have a family, too," Anna notes to ET. "I have my son. I'm a grandmother. So stupidity is the only thing that I can think about when I think of her."
The catty convo gets darker, as Anna says Christine's "not worth" going to jail over, adding that she'd be happy to sue her co-star "just for fun" and see their teams of lawyers go at each other. Plus, she claims she pities Christine and announces "payback is a b***h," promising to "f**k [Christine] 10 times harder" if this goes any further.
"I have to say what a haute mess, right?" Christine cracks. "I was very optimistic because season one, Anna and I had a good time filming. We both had chuckles about it. We're both kind of in on the joke. We went back and forth in our ping pong game and it was silly stuff. It was nothing serious. It was just about a necklace, a silly necklace and somehow as we go into season 2, something is bothering her so much about me. So it's unfortunate. I mean, we don't have a relationship. We don't have a friendship, but what I've learned is that this is OK, too. We don't all have to be besties. We don't all have to go to the bathroom together. We can draw healthy boundaries and edit our friends wisely."
"The most important takeaway is, it doesn't have to be a Christine vs. Anna," Christine adds. "We could both be right. You just have to understand that the game of telephone and the game of gossip is a very dangerous one."
Can the Group Trust Kane?
In the middle of the Christine/Anna mess is Kane, who ran the "end her" comment back to Anna, somewhat sparking this whole ordeal. On the show, Anna goes so far as to say she's done with his "bulls**t."
"I think everyone has their side of the story, right?" Kane says. "I think most importantly, just use your judgment and listen to all the facts as well. At the end of the day, I just have compassion for each other cause I have so much respect for Anna and I think she didn't understand a full story... So I think there's a lot of learning to be had with this group, and I still respect and love Anna as a friend. So I'm fine with her calling me whatever."
"I experienced some friendship betrayal in the season when I am most vulnerable, when I had my guard down after experiencing my mom's loss, and that taught me to also be much more wise and careful with those I let into my inner circle," Christine reflects. "I wish him so much success and happiness, because I feel that it's the lack thereof that causes the negativity, and I feel like a lot of times the toxicity and the negativity that comes out really stems from an inner insecurity. And I feel like he's throwing stones from a glass apartment."
"A small glass apartment," Dorothy chimes in to add. She came into the group not liking Kane, seeing him as a social climber who's "been trying to get lunch since 2011."
"I wasn't in L.A. in 2011," Kane fires back. "The thing is, I've known [Dorothy] for a long time. She was never nice to me... She came in blasting and just was mean. And I'm like, I don't resonate with that, and there's no way to grow from that. I didn't understand where that came from or where that -- probably, it stems from insecurities because hurt people hurt people, basically."
"I respect her because she's upfront about it," he adds. "She doesn't like me. I'm like, 'OK, cool.' But I think we can still be adults and respectful. Because, mind you, this is not Rich Kids of Instagram or Beverly Hills anymore. This is Bling Empire. We're adults, we're grown people, we're successful. There can be a way to walk away, it just doesn't have to be this way."
"The thing about Kane is, I feel like Kane has a very good heart," Jaime offers. "He has good intentions and he's a good person, but he can be very gossipy. He loves to talk. He talks a lot and sometimes he can... he says too much and he loves gossip. So that's the thing that I don't like about Kane, because I don't really care for that kind of stuff. And in terms of him and the group, I'm not really sure. I'm always open to giving people second chances and I'm open to people change, so I don't know how he stands with the others."
Kevin also called Kane's loyalty into question, after Kane alerted Kim to the fact that Kevin was seeing (and sleeping with) other people shortly before he and Kim started officially dating. The revelation led to a glass-shattering moment at a party.
"Everything's good now," Kane shares. "I think we went through a lot this season, and I think people can learn a lot from it because I certainly did. And I think my friendship with Kevin has certainly grown, as well, and my friendships within this group particularly has grown. So I'm proud of that, but it'll be a little embarrassing to see it on TV. But you know, this is real life."
Where Do Kevin and Kim Stand After Split?
After season 1's "will they or won't they?" back and forth, Kevin and Kim finally did give romance a shot, only for it to end over a lie detector test. After Kane confided Kevin's other romantic endeavors to Kim, she asked him to sit for a polygraph exam. Ironically, it was Kim's time hooked up to the machine that unraveled the would-be relationship.
"Do you even really want to be with me?" Kevin asks while she's in the chair, to which Kim replies, "No." Kevin asks to end the exam then and there, with the polygraph reader telling Kevin that the questions Kim did get through before calling off the exam (including whether she still has feelings for her ex-boyfriend) indicated "deception."
"I'm going to be very honest: I have a lot of work to do inside when it comes to trust, and I just couldn't get past that with him," Kim admits to ET. "Even though I put him through so many tests on the show. I tried to, but I felt like... it didn't feel right towards the end."
Kevin says he definitely felt "led on" by Kim.
"I've never been questioned so much about my integrity and honesty," Kevin shares. "And to have that question, not just with Kim, but everybody, that was the most biggest let down and that kind of hurt the most."
"I think everybody knows me the most here, in the sense I'm not trying to be perfect, I'm not trying to pretend to be somebody I'm not," he continues. "I have many flaws. I'm the first person to tell you that. If I f**k up somewhere, I want to know, and I want to see if I could do something better. And if I didn't, then I didn't. I don't know how to defend myself. But when people don't believe me, even when you go through a lie detector test and just to find out, maybe, some honesty wasn't being thrown both ways, it feels hurtful."
Kevin says the events of season 2 inspired him to get into therapy.
"I am seeking professional help, not because of Kim, but I want a better relationship moving forward with whoever I want to be with in the future, and better friendships, too," he explains. "I'm sober for a long time, but I think I'm now at a level of my emotional sobriety where I want to have therapy to help me with that other part as well with my life."
Is Christine Expecting Baby No. 2?
About halfway through season 2, Christine starts seriously exploring the possibility of expanding her family as she processes the loss of her beloved mother. She and her husband, Dr. Gabriel Chiu, revisited their fertility doctor to see what might be possible, after deciding to discard their previously frozen embryos (known as "London" and "Margot") and settle for life as a family of three with their son, "Baby G."
"After losing my mom, it dawned on me that life is hard and I would not want Baby G to go through anything traumatic alone," she shares on the show. "We are going to expand the Chiu family, adding babies Hs and Is and Js, possibly, to the Chiu clan."
"You mean babies No. 2 through 7, maybe?" she jokes when asked by ET for an update. "I still want that minivan."
"I think viewers have to stay tuned," she adds. "I would love a larger family. I would love to have siblings for Baby G, and Baby G talks about his baby sister and his baby brother and all of his playing around. So I feel like he's sending me kind of heavy nudges."
Sounds like a question for season 3... which Christine hints might be on its way sooner than later.
Is Dorothy Already Leaving for a Spinoff?
Speaking of, season 2 ends with Dorothy leaving Los Angeles (and the Bling Empire crew) behind for a new life in New York City. It's no secret she's continued to film something, regularly documenting the behind-the-scenes antics with the production crew (which includes the creative team behind Bling Empire) on Instagram. Reports have speculated that she's leading a spinoff of the franchise, but all Dorothy will offer is a coy, "I don't know. I guess we just have to maybe wait for an announcement or something later on."
The Rich Kids of Beverly Hills alum says she returned to the world of reality TV because her fans demanded it, essentially. Rich Kids went off the air in 2016.
"Going off [my Instagram] comments, what everyone's saying, they're like, 'Bling is the show about Asian-Americans in L.A.' And Bling, it just sounded like the perfect Dorothy Wang show to go on," she explains. "So here I am... I had a really nice, calm, peaceful, couple years off where I didn't have any drama. I can just hang out with who I chose to hang out with, not have to have opinions and speak up and say things. I did have some trepidations about that and having to maybe have to be in the mix of certain people that I didn't necessarily want to see."
"But at the end of the day, I do love showing my life and telling stories and just interacting with new people," she continues. "I always just like showcasing different experiences and trying new things. I thought this did feel like a once in a lifetime experience, and I always kind of joke and say, 'You only have one life to live and one life to ruin, so why not?'"
All episodes of Bling Empire are now streaming on Netflix.
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