ET video chatted with Stassi Schroeder and Beau Clark about their engagement and where things stand with Kristen Doute.
Nothing says romance quite like a proposal in a cemetery. No, seriously.
Vanderpump Rules fans will finally see the magic moment that Beau Clark popped the question to Stassi Schroeder at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery back in July on this week's Vanderpump Rules.
"We watched it yesterday and we cried," Stassi tells ET of the episode.
"I mean, I wasn't bawling, but definitely had water coming out of my eyes," Beau clarifies. "I think it was the fact because it was so beautiful and then, it was also the fact that we were outside."
ET video chatted with the couple from their new Los Angeles home, where they're currently self-isolating amid the coronavirus pandemic and, apparently, thinking about happier times, like the day they got engaged. Stassi says the proposal caught her totally off guard. She legitimately thought they were just going to look at potential burial plots and mausoleums.
"I don't think you understand, I don't think they showed properly, this whole season, how, like, he-- we got into so many arguments, and there were so many sad moments, because he convinced me that he wasn't ready anymore," Stassi shares. "We had been talking, like, for a full year about how he can't wait to marry me and all these things and, you know, we'd be engaged soon and then he, all the sudden, just like reneged on that."
That helps to explain why Stassi was so on edge with Beau, as seen in the most recent episode where she let out her "dark passenger" in broad daylight at a party for her wine line.
"Yeah, I was lying to her," Beau admits. "I was like, you know, 'I’m… work has been really slow... I might lose my job. I just don't know where I'm gonna be at, you know, financially, I might have to sell my jeep…'"
Stassi says Beau sprinkled in enough details with each lie that she fully believed he was backtracking on their relationship.
"Yeah, I crossed the line on lying, definitely," Beau admits, "a whole bunch of times."
Luckily, it worked out. Stassi said yes and the pair got to celebrate with their castmates at Lisa Vanderpump's Villa Rosa estate… well, minus one. Kristen Doute did not receive an invite to the engagement party, further cementing the breakup of the "Witches of WeHo," the onetime triumvirate or holy trinity of Pump Rules: Stassi, Kristen and Katie Maloney-Schwartz.
As seen in the teaser for the episode, Kristen pouts to Brittany Cartwright and Jax Taylor about not being included in Stassi and Beau's big day; they then share a text that Kristen’s ex-boyfriend, Carter, sent to Beau after news of the engagement broke. That text is what led to Stassi's unhappy tears on her engagement day.
"Don't forget to thank Kristen for hooking you guys up," Carter wrote. "She made it happen and now you and Stassi treat her like s**t. That’s some cold-blooded s**t right there."
"I just think you see more of the demise of our friendship, honestly," Stassi says of what’s to come after the proposal episode. "And what Carter had texted us, like, he texted it to us and we weren't rolling yet and I got so upset that I think I was crying. I was crying, 'cause I'm just like, this is, like, the most exciting day. We finally got engaged and to receive a text like that, to be reminded -- it's like, can you wait a few days? Can you wait a few days to just remind me that I have drama going on?"
"I'm like, why did you text me that?" Beau interjects. "Like, what have I done to Kristen?"
"Honestly, it was just f**ked up," Stassi says.
"It was poor taste, bad timing and it’s, like, really?" Beau says. "Now you're gonna come out and try to be, like, some kinda knight in shining armor? When we all know that you're just a piece of s**t? Whatever. I'm still so pissed off, every time I think about it. Re-seeing it again and having those feelings come back, I'm annoyed."
Stassi says Carter's text put the "nail in the coffin" for him and the group, and only made her feel more certain in her decision to distance herself from Kristen. The Witches of WeHo split hasn't exactly been clearly explained over the course of the season, partially due to the fact that, according to Stassi, it involves an off-camera conversation she and Katie had with Kristen ahead of filming season 7 of the show. The pair recently shared their side of the story on Stassi’s podcast, Straight Up With Stassi.
"Where it started for me was, when like, before every season we’re like, we have to be honest -- this is a reality show. We have to be honest, we have to bring it, we can’t hide anything," Stassi says on the episode. "Like, that’s what it is. You just have to be real, and Kristen admittedly had said, I’m not showing that much of my relationship and how I actually feel, but how do I do that? And we’re like, we’ll organically talk about it with you, because we do every night anyway, so we’ll talk about it! And we did."
"She would talk about her relationship, but she wasn’t honest about what was going on in her relationship," Katie clarifies. "So, when she said she wanted to be honest about what was going on in her relationship, we’re like, OK. We can help you do that. But will you be honest about that? If we help you bring it to light, will you be honest or will you defend it? And she said, yes."
Katie and Stassi say, when it came to laying out all of Kristen's issues with Carter while cameras were rolling, she threw them under the bus and would always defend Carter on camera.
"It became really difficult when she would defend him so aggressively to us, on camera, but then off camera, it was a very different situation," Katie adds. "She still wanted to have these heart-to-hearts, and still wanted to vent, and still wanted our advice and still wanted the shoulder to cry on. And, we would still, obviously, offer that to her, because she was our best friend. She was our sister, we still cared about her, and we still were supportive of her. But then, the next time we talked about it on camera, it was the same thing again, where she would be aggressively defending him and coming after us, and treating us like we were horrible friends for putting her in this position."
"We didn’t put her in this position," Katie continues. "She had put herself in this position, and we were trying to help her be more honest about her life, something that she had decided that she wanted to do, and had asked us to help her do that. So, here we are just frustrated by this whole situation."
"Then, cut to the reunion for that, and I’m sitting there hoping, I’m like, hopefully after she’s seen what it was like on camera and that she just made us look like a**holes for bringing it up and then defended Carter, I thought that she was gonna be like, 'I’m sorry that I did that,'" Stassi says. “But then she doubled down on it, and it was that moment at the reunion that I was like, f**k you."
"I’m mad that you’re making us look like bad friends," she proclaims. "That is why I’m mad."
The two note that they could have done a better job communicating their frustrations with Kristen, but at the end of the day, they felt that "Kristen just got really good at just playing a victim."
"It's such a layered situation," Stassi tells ET. "She would turn it around on us when the cameras were there and make it look like we were a**holes for bringing it up. Like, we were bad friends and that just became the whole narrative."
"We thought we were all on the same page," she says. "I knew we were. Until that, whatever -- that's, that's how it really happened. It's not really about her being in a sh**ty relationship."
"I'm not pissed that you're in a sh**ty relationship," she reiterates. "I've been there, we've all been there. I'm pissed that you just made me look awful and like a sh**ty-a** friend and now I just want to back off from you. So then it's like, that snowballed into just so much more, ‘cause you know, when you have, like, one issue with someone? It just grows and grows and then it got to the point where she could've even chewed wrong and I would've been like, ‘I can't be friends with you!!’ You know what I mean? That just hurt."
When ET spoke with Kristen last month, she confessed that she still didn’t understand Katie and Stassi's point of view when it came to the demise of their friendship, and she may never fully get their side of the story. Still, both Kristen and Stassi say they can and will be cordial with one another; it's just unlikely they’ll ever be "best friends" again.
"I'm fine to, like, say hello, ask how her life is and all of that," Stassi shares. "It's just… I don't know if I want her so close to me, you know? We've all been through a lot of friendship breakups before. Like, this isn't the first time that this kind of s**t has gone down."
While it's not the first time, Stassi does confess to this time feeling "more final." Kristen is still not invited to Stassi and Beau's wedding, which is still set for this fall, at least for now. The couple has a date set in Italy and are holding out until “the last possible minute” to make any changes. Italy is, of course, one of the hardest hit countries when it comes to the pandemic.
"I love to b***h and moan and complain," Stassi jokes about sharing a wedding update. "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do that."
"We talked to our wedding planners and they were like, 'We think you should postpone.' And I'm like, we're not ready to do that yet, so we're holding off," she says.
"We've cried about it," she admits. "We've also laughed about it. We've digested it. We've come to peace with it, that it might not happen and, you know, I get it. It's happening to so many people. There are much greater things going on in the world than, like, your wedding not being able to work out. But, we don't know right now. We're in wedding limbo."
Stassi and Beau say their wedding could wind up happening as-is, with just five guests all keeping their social distance, or Beau seemingly jokes they could wait and throw an even bigger bash with up to 1,000 people (because he misses hugging people). For now, they’re taking the quarantine day by day, happy to be in their new home together. Stassi and Beau admit, if they were still living in their respective apartments, they would probably have isolated themselves separately. If they didn’t have separate rooms to walk into, they might have killed each other by now.
"I'd come over for sex and maybe, like, dinner," Beau offers.
"I thought you'd say lunch," Stassi fires back. "Shout-out to everyone living with other people in apartments right now. My hat's off to them."
Thankfully, no matter where you’re stuck, there is still Vanderpump Rules to watch every week and Stassi promises the final episodes of season 8 are the best of the bunch.
"We just watched the rest of the season and the last four episodes are my favorite of the whole season," she gushes. "I really, truly enjoyed them. So, I was like, OK, it's like the new people are integrated with us. There's a s**t-ton more drama than, like, I remember. It's like, Jax going crazy, just different people going ape s**t. It's like, this is, this is good. I was thoroughly entertained. We end strong."
Vanderpump Rules airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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