Vanderpride

How Pride Became the Cornerstone—and Emmy Hopeful—of Vanderpump Rules

The Bravo reality show has been showcasing L.A. Pride since Season 1.
Image may contain Clothing Apparel Electrical Device Microphone Human Person and Hat
Lisa Vanderpump continues her support of gay rights by attending the Long Beach Lesbian and Gay Pride Festival on May 21st of this year.By Harmony Gerber/Getty Images.

The stars of Vanderpump Rules—servers and servers-adjacent at Lisa Vanderpump’s West Hollywood restaurant, SUR (which stands for Sexy Unique Restaurant, in case you’re wondering)—are beautiful, dramatic, shameless, and fascinatingly messy. If you were to map out who is friends, who hates each other, who have dated, slept together, cheated on each other, and who may or may not be receiving Range Rovers from a nameless married man, you’d have a wall similar to Carrie Mathison’s manic color-coded corkboard on Homeland—but more confusing.

But there remains a single day each year when the staff of SUR will come together without question to party, fight, make up, and shill out Pumptinis: L.A. Pride.

Since Season 1, the Gay Pride parade in Los Angeles has been a major character on Vanderpump Rules—which is no fluke. Vanderpump, who started her reality television career on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, was a gay rights advocate decades before she settled in the 90210. Before moving to Los Angeles, Vanderpump and her husband, Ken Todd, owned restaurants, clubs, and gay bars in London. Then Bravo came calling.

Before Vanderpump Rules shooting began in 2012, Vanderpump told one of the show’s executive producers, Bill Langworthy, that one of her conditions was to highlight Gay Pride. Her restaurant SUR, which sits next to the famed gay bar The Abbey in West Hollywood, has a prime location in the neighborhood otherwise known as Boystown, where the annual Los Angeles Pride Parade is held each June. Vanderpump, who says she wants to be a "conduit between the gay community and the heterosexual community," every year gets her primarily straight staff into over-the-top costumes and onto pinked-out floats during Pride.

"I knew that Bravo had this incredible reach," Vanderpump remembers about her initial conversations with Bravo. "I think our show’s gone over 100 countries. That’s a huge demographic. I’ve really taken advantage of that. I’ve taken advantage of it, you know, financially, physically, business-wise, but also I’ve really used it as a platform for my charities.”

Pride was part of SUR’s D.N.A. well before Vanderpump Rules. Stassi Schroeder, who worked at the restaurant for years before the show began filming—the series would later document her dramatic blowup with Vanderpump and her exit as a server, as well as her illustrious return back to Los Angeles—said the day is the the biggest and most important of the year for the restaurant. “It was the one day that we didn’t mind working,” she told Vanity Fair over the phone. “It was just so fun, and the atmosphere is like something you can’t describe unless you’re there.”

The first season’s Pride episode revolved heavily around Schroeder’s deteriorating relationship with her then-boyfriend, SUR bartender Jax Taylor. Instead of dancing on the float, Schroeder and Taylor fought over his decision to allow fellow server, Scheana Shay, to put suntan lotion on his back.

“I’ll never forget that day because the night before was when we broke up, and we had done that off camera. And we were new to reality T.V.; we didn’t really know when you’re supposed to do things, and when you’re not. So we both showed up separately to the float, and no one knew what was going on,” she said.

That year's Pride parade was also met by protesters; on camera, the staff of SUR protested them right back. “I will never forget people protesting," Schroeder said. "We were all just blown away. Like, there are people who got out of their house or apartment, and made a sign to protest something so wonderful. We were allowed to give the finger and curse and do whatever we want. It was the one time Lisa allowed us to act like wild animals.”

The most recent Vanderpump Rules Pride episode, which aired last December, collided with real life in an even more dramatic way: it was filmed the day after the Pulse shooting in Orlando, when Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 others at the gay nightclub. That morning, a man with guns in his car on his way to L.A. pride was pulled over and arrested. While the cast wasn’t scheduled to appear on a float during the parade, they had planned on working at the restaurant for the Pride party, while Lisa Vanderpump rode a bus with the British consulate.

“We had a decision to make, like many others. Do we close or do we stand up? Do we have courage in the face of adversity?” Vanderpump recalled. “So we took a breath, went down [to West Hollywood]. I saw people in tears, just shell shock. There were tanks. The security was extraordinary. With terrorism, it’s an unknown quantity. We don’t know how many of those fuckers are out there. We never do. So it was basically thinking, what do we do? Do we capitulate? Do they bring us to our knees? Or do we actually stand up and say no, we won’t be beaten? And I think that’s what we did.”

Some cast members, including Schroeder, chose not to go to the parade, but through a GoFundMe account raised nearly $5,000 for the victims of the Pulse shooting and their families. Others worked the day at the restaurant as planned.

“I think it was an extraordinary moment for reality television," said Vanderpump. "The fact that the crew were courageous enough to potentially put themselves in harm’s way."

The episode has been submitted for Emmy consideration in the Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program category. Vanderpump has high hopes that they will receive a nomination. “I think it was a salute to the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Showing those 102 people who were either injured or killed that we support you. It was very important to me. It was a moment in time. It was documented. Hopefully it will be on my epitaph, standing up for what’s right.”

The episode was a rare serious moment on Vanderpump Rules, showing real emotion in real time from characters that viewers are more likely to see in drunken fights in Las Vegas or getting their exes’ names tattooed on their arms. Most episodes, including the Pride ones, are classic examples of frothy reality television. Tom Sandoval laughed while retelling Vanderpump’s decision in Season 2 to have all the men working go shirtless and wear angel wings while dancing on the float. He claims his qualms didn’t lie with insecurities, but rather a fear that his wings would knock someone off the float. “It’s just how Lisa is sometimes,” he said. “She’s like, fashionality over functionality, that’s what I call it.”

Still, Lisa Vanderpump takes pride—really, no pun intended—in the fact that she’s addressed different social issues and tragedies on the show, as do the people who work for her. Even the ones she butts heads with.

“Even when she didn't have Housewives, she tried to make Pride as grand as it could be without her fame,” Schroeder said. “But then when she was given that outlet and that platform from Housewives, then she was able to do everything she possibly could. To film it, to put it in magazines, to do interviews about it, to shove it down people’s throats—and I mean that as a compliment to her, in the best way possible.”