'We send Christmas cards to each other every year,' the actor shares.
Harry Hamlin is opening up about his marriage to Lisa Rinna.
In a new interview with The Daily Beast, the 68-year-old actor gets candid about being the husband of a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star.
"It's totally deliberate,” he says, of sometimes appearing on the popular Bravo reality series. "They were not going to hire Lisa if I didn’t do it, and the husbands have the same obligations as the wives do. They want you to show up and be involved. I said I wasn’t going to do that. So we concocted a way to get around it.
"I don’t have to do any of it," he adds. "Sometimes Lisa will say to me, 'They’re begging me to have a scene with you. If we give them that I get brownie points.'"
Hamlin tells the outlet that when Rinna first approached him about doing the show, he reached out to his longtime divorce attorney, whom he's still in frequent contact with.
"I have my divorce lawyer on speed dial, and I do," he reveals. "I have had three opportunities to use him; once with Ursula [Andress], and two of my ex-wives. It’s the same guy every time. We send Christmas cards to each other every year."
"I said to Lisa, 'You can’t do this. Everybody who does that show gets divorced,'" he continues. "It’s a horrible, horrible thing, to do that show."
Hamlin credits Rinna's friend (and fellow Housewife) Bethenny Frankel for opening his mind up to the idea.
"Bethenny convinced me from a branding point of view it would be a good thing to do," he recalls. "Then I was open to doing it on my own terms."
So, with all the drama fans always see on Housewives, how do Hamlin and Rinna keep their marriage strong?
“We listen to each other. Really listen to each other," he explains. "The thing about listening is that it’s not something that comes innately to human beings. Normally we have a tape playing in our heads all the time. It can be hard to allow what other people are saying actually in."
"That’s what Lisa and I do—we listen," he adds. "And she’s smart, she’s the smartest person I have ever met. She’s smart as a whip. Our favorite thing is to hang out."
Back in 2015, Rinna also spoke about Hamlin feeling hesitant about doing RHOBH in a clip from Oprah’s Where Are They Now?
"Before season five started of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, I had a meeting with the producers to do maybe another show," she shared at the time. "What came out of the meeting was, 'Maybe I should do The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.' I thought, 'Oh, God, Harry’s never gonna go for this. He never will.'"
Rinna said Hamlin was initially very opposed to the idea, telling her, "Nope. I’ll divorce you. If you do it, I’ll divorce you."
"I said, 'OK, done,'" she remembered. "No more conversations, done. Walked out of the room, that was that. I was fine with it."
Hamlin and Rinna share two kids, daughters Delilah Belle, 21, and Amelia, 18. Hamlin also shares a son, 39-year-old Dimitri, from his previous relationship with Andress.
Hear more in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
