Navigating the wilderness, reality television style

I’m by no means a nature girlie, so being in the wilderness is not my preferred state. Especially professionally.

Some of the greatest among us have spent long periods in the wilderness, nestled between successes. There are many infamous wilderness stories: Churchill’s decade in the wilderness between a botched WWI operation and being elected MP, Lindsay Lohan’s struggle with drugs and alcohol between being a beloved child star and having a hit Netflix romcom, John Galliano’s firing from Dior for an anti-semitic drunken rant before emerging as a designer for Maison Margiela.

But one of my favorite wilderness stories to track is from my favorite reality TV show: Vanderpump Rules. Two of the show’s original cast members, Kristen Doute and Jax Taylor, found themselves in the professional wilderness after controversial past remarks and actions came to light in 2020.

For Kristen, she was fired from Vanderpump Rules after her former co-star Faith Stowers, of recorded affair with Jax infamy, revealed that Kristen had falsely reported her to the police for a crime in 2018, allegedly motivated by racial biases. Kristen also faced backlash over resurfaced tweets in which she used insensitive and racist language.

Jax Taylor’s ouster stemmed from resurfaced audio recordings of him making insensitive remarks about the LGBTQ+ community (despite being married by Lance Bass), as well as past accusations of cheating and bad behavior on the show. It probably also had something to do with telling THE Lisa Vanderpump that he was the star of the show that donned her name.

After being let go from the popular Bravo reality series that had been their main income source for over eight seasons (they went from earning $1,000 per episode for Season 1 to $25,000 per episode in 2018), Kristen and Jax had to forge new career paths outside of Vanderpump Rules.

They leveraged their social media followings (Jax has 1.2M followers; Kristen has 992K) to hawk products, from hair regrowth serums to bathing suits, as influencers. They launched podcasts. Jax launched “When Reality Hits with Jax and Brittany” with his wife, also let go from VPR, and Kristen launched “Sex, Love and What Else Matters” in 2021. It’s unclear how much each podcast episode brought in, but neither was ranked as a top podcast on major charts like Apple or Spotify or likely brought in anything close to the 1M weekly audience of VPR.

There’s a heartbreaking confessional in The Valley where Jax says to the camera, “There was one day, and the phone just stopped ringing.” Kristen refers to this wilderness period as one of the hardest in her life.

After years in the wilderness, Jax plotted his return to reality TV by pitching a show called The Valley to Bravo and the executive producer of Vanderpump Rules, Alex Baskin. The Valley was envisioned as an unscripted look at their post-Vanderpump lives, no longer working at a restaurant but rather building families in their 40s. The Valley, then called Vanderpump Valley, was the initial plan for the original cast of VPR, given that there was a fresh crop of 20-somethings working at Sur, the Vanderpump-owned restaurant on which the initial seasons of VPR centered itself. However, when multiple members of the original cast, including Jax and Kristen, had their reputations decimated, the plan was abandoned until recently resurrected.

The Valley premiered on Bravo in early 2024 to solid ratings. The debut episode, which seamlessly transitioned from VPR just as VPR starting with a seamless transitions from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, drew around 900,000 live viewers, putting it among Bravo’s highest rated new unscripted series premieres in recent years.

Reviews praised the show’s drama and inside look at Kristen and Jax trying to rebuild their brands after the controversies that got them fired from Vanderpump Rules. Viewers seemed invested in seeing if the duo could realize healthy relationships personally and redeem themselves professionally. Jax opened a sports bar (or, as haters are quick to point out, a room in an established bar, Rocco’s) in Studio City. Kristen revived (and relaunched on television) her James Mae t-shirt line.

While a full season ratings picture is still emerging, the promising debut numbers (and Rihanna’s fandom) indicate Kristen and Jax have successfully navigated their way out of the professional wilderness with The Valley’s early success on Bravo.

After years away from reality TV, they have reestablished themselves with a new hit show allowing them to move forward from the Vanderpump Rules fallout, which is poetic given the pause in filming and uncertain future for the very show they were fired from. The Valley represents their personal and professional comeback stories in progress.

For better or worse, Jax and Kristen have re-established themselves at the center of the genre that made them famous in the first place. Jax is a self-admitted lying pig and “crazy Kristen” is an undeniable chaos agent. Their wilderness period was the manifestation of karma. But, in a weird way, it’s uplifting and inspiring to see them fight their way back to relevance, to demand they live their purpose, even if that purpose is being messy as f*ck on reality TV.