'The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' star Sutton Stracke responds to comments made by her co-stars and previews drama still to come.
Sutton Stracke might be asking some of her The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' castmates to take an extra close listen to her season 12 tagline ("If you want a seat at my table, you best mind your manners") after hearing some of the things they've said behind her back... and to her face.
"When I get ready for bed after we've had a group dinner or something, I always have to look in the mirror to see if there's a knife back there so I don't lay on it even further," she jokes to ET over video chat. The latest backstabbing moment came courtesy of Sutton's frenemy, Erika Jayne, who described the boutique owner as "the master of her own disaster" and "a liability" to Sutton's close friend, Garcelle Beauvais.
"Look, I have my new house fully renovated, I've got two children going to very good schools on the East Coast. I'm a happy person. So I don't know where the disaster lies in that," she quips. "Then to call me a liability, I find very ironic and not... we talk about it later."
Garcelle pointed out the irony in Erika's "liability" label in a confessional after the "Pretty Mess" singer made the comment, pointing out that Erika -- who faces a series of legal challenges tied up with her estranged husband, disgraced attorney Tom Girardi's, alleged bad business dealings -- is more of a potential concern for this group than Sutton.
The Georgia native hints that Erika's remarks make their way back to Sutton (seemingly through Garcelle), which leads to a face-to-face confrontation. Still, it stings to see those unkind moments, she says.
"Whenever we watch things back, or we get to see scenes where we're not a part of them and hear what people have said about us, it does change maybe your opinion of the friendship," Sutton shares, "and then we get a time to discuss it, one face to face. I'm a face-to-face person. I don't do that. I don't take up Twitter wars. I don't do any of that stuff. I like to talk to your face."
The end of last week's episode previewed one of those face-to-face confrontations, as Sutton gets into a screaming match of sorts with Lisa Rinna, who tells her co-star that she will "f**king cut [Sutton] down!" It's unclear why exactly the women are at odds.
"I'll tell you this: I think that this season, Lisa was grieving and points of grief have lots of ebbs and flows," Sutton surmises, referencing the loss of Lisa's beloved mother, Lois.
"[Maybe] I was a safe place for Lisa to launch the anger part of grief, I don't know," she continues. "But I think that a lot of it was grief. I do."
With that said, Sutton owns up to still being a catalyst for Lisa's outburst. It wasn't all misdirected anger.
"I think there's some real anger, but then I think that anger is heightened because of what all is going on in her personal life," she says.
Sutton and Lisa have been sort of at odds all season long, with little fires in their friendship popping up every couple of episodes. The premiere kicked off with Lisa upset with Sutton over comments she made about paying for Lisa and her husband, Harry Hamlin's, tickets to a charity event years prior. While the two seemed to clear the air over the course of filming, the Rinna Beauty founder reignited the would-be feud with social media posts ahead of the season's launch.
"I think that Lisa... Lisa has even said this to me: We have a very complicated relationship," Sutton offers when asked if she still considers Lisa to be her friend. "I know her outside of this group of women. So I think that's what makes it complicated."
That comment implies that Lisa operates differently around the cast of RHOBH, a critique also made by other women whose relationships with Lisa pre-date the show, including Garcelle and former Housewife Denise Richards. However, none of Lisa's critics seem able to clearly explain what's different about her.
It might be something to unpack at reunion, where Sutton will no doubt be hashing through issues with about half the cast. Much of season 12 so far has focused on her dust-ups with newbie Diana Jenkins, a controversial addition to the show whom the audience hasn't exactly embraced. The viewers have, however, backed Sutton as she battles the socialite/philanthropist.
"[That] makes me feel better," she says of the audience siding with her. "I hate picking sides, because I want everything to be copacetic and it just can't get there."
Sutton's co-stars seemed to largely pick Diana's side throughout the ordeal, and despite the fan reaction as the episodes air, Sutton says no one's changed their tune.
"I'm a little surprised," she confesses, before confirming that co-star Kyle Richards did apologize for inserting herself into Sutton's back and forth with Diana, which included making some hurtful comments about Sutton's history with miscarriages.
Sutton shared her experience with pregnancy loss in an attempt to bond with Diana, but Diana saw it as Sutton making her situation about Sutton. Diana had the same reaction to Sutton sharing the story of losing her father to suicide when Diana opened up about the death of her brother.
"Here's the thing: I didn't understand that because I think it's normal in conversation to say, 'That happened to me, too. I totally understand what you're going through,'" Sutton explains. "So I was a bit confused just trying to relate to somebody and let them know that I'm truly sorry and I should not have said that, but it didn't go over well."
In another instance of the fans being on Sutton's side, viewers called out Kyle's apparent hypocrisy after she brought up her battle with an eating disorder in order to get through to Crystal Kung Minkoff, who also suffers from disordered eating.
"I wasn't a part of that conversation, because I would've said something," Sutton says. That conversation happened after a luncheon some of the cast had with Kyle's Halloween co-star, Jamie Lee Curtis, with the group splitting in two -- Kyle, Diana and Crystal in one room, Sutton, Dorit Kemsley and Sheree Zampino in another. When the two sets of women came together, Sutton offered a bit of an olive branch to Diana, taking ownership of "90 percent" of their issues and an invitation to talk whenever Diana was ready.
"I try to make it very welcoming to, 'If you ever want to talk, I'll let you come to me...' and that's where we stand," she says. Viewers may not see much movement when it comes to Sutton and Diana as the season continues, but there has been some since cameras went down.
"Diana reached out to me on the anniversary of my dad's suicide and she surprised me and she's very kind," Sutton reveals. "She made a donation to NAMI [the National Alliance on Mental Illness], who I'm an ambassador for, and which is a mental health organization. So it's confusing when people do things like that. Who knows? Lord, we're much crazy women. You'll never know what's going to happen."
On top of her friction with Diana, Lisa, Kyle and Erika, Sutton's also ridden the roller coaster that is her friendship with Crystal. The two worked to get to a good place between seasons 11 and 12, only to hit some speed bumps early into this year.
"Every time we get it right, it crumbles," Sutton says. "Then we put it back together. And the truth is, I like Crystal. She's smart and she's interesting to talk to. So I think we'll always try to fix it. Crystal and I are like that car that you buy from the used car lot, and it breaks down and then you get it fixed and it breaks down, but it's still a cute car. You still like that car and you don't want to give up on it. That's kind of our relationship. But at the end of the day, I like her."
Sutton also has an analogy for the cast's trip to Aspen, Colorado, a dramatic excursion teased in the midseason trailer, where the women recall Kathy Hilton having a mountain-sized meltdown.
"Aspen is, it's very rocky there," she notes. "It's like the mountains go up and down and up and down and there's very little oxygen, so you have to breathe out of those cans. So I think that's very representative of the weekend that we had."
"What's crazy about Aspen, there were lots of people there," she adds. "It was very crowded and people were watching us do everything. So listen, I was enjoying my beverage and relaxing."
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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