Uncover Juicy Secrets Producers Won’t Tell You About ‘Vanderpump Rules’

Bravo execs originally didn't believe in the show.

It's hard to believe, considering Pumps is now the network's most successful reality TV show, but back when the series first started, a few higher-ups were skeptical. "We knew there was something really interesting and special about it," Vice President of Current Production Ryan Flynn told The Daily Dish Podcast. "But I think the biggest concern in the halls of Bravo with Vanderpump Rules that first season is we are a network that's known for showing sort of exclusive luxury—you know, people, places, houses that the average viewer never gets a view into and loves it. They love that exclusive look into a world that they don't have access to, and we were turning our cameras on to cocktail servers, hostesses, and bartenders with apartments that have cottage cheese ceilings and window air conditioning units, something like a lot of places we've all lived in in our 20s."

He later credited Lisa Vanderpump for being the main person to help convince Bravo to take a gamble on the show, which paid off in the end.

The cast doesn't really work at SUR anymore.

During the first few seasons of Pumps, fans could easily walk into the restaurant and get served a drink by Tom Sandoval or an appetizer by Stassi Schroeder. However, now that the cast is famous and have other lucrative businesses, they don't necessarily have to work as full-time servers anymore. In fact, according to Jax Taylor, it sounds like the crew just drops in when they have the time. "The show is taking up a lot of my time right now, my businesses are taking a ton of time," he said in a reddit AMA. "When i have a chance to go in, I do."

Scheana said something similar in an interview on Juicy Scoop Podcast. "Production can’t force us to work if we don’t want to," she said. "But if there is a couple weeks that go by and people aren’t working, we get a phone call from Ken [Todd] and Lisa."

Serving fans can be a little awkward.

When the cast is at SUR, serving the same people who watch the show can be a weird experience. "You have to be photo-ready every day for work," Stassi told LA Weekly. "I used to dress more casually when serving, but I can’t do that anymore because then I’m taking pictures with people with a ponytail and no mascara.”

Sometimes fans forget that SUR is an actual restaurant and not, you know, Disneyland. "It can be a little bit tough," Kristen Doute told Fox News. "Because as much as I love the fans, and it’s so validating to know that they’re coming in just to see us and to have dinner at this restaurant just to take a photo, but it can [feel] like a caged animal in the zoo maybe with not-so-nice female fans that like to come in and have a few too many drinks."

And it's even weirder when they have to serve their haters. "I'll go to a table and they're, like, 'Oooooooh, yeah, we watched you last season,'" Stassi said. "And you have to serve them the entire time, and you know they hate you."

The cast is pretty vocal about how real the show is.

Unlike other reality shows that bring people together just for the sake of a TV show, the cast of Vanderpump Rules already knew each other before the show, making their interactions more authentic and real. "It’s pretty not-scripted," Katie Maloney told Galore. "You see our relationships are real. We all have our history."

Kristen agreed. "You can’t script something like this," she told Fox News. "This is how we have been for so many years."

But producers do manipulate some stories.

When Stassi broke up with boyfriend Patrick Meagher, she hinted on her podcast that producers might've had a hand in it. "I hate that we have to keep so many things secret," Stassi said. "They made me say that me and Patrick were still broken up. Patrick's not on the show. Why does it f–king matter? I don't want to trick people." However, she didn't go into detail, and she later backtracked on Twitter calling the show "the realist reality show there is."

According to an anonymous insider on reddit, a cast member revealed the sneaky ways producers would create storylines. "A cast member from Vanderpump Rules gave an example of she was told she was filming a brunch at a nice place with another cast member," the commenter wrote. "She was told to dress up. The day of filming, they asked her to stop by her boyfriend's apartment to pick up mail. They only showed her showing up to the ex-boyfriend's to pick up mail dressed up. Does this seem likely? Are the story producers intentionally keeping people in the dark for more on-air drama?"

Most of the cast takes Adderall to keep up with filming.

In case you've wondered how the cast has the energy to get blackout drunk and then wake up and work a seven-hour shift the next day, both Kristin and Stassi have admitted that they're all heavy Adderall takers. "It’s the worst drug I’ve ever taken, I swear to God," Stassi said. "I feel like it’s worst than coke because you get so addicted to it because it’s a pill and so you think it’s okay."

They hardly made any money during the first season.

According to TMZ, the SURvers only made $5,000 each for the entire season. After the success of the show, the cast demanded more money and by Season 2 were making $3,000 per episode. Considering they're on Season 6 now, they're probably making even more.

Stassi was on two other reality shows before Pumps.

It appears being a reality star was always Stassi's dream. In 2005, she appeared on The Amazing Race: Family Edition when she was a teen, and in 2008 she was on the one-season show Queen Bees. "I didn't have a chance to think about if it was something I wanted to do," she told Entertainment Tonight about her reality TV dreams. "It was always just been something that I've done. And then I realized that I was kind of good at it."

Scheana Marie originally didn't want to be on the show.

Back when the series first started, Scheana was focused on her acting career and didn't want a "trashy" reality show to affect her chances at landing a role. "I was really against doing it at first as I didn't want to be known as a reality star trying to be an actor, or trying to be a singer," she told Lifetime. "So I wasn't all about it until I sat down with the producers and they talked about what a career driven show it was and how it would focus on us following our own career paths too, and then I was really excited to do it." To date, Scheana has only been in one film since the show started, a 2015 movie called Mouthpiece.

Working at SUR is very exclusive.

If you think any person can walk off the street and chill with the other famous SURvers, you'd be wrong. In fact, getting a job at the famous restaurant is so hard, it's next to impossible. The restaurant accepts no applications and will only hire employees that personally know the current staff. "Everyone who starts working there is either a friend of a friend or they know someone. We never really hire anyone who walks off the street and hands in a resume," Stassi said. "I had friends who were working there, and I was always coming in for drinks, and I just figured I might as well work here. I'm here all the time."

However, that old policy might be changing. In 2017, Lisa Vanderpump announced on Twitter that SUR was hiring. So perhaps we all have a chance to work there and make those reality TV dreams come true.