Lisa Rinna Dishes on “Pre-Planning” Involved RHOBH, How Producers Set Up Scenes

4

Credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images

Lisa Rinna revealed the “pre-planning” involved on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and she discussed what producers do before each season. She also claimed that an editor sits in a “back room” behind each scene and “write[s] down everything” they say.

Lisa left the show after season 12, and she’s since compared it to the Titanic. Though she has no plans to return, it was recently announced that she’ll film for the upcoming fourth season of Peacock’s The Traitors.

On her Don’t Talk About The Husband podcast, she was asked what happens behind the scenes concerning the production of RHOBH.

“There’s a lot of people behind the scenes — a lot of people that make a show like that work. It looks very effortless,” she said. “You see us, say, at a lunch scene. It’s set up before — everybody gets an email saying that it’s coming up on Saturday, maybe in two weeks … You know that you’re going to someone’s house, you’re going to show up at this time. They send cars for you [to] get driven there because they don’t want you to drink and drive.”

“There’s usually three cameras around you. It’s usually set up around an event or a lunch or a party. There’s a lot of pre-planning that goes on. There’s a lot of producers,” she said. “It can go on for hours at a time … You never really know when it’s going to end.”

She also shared that production intentionally “stagger[s]” when castmates enter a scene.

“They decide they want this person here first. So there’s planning in that kind of stuff,” she said. “There was waiting in the car a lot of times. Then they come out to your car, they mic you in your car — they have to put a mic on your back — and then they wait for something to happen.”

Her husband, Harry Hamlin, added, “The amount of film that is actually run through those cameras relative to the amount that shows up on the TV screen … the editors go through hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage to find 42 minutes of film.”

“I feel so sorry for those editors. They literally have somebody in a back room — so let’s say we’re filming at someone’s house, they would take a little back room and set up a monitor — and there’s somebody there writing down everything everyone is saying in a scene,” she added. “[They do this to] figure out what to use and where to go, and keep track.”

She claimed they film for about four months and have “no idea what’s going to happen.”

“The producers come to your house right before you start filming. They sit down with you at the beginning of the season to ask where you are in your life — what’s going on, with your kids, with your work, whatever,” she said. “They’re looking for what’s going on in your life, because that’s what’s going to … become your storyline, basically.”