Of all the women in Bravo's Real Housewives empire, few have proven quite as polarizing
as Kyle Richards.
To some, she's the queen of Beverly Hills.
To others, she's as outdated as last year's Birkin.
From child star to happily married housewife, this is the stunning transformation of Kyle
Richards.
It may have been famously little, but the property in which Richards' acting career
kicked off also happens to be one of the most well-known in entertainment history.
"Thought I might tell ya a story."
"Oh please Pa."
Her first major role was as Alicia Sanderson Edwards on beloved TV series, Little House
on the Prairie.
Richards first appeared in 1975, recurring on the show all the way up until 1982, when
she was just hitting her teens.
"I'm sorry, Carl.
I just wanted you to now I feel as bad as you do."
Ahead of hosting a 17-episode marathon of the beloved show in 2016, Richards gushed
to NBC about how much fun it was to be part of the show as a child, comparing it to quote,
"going to camp."
She admitted to sometimes being stressed these days, by our tech-obsessed society, jokingly
pointing out how everyone on Little House on the Prairie was able to survive without
a cellphone.
"I've decided something."
"What's that, Half Pint?"
"Home is the nicest word there is."
Surprising literally nobody, Richards' family of child actors was anything but normal.
"I did not have a conventional life growing up at all."
She and her actress sisters Kim and Kathy were given free rein once they started making
their own money.
Richards revealed on an episode of Real Housewives how she even drove herself to auditions, adding,
"I was driving way before I had a license.
My mom was a rule breaker.
She did not give a s---…If she wanted to let me drive to work at 13, she was gonna
do it, and she trusted me."
Likewise, Richards wanted to do right by her mother's legacy in writing her show based
on her life, American Woman.
She told Wendy Williams,
"My mom was the biggest influence on my life, and she really did inspire me.
When I lost my mom, when she passed away, I thought I really wanna tell my story of
who my mom was."
The teen years are tough no matter who you are, but they're especially difficult for
young women to navigate, never mind those who have to grow up on camera.
On a 2019 episode of Real Housewives, the reality star revealed how she'd struggled
with an eating disorder as a young teen, particularly during the time she was appearing on the hit
TV shows Down to Earth and Concrete Cowboys.
"It started when I was 17."
"Oh my God."
"I was 99 pounds.
It was like that for years.
I remember times, 'I'm gonna have six 6 almonds today.'"
On the episode, Richards admitted to her castmates that she's struggled to talk about her past,
but couldn't possibly listen to Lisa Rinna talk about her own daughter Amelia's eating
disorder and just keep quiet about her own.
"People would compliment me."
"Of course!"
"And then it feeds.
The more they complimented me, the less I would eat."
Kyle elaborated on her story during an after-show, explaining she didn't want to negatively affect
her daughters relationship with food by bringing up her own issues.
She assured viewers that she'll never go to the extremes she had before, but that she'll
be managing this issue for the rest of her life.
"It'll probably always be with me.
There was a lot of chaos when I was a kid at times, I think this was my way of, you
know, having control of something."
When fans of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills think of Richards' relationship, they
likely only think of her husband, Mauricio Umansky, of The Agency realty fame.
But Kyle was actually previously married to the father of her eldest child, Farrah.
Richards discussed her previous relationship on an episode of Juicy Scoop with Heather
McDonald, noting the two met at a Tina Turner concert when Richards was just a teen, with
braces.
He was five years her senior, but they got married and she got pregnant at 19.
She said,
"I struggled with the being married part.
Now I've got the wife part down, but that's hard to be a wife at that age…Eventually
I couldn't do it and I left, and I felt so guilty."
"The mom would be cooking, and the dad would come home from the office with the briefcase,
and I was like, just like the movies."
The couple parted ways in 1992, after just a few years of marriage, but remain friends
to this day.
Richards and Umansky had three daughters together, Alexia, Sophia, and Portia.
In a 2010 blog for Bravo, Kyle wrote,
"Being a mom is something that I never take for granted.
I love each and every moment with my girls."
"My mom was very strict, we were supposed to be perfect, and like I try not to do that
to my kids."
But motherhood definitely changed the actress's outlook on her career, leading Richards to
take a step back, working on smaller roles.
She reflected on the readjustment, telling the L.A. Times in 2018,
"When I wanted to go back to work after having my children, one of my first auditions was
for ER, a small part…I went in and I got it…and then I ended up being on there for
almost 10 years."
"I feel like if you've been married for 20 years in Beverly Hills, it's like being married
for 100 years somewhere else, because it's so unheard of."
Richards and Umansky have been loved up for over 20 years, with the reality star even
changing religion to marry her man.
As Kyle acknowledged on her Bravo blog,
"When I met Mauricio in 1994, everything fell into place…He asked me to convert to Judaism,
and it was an easy decision.
Growing up in Beverly Hills, everyone was Jewish, and I always secretly wanted to be.
I loved his family, and most importantly, I was madly in love with him, and he loved
both Farrah and me."
For Umansky's 49th birthday in 2019, Richards took to Instagram to post a collage of photos,
writing:
"Happy birthday to the king of our castle [Mauricio]…We love you to the moon and back.
Thank you for being the sweetest, most patient, loving, generous, hard-working husband & Daddy.
I love you more."
Just a few months earlier, Umansky posted his own PDA-filled snap of the couple, writing
alongside it,
"Decades of Music.
Decades with the most amazing companion, person in the world.
I love you."
It's difficult to keep a clear head in Hollywood, but Richards is adamant her kids won't become
spoiled brats.
Even so, she admits it's not an easy task.
"It is really hard living in this town where everybody has so much."
Kyle told the San Diego Entertainer,
"I don't want to be a broken record with my kids because then they'll stop listening,
but I kind of am sometimes…We have these long conversations about how if you want something
in life you have to focus on it and put it out there, like my mom used to teach me."
When Richards and Umansky first got married they shared a tiny condo with Farrah, so it's
important for the reality star to instill the value of money in her daughters.
Richards told E! News in 2014,
"I do explain to my children, 'You're very fortunate, not everybody is as fortunate as
this, and you know it's very important to give back.'"
In 2010, lifelong actress Richards entered the world of reality TV as a cast-member on
Bravo's Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
And she admitted to not really understanding what she was getting into at the time.
"In a town full of phonies, I'm not afraid to be me."
Kyle told the San Diego Entertainer,
"I didn't realize what the Housewives [franchise] really was when I started doing it…I was
acting my whole life, and then I had pretty much stepped aside from that to raise my children.
When The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills came up, I looked at it as just another gig."
She told Stuff in 2017 that the first couple of seasons were the hardest, admitting,
"We didn't know what we were getting ourselves into and when all of this stuff started coming
out that was going on in our lives…I think people thought we were going to be these fake
and foo-foo people, but then they found out that we are real people with very real problems."
The year following her reality TV debut, Richards capitalized on her new found fame by publishing
the memoir and self-help book, Life is Not a Reality Show: Keeping It Real with the Housewife
Who Does It All.
She said it all came about naturally, telling Huff Post in 2012,
"I've actually always been, with my girlfriends, the one everyone always came to for advice,
and now that I've been on the show I get so many questions on Twitter which is one of
the reasons I wanted to write the book.
I get a lot of questions like 'How can I get a relationship like the one you have with
Mauricio?' or 'How do I find a husband like that?'"
"I grew up in a family of all women, so I am, like, the quintessential girl's girl."
Likewise, Richards claimed she's a bit of a matchmaker, telling Page Daily around the
same time,
"I was always known as the dating guru…
My real inspiration for writing the book is that I want to help women have the best marriage
and relationships while looking and feeling their best.
If I wanted to write a how-to manual to give to my daughters on having successful relationships,
this would be it."
"Who thinks they can be quiet for 22 minutes?"
In 2018, Richards' long-gestating project inspired by her unusual family upbringing,
American Woman, finally debuted on Paramount Network.
And the reality star noted just how important it was for her to be involved with producing
the show so she could take a real hands-on approach.
She told Variety,
"I felt like I needed to be there.
Not only do I need to be there to make sure the story's told the way I see it, but also
I wanted to learn every step of the way."
"What started out as an idea five years ago, now it's going to be airing on television…"
"Yeah!"
"Yee!"
"...is a dream come true."
The show, which ran for one season, was a passion project for Richards, who saw it as
a love letter to her mother.
She acknowledged that her sisters' apprehension about the show was understandable, but Richards
confirmed it wasn't about them.
"I said this is not, you know, I'm not sharing your stories, or Kim's, it's my own stories.
And not only that, it's a fictionalized version of."
Kyle told People magazine in 2018,
"Everything I have now is because of what my mom did for me…I was inspired by my mom,
being a single mom in the '70s.
It was a crazy, fun, reckless time.
But it's not based on my actual life."
"I don't even know how to describe, nor do I want to describe, the relationship between
my sisters and me."
Richards remains very clear that the most important thing in the world to her, is family.
She told People magazine in 2018,
"I love my sisters and I would never do anything to disrespect or embarrass them."
"When we were little, you know, we would get in fights and like rip each other's hair out.
So maybe it's not that normal, but it's normal for Kim and me."
But in the wake of Lisa Vanderpump quitting Real Housewives, rumors swirled that Kyle's
sister Kathy Hilton might take her place on the show.
And as far as Richards is concerned, she wouldn't want her joining the cast.
An insider told Hollywood Life, in 2019,
"Kyle has worked really hard to get to a good place with her sisters…And she knows if
Kathy actually were to join [Real Housewives of Beverly Hills], it would probably tear
their family apart again and hurt their relationship."
"Kathy would not ever act like this.
Kathy would have my back like a real sister."
With all the problems Richards and sister Kim have experienced on the show previously,
Kyle's hesitance to include Kathy makes sense.
Kim's highly-publicized substance abuse issues led to onscreen fights and significant hardship
for the two sisters over the course of several seasons.
Richards has long been seen as the sidekick to Queen Lisa Vanderpump, but after the restaurant
mogul quit the show, and with it, their long-term friendship, it seemed the time was right for
Richards to take her place.
During the first part of the Season 9 reunion show, in 2019, which was notably Vanderpump-free,
Richards' cast-mate Erika Girardi proclaimed Kyle the true queen.
"Look at us today.
She is the queen.
She is the one that we're all connected to."
But according to Reality Blurb, fans were divided, to say the least.
Twitter took it particularly hard, with certain fans even calling for a boycott of the show.
According to Entertainment Tonight, Vanderpump wasn't too pleased her ex-BFF had stolen the
crown either.
"What I regret is the fact that my exit wasn't as positive as some of the wonderful moments
I've had on the show."
As for Richards herself, a source told Hollywood Life in 2019 that she's loving her new role.
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