As someone who starred in five seasons of Vanderpump Rules, Brittany Cartwright knows the new cast has some “big shoes to fill.”
Bravo announced that the Emmy-nominated reality series, which first came on the air in 2013, would be swapping out its cast of 11 seasons for a new group of young SUR-vers at Lisa Vanderpump‘s West Hollywood restaurant, bringing the show back to its original concept.
“I don’t know if I was shocked at first or if I was just like, I think it’s going to be hard for them to fill their shoes because the OGs — even before me — are so bright and were so amazing,” Cartwright, who starred on the show from Season 4 to Season 8, exclusively told DECIDER over a recent Zoom interview while promoting her partnership with Charmin’s #PreventTheDump dating campaign.
Vanderpump Rules began by following the drama amongst the close-knit SUR staff, which included Stassi Schroeder, Jax Taylor, Katie Maloney, Kristen Doute, Tom Sandoval, and Scheana Shay. Stars like Tom Schwartz, Ariana Madix, Lala Kent, and James Kennedy were promoted to full-time cast members in the following seasons — and Cartwright earned her spot on the roster when she began dating Taylor in Season 4.
As the seasons went on, the cast members who actually worked at SUR slowly began to dwindle and by Season 9, none of the OG stars were employed at the restaurant, which is why Cartwright understands the decision to recast the entire show for Season 12.
“I do kind of understand because everybody’s in such a different phase of their lives,” she said. “Scheana and Lala are parents and just everybody — Ariana’s out living her life being on Broadway and doing this and that. [She’s] barely in L.A. I think it does make sense to come back to the restaurant because that’s where it actually started. “
She added, “We’ll see what it’s like being a SUR server again or a TomTom server because a lot of people have already moved on. So I get why they’re trying to bring it back to the restaurant.”
Cartwright — who now stars alongside Doute and Taylor on Bravo’s The Valley — also wished the new cast good luck, noting that they must be “feeling a lot of pressure” to live up to the success of the original run of Vanderpump Rules.
“That show was on for 11 seasons, very successful seasons,” she said. “So either way that’s amazing. We’ll see if it’s great, if it tanks, whatever. We’ll see. But good luck to them. I love Bravo so I want everything to work out for whatever decisions they make.”
Cartwright spoke to DECIDER amid her partnership with Charmin for its #PreventTheDump dating campaign, which unveiled a study claiming 76% of Americans consider premium toilet paper a green flag when found in the bathroom of a potential partner.
Cartwright’s deal with the company comes one year after she announced her separation from Taylor. The two were married for five years before she filed for divorce.
“I think that within dating and now this is a whole new chapter of my life, I’m going to be a little bit more direct about those types of things,” she added.
You can watch Cartwright on Season 1 of The Valley, which is currently streaming on Peacock.
