Taylor Armstrong is opening up about her late husband, Russell Armstrong, and the abuse she sustained throughout their marriage in a new tell-all for Investigation Discovery’s Hollywood Demons.
Following roles on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and The Real Housewives of Orange County, Taylor, 53, will be seen chatting with Dr. Drew Pinsky, 66, about how her relationship with Russell began, the horrifying behavior she was exposed to, and his death by suicide.
“It is a really hard question when I have people ask why I stayed [with him]. It is so complicated and statistically most domestic violence victims return seven times before they find the courage to leave,” Taylor explained, via Us Weekly. “I questioned myself a lot, asking, ‘Am I being abused?’”
According to Taylor, it “felt cringey” to consider herself a domestic abuse victim since she felt like she “[had] it all.”
Looking to her childhood, Taylor, who starred on the first three seasons of RHOBH, which aired from 2010 to 2013, said she was “surrounded by trauma.”
“I had domestic violence in my house as a child from a very young age,” she revealed.
After moving from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, Taylor met Russell at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and moved in with him “within a couple of months” and got “married that same year.”
“I was pregnant when we got married and he was already a dad,” she said. “Perhaps that gave me confidence in the kind of person I thought he was at his core. He stuck around with his kids when my dad didn’t. It felt right at the time but in retrospect there were all kinds of red flags.”
“I never saw him even flinch over money,” she noted. “I don’t remember cooking once because we went out every single night.”
While their public persona was one thing, their behind-the-scenes relationship was highly troublesome.
“My housekeeper would find recording devices all the time. It got to the point where I assumed I was being recorded all the time. I always assumed he was listening,” she admitted.
One particularly scary moment for Taylor began after she cooked pizza for Russell’s sons.
“He came in the house, grabbed me by the throat and put me up against the wall,” she shared, noting that Russell “threatened to kill” her for giving the boys pizza without vegetables.
Russell also used his finances to control his wife.
“I had no access to cash and I had no access to bank accounts,” she mentioned. “So the financial control became a huge part in me not being able to leave.”
Once she agreed to join the RHOBH cast, Taylor worried that Russell’s abuse would be exposed, especially since some of their friends “were very aware of what was going on” and had actually offered to help.
“I was afraid he would explode in the car. I could see it and I could tell he would start to give me this look,” she explained. “And we were in a limo with cameras so I thought, ‘Let us get home before this happens.’ Because he could not control himself.”
In fact, after learning that someone had tried to help Taylor, Russell got violent.
“He threw me in the pool before knocking all of the guy’s teeth out,” she claimed. “He jumped in the pool and was holding my head under the water. I thought he would drown me.”
“It was pretty well known that I had marital problems but I wasn’t ready for my abuse to be outed on television,” Taylor continued.
As RHOBH fans know, Camille Grammer, 56, ultimately confirmed Taylor was being abused by Russell on the show.
“I remember looking at the producer in just a blank stare thinking, ‘It is out,’ and I couldn’t put it back. Camille had outed the fact that I was abused. I was saying, ‘You have no idea what you have done to me. He has threatened to kill me before,’” Taylor recalled.
Continuing on about the damage she sustained from Russell, Taylor revealed he accused her of cheating on him ahead of season two.
“He raised up, leaned over and punched me. He fractured my orbital floor,” she stated.
She told her doctor that Kennedy, now 19, had kicked her, but he “didn’t believe” her, and she eventually went through “reconstructive surgery” and filed for divorce in July 2011.
The following month, after going to check on her estranged spouse after he missed a divorce meeting, Taylor and a friend found Russell dead by suicide, and she quickly realized that her daughter Kennedy was outside.
“I ran into the street outside the house when all of a sudden I realized my daughter was in the car,” she recalled. “She asked, ‘Did my dad do something stupid?’”
After Dr. Drew asked Taylor, who married her now-husband, John Bluher, in 2014, about the timeline of her filming, Taylor admitted that she had to back out at a certain point.
“I had to not film because I had the eye surgery and after we filmed the finale. Everyone was very aware of what happened,” she confessed. “[And] maybe in a way I felt if the cameras were there, I would get the good version of him.”
Looking back, Taylor admitted, “I wish I would have been brave enough to leave earlier for her. And there’s shame for not being stronger.”
Days after Russell committed suicide, his associate, Alan Schram, did the same, prompting theories of foul play. However, those claims were never solidified.
It was also noted that a trial lawyer “effectively served” Russell for filing a fraudulent bankruptcy and misappropriating investor money in a lawsuit just before his death.
“We had an offshore protection trust that he said had 12 million. They were all empty. There ended up being 30-plus bank accounts,” Taylor noted.
Hollywood Demons premieres on Monday, April 14, at 9/8c on ID.
