When Vanderpump Rules premiered in 2013, Laura-Leigh was there. Like her costars, Laura-Leigh grew messy rather quickly. But once Season 1 wrapped, we never saw her again on Bravo. Her exit sucked because she gave us her all during filming.
First, she hooked up in the bathroom with Jax Taylor right after he broke up with Stassi Schroeder. Then, she brought Jax to her AA meeting, where he learned that she was one week sober from alcohol and meth. He dumped her, and she quipped back, yelling, “Sorry I’ve been f*cking you every day without protection, and been inside of you and told you intimate things every day.”
But they did not scare Laura-Leigh. Instead of running away from conflict, she dug her toes into the smog of LA, stressing that her costars would have to deal with her until an acting job appeared that might help her to afford an early exit on VPR. A woman of her word, Laura-Leigh exited the series after booking a gig as Boner Garage in We’re the Millers.
But now that her former series is getting a reboot, Laura-Leigh has risen from the ashes to spill a lot of tea on all things VPR Season 1. Thank you, Vanderpump Rules Party Podcast, for sitting down with this legend so we could glean the following information straight from Laura-Leigh.
Laura-Leigh made next to nothing on Season 1 of VPR
When asked if she got cast to work at SUR for this series, Laura-Leigh stressed, “We were all working at SUR. I was a new hire. All of that was true.”
However, she almost said no to filming, as her agency threatened to drop her if she “did a reality show.” Her agency was well-respected, so Laura-Leigh did not want to lose this connection. Therefore, she decided not to sign off on the filming rights, but by the time this conversation rolled around, “they had shot so much, they could not release the show without my signature,” Laura-Leigh spilled.
Laura Leigh mistakenly thought this series would “never see the light of day,” so she signed off, as she needed to pay her rent. “I am a single woman doing it all on my own. No parental help financially. [I was] working endless jobs and auditioning and testing, [feeling] completely depleted,” she emotionally noted.
“I signed it to get $500 to pay the rest of my rent for that month. And that is what I made off the show,” Laura-Leigh revealed. I hate this, as the others earned much more than her, even though Laura-Leigh carried several of the storylines in Season 1. Sadly, Laura-Leigh also received zero residuals, she claims.
On Stassi and Jax, Laura-Leigh has some thoughts
The interviewer noted that Laura-Leigh was iconic, as she stood up to Stassi when no one else would. “Stassi did not scare me,” Laura-Leigh responded, but she did make “my life very hard, [although] her anger was so misplaced, you know?”
Laura-Leigh then blamed Jax for his lies, as Jax took Zoe (a dog) from Stassi, telling Laura-Leigh that he did so because Stassi was not caring for her pet. If she had known this was not true, Laura-Leigh would have taken Zoe back to Stassi, as she knows how beloved a pet can be.
Then, Jax asked Laura-Leigh to help him find an apartment, so she showed up to filming since she dug this man. Later, Jax admitted that he had already secured a unit. He was only trying to give her an opening to film for this series.
Yet, this alum has “nothing bad to say about Jax” because Jax “never lied about who he was. He might have lied about circumstances or situations, but he never lied to me about who he was,” Laura-Leigh stressed.
As for Stassi, Laura-Leigh said she “would have shifts where Stassi and her little crew would come in and spill drinks on me or send me hate letters through the cooks. As I am like, yeah, come sit in my section to berate me during my shifts,” she dryly recalled.
Another time, Jax stole Xanax from Stassi, but Laura-Leigh asked him to remove these pills from their residence. By the time I get to work, I have all these text messages from Stassi about how I was stealing her medication,” Laura-Leigh reflected.
However, Laura-Leigh later admitted that without Stassi, she would not have her dog, Halo. Also, Stassi helped her discover “Prozac. Which saved my life,” Laura-Leigh expressed, now thankful for Stassi.
Laura-Leigh also has some thoughts about Katie, Kristen, Tom, Peter, and Lisa
When Laura-Leigh appeared in Season 1, she was friends with Katie Maloney and Kristen Doute. Therefore, her interviewer asked if she maintained these friendships after these ladies let Stassi back into their group.
In response, Laura-Leigh gushed over Katie, stating that Katie is “the most genuine-hearted of them all,” as Katie “is who she is on the show. She was always very open and kind to me.”
Kristen, however, likely used her, she feels, as “anything that would hurt Stassi was helpful for her” back then.
Tom Sandoval, however, helped Laura-Leigh during Season 1. “I got drunk one night at work, and they were going to fire me. But Tom was like, who hasn’t been drunk here at work? Laura-Leigh is going through some things,” he stressed, saving Laura-Leigh from exiting our screens any earlier than she did.
Returning to Kristen, Laura-Leigh remembered that she was supposed to meet her costar at a dog park in Season 1. However, Kristen arrived late. “Turns out that was the night Kristen was sleeping with Jax at Jax’s apartment,” Laura-Leigh spilled. Oops.
When she started working at SUR, Laura-Leigh asked Peter Madrigal out. He turned her down while remaining professional “at SUR. He was nothing but fair, and he always respected [her] hard work.”
Laura-Leigh has lost touch with Lisa Vanderpump, even though Lisa was very supportive of her career. But Laura-Leigh loved “Max, her son. I always knew [he] was being real with me,” she explained.
Laura-Leigh reveals the inaccuracies in her VPR storylines, starting with AA and that bathroom scene
Vanderpump Rules has a lot of toxic storylines. Season 1 was no exception, which Laura-Leigh knows full well. This girl was trying to better herself on Bravo through AA classes. Sadly, Jax twisted his words to make this storyline his.
When Jax said, “I have been to AA meetings,” he lied, she revealed, adding that the one AA session that aired “was the only one he was at. He was late. [Jax] missed the whole meeting. He walked in pretty much at the end and broke up with me. So that [narrative] was not true,” Laura-Leigh noted.
However, do you remember when Jax and Laura-Leigh got caught hooking up in the bathroom at SUR? According to Laura-Leigh, “The bathroom scenes were true. Except one [time] at SUR, I did not know that [Jax] had unlocked the door,” she admitted.
Curious, her interviewer asked, “Why would he unlock it? He wanted someone to catch [you]?” In response, Laura-Leigh quickly stated, “Correct.” Thankfully, after the camera crews opened this unlocked door, the footage they gathered never saw the light of day.
This night caused Laura-Leigh to relapse. After Jax unlocked their once-sealed loveshack loo, Laura-Leigh “got drunk, and Tom [Sandoval] had to take [her] home because [she] was so upset about it. I even lost all of my tips. It was just a bad night,” Laura-Leigh recalled.
Thank you, Laura-Leigh, for spilling all of this tea.
Vanderpump Rules is streaming on Peacock.
TELL US -WHICH CLAIM MADE BY LAURA-LEIGH SHOCKED YOU THE MOST? WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THIS VPR ALUM BACK ON BRAVO?