Dorit Kemsley thinks it’s a “stretch” that her not defending Teddi Mellencamp had anything to do with her drama with estranged friend Kyle Richards.
Dorit, 48, and Kyle, 55, clashed on the Wednesday, December 2, episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as their friendship took a dramatic turn this season. During the episode, Kyle said she didn’t feel that Dorit stood up for former Housewife Teddi from a mean comment at last year’s BravoCon. (A fan asked Kyle why she keeps “thrusting Teddi on these women.”)
On the RHOBH After Show following Tuesday’s episode, Dorit reacted, “I thought she was grasping at straws. Her being mad at me because I didn’t stick up for a friend, mostly of hers, felt like a big stretch.”
“It’s not to say she can’t have those feelings,” Dorit continued explaining to new Housewife Bozoma Saint John, saying that her issues with Kyle were already apparent while filming season 13 when Kyle got closer to Morgan Wade. “But we had reached a point in our friendship where I was on the outside. She had not spoken to me. There was very clearly a big reason. We were good friends. How do you go from that to being totally isolated and then say that the reason is because I didn’t stick up for Teddi on a stage where I didn’t want to give any life to some troll?”
In her own conversation with Erika Jayne, Kyle, 55, said, “That says a lot about her character that she didn’t want to defend Teddi at all, who, we know that they’re friends.”
“I still consider her a close friend of mine,” Kyle told Erika. “But like I said, you put yourself in a category of not being a close friend of mine by doing and saying those things.”
For her part, Erika, 53, said she, too, felt Kyle wasn’t necessarily mad at Dorit because of Teddi — but because Dorit allegedly commented on her crying onstage at BravoCon while talking about her marriage. (“And you later said to certain people that I turned the tears on for attention,” Kyle confronted Dorit on Wednesday’s RHOBH episode.)
The Pretty Mess author said she felt Kyle was “reaching” by attributing her friendship troubles with Dorit to her not defending Teddi.
“When I found what you said about her saying things outside … I was like, ‘Oh, that’s why you’re mad.’ And that, to me, was too much for you.”
In June, Kyle told Us Weekly that things between her and Dorit were “not good” as they filmed the latest season.
Dorit Kemsley, Erika Jayne and Kyle Richards Todd Williamson/Bravo
But in November, the Halloween Ends star told Us she hoped for future reconciliation with Dorit. “I think that if you’ve ever cared about somebody that much, I think there’s always room for repair, assuming they haven’t done something horrendous to each other,” Kyle said. “I think there’s always a way back.”
Kyle and Dorit had been close friends for the bulk of their joint RHOBH tenure, however, by the end of season 13, it was revealed that the Bravo stars were not on speaking terms.
“I came into this season knowing that we were not in a good place. But I thought, ‘We’re both going through hard times. This is when we should be leaning on each other,’” Kyle explained, referring to their respective separations from husbands Mauricio Umansky and Paul “PK” Kemsley. “I tried that approach, and it wasn’t working. I think that was a lot of my frustration, too.”
Dorit, meanwhile, told Us in November that her and Kyle’s respective splits from their husbands hadn’t brought them closer.
“I did feel very abandoned by Kyle,” Dorit said. “There were a lot of things that were left unsaid from the reunion, and I was struggling with that because I really care about her and I considered her like family. But I can’t say that and mean it and not feel it and not feel like it’s reciprocated. There were a lot of things over a sustained period of time that led me to feel that way.”
She continued, “I felt like in order to truly be able to mend fences, to be able to come together, to be able to rectify whatever issues we were having, I wanted to have very honest conversations where we were both able to put real things on the table and say, ‘OK, this doesn’t feel right. This is not what friends do. What has been going on the last two years? Because it’s very different to the friendship that we used to have.’”
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