The Bossticks
Join us as we sit down with Kyle Richards – actress, television personality, and entrepreneur. After her early start as a child star, she became a household name as an original cast member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where she remains the longest-running cast member, known for her candid personality, successful business ventures, and lasting influence in pop culture. In this episode, Kyle reflects on parenting at a young age and raising her four daughters, shares insights from her early acting career that led to RHOBH, discusses how she instills authenticity in everything she does, opens up about family life and personal wellness, and teases exciting new ventures on the horizon.
The Housewife Who Never Flinched: Kyle Richards on Sobriety, Separation, and Staying Real
Kyle Richards has been in front of cameras since she was three years old—child actress, Halloween scream queen, Paris Hilton’s aunt, and now the longest-running housewife in Bravo history. She’s never been fired or taken a break, and according to her, never once called in sick—for fifteen straight seasons.
In this conversation on The Bossticks, she gets into what that actually costs you, why she and estranged husband Mauricio Umansky are still in a “gray area” after 30 years, how she raised four daughters who are somehow grounded despite all of it, and why she quit drinking (and has zero interest in going back).
Below are the highlights from the conversation, adapted from the episode.
How old were you when you had your kiddos and do you wish you had more?
“I had my first baby, Farrah, at 19 years old. I was a mommy at 19. Then I was in my 20s with the next one, and then I was 30 with the next one and then almost 40 with the last one…I wish I’d had more in between, but Sophia was so difficult. Farrah, first of all, was so young and then I had to wait and, you know, I got divorced and then I got remarried, so I had a window there where, you know, obviously that’s why there’s that gap, but yeah, I wish I had more in between, but Sophia was challenging. I thought, OK, I guess I’m done. And then they, you know, they get older and they go to school and you’re like, ‘I can do this again,’ and I’m someone who can handle a lot at once. Like I can have the kids and the dogs and like a lot like happy chaos going on.”
You’ve talked about being a very hands-on mom. No nannies, no one driving the kids to school—where did that come from?
“I was honestly just too OCD and too afraid. My anxiety didn’t allow me to have anyone help me. But I’m so scared [my kids] are gonna be like that and not let me take the baby.”
Your mom sounds like she was a force. How would you describe her?
“She was really strong, really tough, Aries, Irish—fire across the board. She was a single mom. She and my father were separated when I was like 3 years old or something, and she had a lot of pressure on her with her daughters. She had to be tough and she didn’t want us to ever be scared, she wanted us to be independent. So she was trying to be a good role model to us and in doing that, she was extra, extra tough—which I don’t know if it really helped…
…Like my mom was really funny…My mom actually [pushed her into acting], and I’m actually really grateful she did because my mom studied at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and then she was also a very young mom and then, you know, she was wheeling Kathy in a stroller through New York City—that’s where they all are from, and people were stopping on the street. ‘She’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful, she should be modeling,’ so my mom put Kathy in modeling and then it became commercials, and then Kim came along and then it was the same with Kim and then Kim did a carpet commercial crawling on the carpet at 6 months old. So my mom was kind of living vicariously through her kids and moved everyone to Hollywood.”
You’ve been at BravoCon and people apparently go absolutely wild for you. Why do you think that is?
“First of all, I’m the longest-running consecutive housewife in the history of the whole franchise—across the board. So I’ve been there the longest and I’ve never left and I’ve never been put on pause or fired. 15 years straight, no breaks, no pause. I’ve never called in sick. I’ve never canceled an interview. I’ve never not shown up. Last season, not this season, I walked off in the middle of filming and was like goodbye, but other than that…I think honestly a lot of comedians who like their shtick is to make fun of us or impersonate us, they will always say to me, ‘You’re so difficult to do because you’re actually a real person,’ and you know, I think a lot of the, I mean, not just, you know, shade anybody, which because what I’m about to say may sound like shade, but it’s also what makes them great TV—like they’re characters.”
You’ve said you can always tell when someone comes in with an agenda. What does that look like to you?
“When I see someone coming in with an agenda and this persona they want to project—I mean, I just see right through it. It is painful for me to sit through. I will never hit below the belt. The things I could say that are going through my mind sometimes—which I’m sure people wish I would say—but I’m not there to hurt anybody or ruin their businesses or their marriages or anything like that. But I’m like…give me a break.”
The audience feels entitled to everything once you sign up for this. Where do you draw the line?
“Sometimes the audience—which by the way, they’re amazing, the fans are very passionate, they’re like sports fans—but sometimes it’s like, my God, they really feel that you owe them everything. They’ll send me a screenshot and say, ‘Oh, I saw you had this shampoo in your shower…” But do you want to see me going to the bathroom, showering, having sex too? Like where do we draw the line?”
You and Mauricio are separated but haven’t filed any paperwork. How has that worked?
“We’re not legally separated, but we just don’t live together. We haven’t done any paperwork…Listen—you don’t love someone that long and have that kind of relationship with them and just…disappear…We built this beautiful life together, and this beautiful family, and I have a lot of respect for him and I have a lot of love for him. So there’s just been no reason to fight. We haven’t had somebody, a third party pushing us to separate or file. So we’ve just been doing it on our own terms, in our own time.”
Will you and Mauricio ever get back together?
“The million dollar question. Listen, we will not always stay in this gray area, and there has been more talk about that as of recently, I will say…the longer things go on like this, it seems harder, you know, to think about how do you come back from this, it feels, right?..I think both of us, it’s just hard to accept or acknowledge because it’s such a big part of our identities, you know, being married so long, but we’ve kept it so normal with our family. And I could say, you know, for the kids, it’s not just for, I mean, them, it’s for us too, and my kids are for the most part adults.”
You keep your family incredibly tight-knit even now that the girls are adults. What’s the secret?
“My girls are my best friends. They’re my favorite people in the world to spend my time with and I don’t, not ever, not one time when I have all four together, does it ever pass me that I think to myself, ‘I cannot believe that all four of these intelligent, beautiful, kind, funny women are mine.’ And yeah, don’t tell me, oh, they’re not yours. We’re just an incubator. No, no, no, they’re mine. They are all mine. I made them. I carried them and I’m just like I can’t believe it, you know, God is good. God really, you know, did me right and I just cannot believe that these incredible people are mine.”
You’ve been sober for almost four years. What made you decide to stop drinking?
“It was the timing. I had just lost my best friend to suicide and I couldn’t afford a day feeling depressed. I wanted to feel the best I could, physically. I thought, ‘OK, I’ll just not have alcohol, sugar, carbs for a couple of weeks, take a couple pounds off’—and all of a sudden I felt so much better and I looked so much better. Two weeks became a month, and one month became two, and I was like, ‘Why do I need to go back to that again? Wait, I can live my life, have fun, and never have that hang-xiety again.”