One Nightstand With Lisa Rinna

In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at The Blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.

Lisa Rinna wants you to know that the person you saw on The Traitors is the real her. “I hadn't been a Housewife in three years, and that isn't my persona,” she says. “I mean, what you saw in The Traitors is really who I am.”

Rinna was eliminated in the show’s seventh episode, but the experience was still exhausting. “I literally went to bed for three weeks to recover,” she says. “It’s like a fever dream — your senses are so heightened, and you are in fight or flight because they keep everything secret. You never know what's going to happen to you.”

The show was Rinna’s return to reality TV after departing The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in 2023. Her eight-season tenure on Bravo’s crown jewel was a trip, and her new memoir, You Better Believe I’m Gonna Talk About It, is full of reflections on how the show changed her, especially after the Amsterdam scene of infamy when she smashed a glass on the table and lunged at Kim Richards.

“I never identified with that person. I don't know that person. I've never done anything like that in my life. I'm not somebody who likes conflict, is ever in conflict,” she says, adding that the aftermath was particularly brutal. “The whole group of us was really devastated. It was like a car accident had happened or something really, really major. And we were all in shock from it. It was a big line being crossed. Life was never the same. That show was never the same when that happened. It changed everything. First of all, I never knew I had that in me. Second of all, it affected all the women because they were there. It was a life-altering, life-changing moment for me, for the show, for everybody.”

At times, Rinna is critical of her former employers in the book, noting the challenges of the edit room and performing day-in, day-out without additional compensation for clothing and glam. “I think with Tyra coming out with the America's Next Top Model documentary, I think in a certain amount of time, something like that will come out around the Housewives,” she says. “My husband always says this — ‘The postman always rings twice.’ You can't ever get away with anything, in other words. So if something happens where you know it's not the right thing or it's criminal or you're doing something wrong, the postman always rings twice.”

But Rinna is also reflective in the book about her own mistakes. She spends many instances reflecting on her regret for questioning if Yolanda Hadid was truly sick with Lyme disease. “That was wrong on every level and that's the only thing I really regret, because none of us should have gone there,” she says. “The show pushed for it. And I was too new at the time to really be able to be like, no, like I was there to make a TV show. Anyway, I should have said, ‘F*ck no, I'm not doing this.’” On Bethenny Frankel’s idea of a unionised reality TV workforce, she’s lukewarm — “Well, listen, I understand it,” she says. “I think that in that timing and in that realm, it didn't work.” But would she participate in a documentary tell-all, if the time came? “I don't know if I would do that, but I think it'll happen down the line,” she says.

Despite the bad breakup, she reunited with her former boss, Andy Cohen, for an appearance on Watch What Happens Live around the Traitors finale. “I was nervous and I didn't want to do it and I'd said no like four times,” she says. “When I was in that world, once I got out of it, I really had to mute it. You have to really turn it off everywhere, or you can't get out of it. It's so in your body. It's like in your bloodstream. It's like in your DNA. So it takes a while to get it out of your system.

“What I can say about going back and doing Watch What Happens Live is I could not have hoped for a better outcome. It was so great. Andy was amazing. Andy gave me some flowers that I didn't think he would ever would. And it was just so fun. I had a great time.”

Outside of her Housewives bubble, Rinna has had time to offer dating advice to her supermodel daughters, Amelia Gray and Delilah Belle Hamlin. “I feel sorry for you guys,” she says of those single and dating. “I do, because how do you meet people? Other than DMing or like TikTok-meeting? That's a no-no, I think. But I know my girls do that and I'm like, ‘Wait, you met him on TikTok?’ I have one daughter in particular who meets them on TikTok and I'm like, girl!”

The memoir itself is part-catharsis, part-gossip session, and Rinna is unapologetic about how it came together. “You know I didn't write it,” she says of the memoir. “I wrote it with a ghost writer, Dibs Baer, who is amazing. I chose her because I felt like she got my voice.” Rinna, by her own admission, is no longer much of a big reader, but tends to favor self-help over fiction. “I liked to read more in my teens and 20s,” she says. I think what happened for me is once I became a mother, I couldn't focus anymore and sit down and read a book because there's no time for 20 years.”

Below, Rinna shares four of her favorite books.

Rinna read her first choice, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, while moving from San Francisco to LA in her early 20s. The book, which discusses strategies to adapt to new realities, has taken on new meaning for her since leaving Housewives. “I think life is about changing your sense of reality at all times,” she says. “Every time you leave a job that you've worked at for a long time, and especially in the entertainment industry, if you're working on a show, then you don't get to see the people as much and it really changes and it's all about evolving and then reinventing.”

Her second pick is The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, which dives into the supernatural law of attraction, a philosophy Rinna draws on in her life and career. “Growing up, I was not taught about feelings and expressing them. I grew up in a time where you did not talk about your feelings. You just swept them under the carpet and you just made the best of it,” she says. “What I love about that book is it taught me how to manifest in a positive way. It taught me how to change my negative feelings, my negative thought patterns. It taught me how to get what I needed out of life and create the right energy.”

Her third book is an all-time favorite, The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, which has followed her throughout her life. “I feel like books find us when we need to read them,” she says, “Sometimes I read books and I'm like, ‘I'm not ready for this.’ And then 10 years later I'm like, ‘Oh my God, I'm ready for this.’”

The book’s religious themes also resonate with Rinna’s childhood memories of going to church. “I was religious growing up. I loved to go to church,” she says. “I loved the feeling of community. I loved the message — even Catholic church, which is hard to understand, and it's long. I just loved it. I felt positive.”

Rinna’s final selection, Capote’s Women by Laurence Leamer, tells the story of Capote’s friendship and ultimate betrayal of a group of high-powered socialites called “The Swans.” “I would have loved to have lived in that era, and maybe I did in a past life. The way that they paint the picture of what it was like and how he turned on them and how he wrote about them, it's just juicy, juicy, juicy. It's so good.”

Who is the modern Truman Capote, I wonder? Is it her old colleague, Andy Cohen? “No,” she says, then pauses. “Well, kind of. I think he'd take that as a compliment actually. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Watch the full episode below.