The first of three “Vanderpump Rules” #Scandoval reunion episodes will air on May 24, but for fans who can’t wait that long for the fireworks that Bravo has promised, there’s a tailgating opportunity in the form of a documentary titled “The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump.”
The 90-minute Hulu doc, which begins streaming on May 22, stems
from the Los Angeles Times story, “The Man Who Played Hollywood: Inside
Randall Emmett’s Crumbling Empire” written by Amy Kaufman and Meg James. The
article, published in June 2022, revealed lawsuits, debts and troubling
allegations regarding Emmett’s relationships with women, assistants and
business partners.
See below for an exclusive clip from the
documentary, the first collaboration between L.A. Times Studios and ABC News
Studios.
It was in motion well before the #Scandoval about
an affair between “Vanderpump Rules” stars Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss
created a tabloid frenzy in March. The new doc centers on allegations about
Emmett, a film producer who was involved with Lala (Lauren) Kent, another
member of the popular Bravo reality series.
Emmett, a longtime producer whose credits include “Midnight in
the Switchgrass” and “The Irishman,” gained fame when he began appearing on
“Vanderpump Rules” in 2019 alongside Kent, who was his fiancé at the time.
In 2021, before splitting up, the couple welcomed their first child
together. They are currently embroiled in a custody dispute.
Emmett
did not respond to a request for comment from Variety. He gave a statement
to the New York Post published May 16 asserting that “The Randall Scandal”
was “biased” against him from the start.
“I declined to
participate because it very quickly became apparent to me the film was going
to be as biased, if not more so, than the article on which it was based,”
Emmett said a statement, according to the Post.
While Kent did
not participate in the docu, her mother, Lisa Burningham, and her brother,
Eason Burningham, were interviewed. They describe never-before-told claims
of Emmett’s alleged mistreatment of Kent, including odd behavior during the
birth of their daughter and Kent’s departure from their shared home.
In addition to her mother and brother, several of Emmett’s
former assistants are interviewed in the doc alongside industry vets
including television writer, Teresa Huang and Alicia Haverland, who served
as prop master on “Midnight in the Switchgrass,” which starred Bruce Willis.
“When we started [writing the story] we didn’t realize
just how much we would find when it came to Randall,” says James. “The
interest in the story was quite a ‘Whoa’ moment because we thought it was
going to be an impactful story, but we really didn’t predict how much it was
going to take off.”
The docu details Emmett’s alleged verbal
abuse and workplace harassment towards a string of assistants as well as his
alleged irritation over Willis’ declining mental acuity during the filming
of “Midnight in the Switchgrass.” (Emmett denies all allegations in the
doc.)
When Kaufman and James found out about the Willis
allegations in 2022, members of the outlet’s fledgling documentary arm
connected with both reporters.
“That was an initial discovery,”
says L.A. Times Studios executive producer Leslie Lindsey. “At that point we
began working together and collaborating internally because we could see the
potential for the story to become a documentary.”
After the
article was published nearly a year ago, ABC News Studios reached out to
L.A. Times Studios about making the “The Randall Scandal.”
“One
of our core strategies is to tell stories that are in the zeitgeist with the
journalistic rigor that we apply to everything that we do.” says head of ABC
News Studios, Mike Kelley. “This just felt like one of those stories that
fit that strategy.”
While “The Randall Scandal” marks the first
collaboration between L.A. Times Studios and ABC News Studios, the doc is
one of several Bravo-based nonfiction films that ABC News Studios released
on Hulu. In June 2021 they released “The Housewife and the Hustler” — about
the legal problems of Erika “Jayne” Girardi, of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives
of Beverly Hills” and her estranged husband, one-time power lawyer Tom
Girardi. That was followed by the November 2022 release of “The Housewife
and the Shah Shocker,” about “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star
Jen Shah who was accused of fraud and money laundering and is currently in
jail after pleading guilty.
In another comment to the New York
Post, Emmett called the film “a cheap attempt to capitalize on the current
‘Vanderpump Rules’ fever.”
But Victoria Thompson, executive
producer for ABC News Studios says that the plan was always to release the
documentary in May 2023.
“We were in production before Scandoval
took the world by storm,” says Thompson.
Kaufman adds, “my
understanding was that ABC and Hulu thought it would be pertinent to tie it
in at some point when the show was on because people would be watching the
show, but they also didn’t know that Scandoval was coming.”
Before
the #Scandoval became a tabloid sensation, the L.A. Times article was a
conversation point in the latest season of “Vanderpump Rules.” But when the
#Scandoval hit, any mention of Emmett was overshadowed by the cheating
scandal.
“What surprised me watching this season of ‘Vanderpump
Rules’ was how the two storylines were handled and, to some extent, the
amount of attention Scandoval has gotten,” says Kaufman. “Scandoval is
captivating because it involves so many cast members — but it’s a cheating
scandal, which is pretty common on “Vanderpump Rules.” Randall Emmett has
been accused of cheating and many things that are more serious, including
sexual misconduct, abuse and harassment of his employees, financial
impropriety – all documented in numerous lawsuits.”
