Dorit Kemsley was speeding along the streets of Beverly Hills in her G-Wagon on the way to Kathy Hilton’s mansion when she noticed the familiar creep of paparazzi in her rear-view mirror. The 48-year-old reality star and fashion designer – best known for her role on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills – had just publicly announced her separation from husband, Paul “PK” Kemsley, after nine years of marriage. She was tightly wound and emotionally spent. She lit a Marlboro with one manicured hand and used the other to steer, giant shades covering her eyes. It was a candid, irreverent moment captured by one of the mostly forgotten and largely ignored cameras installed by the television network in her vehicle.
What she didn’t expect was for Bravo to actually use the footage, and for it to then go viral (you very rarely catch people smoking these days on reality TV). Within hours of season 14 airing, fans were uploading the clip to TikTok, soundtracked by Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey. “The way Dorit Kemsley just made me want to divorce my husband, tell everyone he’s an alcoholic, drive around Beverly Hills in my Range Rover and smoke a cigarette out of the window,” posted one user to the tune of Del Rey’s “Ride” – a song universally used online to express a sort of theatrical unravelling. “I always knew Dorit had a fire in her,” said another fan. “Reminds me of the end of Cruel Intentions,” a third chimed in. The message was clear: Dorit had unintentionally revealed herself to be just like us – over it, not immune to a stress cig – but still undeniably fabulous.
“I remember the headspace I was in,” she says now, speaking over Zoom from her home office in Los Angeles. She’s in a chocolate-coloured roll-neck, warm and easy to talk to. Behind her is a painting of her own side profile, edged in gold. Occasionally, she’ll stop to sip from a wine glass full of water using a straw, which gives me flashbacks to the show’s infamous talk-to-camera “confessionals”. “I was coming out of such a dark time. It felt like I’d been holding it together. And then I was just like… fuck it. So that was what you saw.” Once the episode aired, people in droves started sending her the clip. She was surprised, but she embraced it. “It’s fascinating, because you realise how something can resonate with so many people, and I would have never expected a moment like that would have,” she says. “Seeing the I don’t give a fuck. I really learnt to appreciate the humour and also the power.”
It’s been 18 years since the first ever episode of Housewives (first came Orange County, then New York, and then in 2010 Bravo launched Beverly Hills). In the years since, it’s become a reality TV behemoth, with RHOBH its crowning jewel (last season’s debut drew in 2.5 million viewers). But to anyone unfamiliar with the franchise – which follows the lives of wealthy socialite women – it can be hard to explain its longstanding allure. I often think of Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 text Notes On Camp, in which she describes “pure camp” as follows: “The essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.” To enjoy Housewives, then, is to enjoy camp in its purest form. A screaming match in the back of a Sprinter. A car-window cigarette in Beverly Hills. Immortal lines like: “At least I wasn’t doing crystal meth all night long in the bathroom, bitch.”
But reality television has changed exponentially since the 2000s and early 2010s. Its biggest stars are now a lot more savvy and self-aware, making those messy, authentic moments harder to come by. It’s something Dorit herself has thought about. “I find that if you try to give what [you think] the audience wants, you’re going to find yourself in a pickle,” she says. “I’ve never been driven by that. I don’t research and look at Twitter and see what they want… I know that some people do.” But also, she points out, reality stars face a huge amount of scrutiny. The internet can be vicious, unforgiving in a way it wasn’t always. “You feel more afraid; you have reservations about being totally free and open because every tiny thing can be misconstrued and twisted or judged. [But] I reached a point where I didn’t give a shit. It’s the best way to do a show like this.”
Dorit has now been part of the main cast for eight years. When she first arrived, in 2016 – with her transatlantic accent, close friendship with Boy George and carousel of fashion-forward outfits – it was clear that she was a natural. So often, cast members appear for one or two seasons and then disappear into obscurity. But Dorit made the segue into reality TV look easy. I’ve often wondered what it feels like – having cameras in your face constantly, especially during these incredibly high-octane moments; break-up chats, friendship drama – but Dorit says you get used to it. “I didn’t have any experience in this before I did it, but you pretend [the cameras aren’t] there,” she says. “It’s the fourth wall, and you never break the fourth wall.”
Their lives often appear dramatic and borderline absurd. There’s one scene, this season, which finds Dorit wearing a giant disc on her head. She’s at a surrealism-themed party, and she’s having an argument with her friend Kyle Richards, who is in reindeer horns made from hair. “You think I’m some fucking idiot,” she says to Kyle, with a trademark flourish. But off-camera, Dorit says, she “prefers as little drama as possible”. Even if she didn’t, she’s encouraged to save it for the show. “The producers would kill us,” she says, when I ask if she really does spend her time fighting her way around Beverly Hills. “It’s an unspoken rule. You sign up and it’s a year-long commitment and it’s a little unfair if you were to have those conversations without the cameras. When I first started, that was really not allowed. You weren’t even really allowed to carry on having conversations outside of the show. They wanted everything on camera. And I think that’s the way it should be. It’s what we’re being paid to do.”
Still, there are parts of the experience that she’s never been able to get used to. The confessionals – when cast members chat to cam, often saying snarky things they wouldn’t say to your face – can get under her skin (“It’s never easy to hear the ladies saying terrible things about you”). But she’d rather know what people are saying. “I like to see when people are talking shit, quite frankly, because [if] they don’t have the balls to say it to your face, they’ll say it in their confessional. And I always think that’s such a chicken way out,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, I like being sassy and fun. But at least it should echo what you say when you’re with the person, and not be totally different. There are some women in the group that will be very silent and not share their feelings and then [it’ll] flash to their confessional and they’ve got a lot to say.” She laughs and raises an eyebrow, as if to show she doesn’t take it all that seriously. “But listen, that’s the nature of it.”
Dorit almost didn’t come back for season 14. She was “done and tired with the bullshit”, having spent the previous few months trying to navigate a public separation while also not being in a “great place with the women. It was Erika [Jayne], really, who felt like my only friend in the group.” But in the end it was ex-cast mate Lisa Rinna who convinced her to return. “I was so tired of this and that, and some of the ladies mistaking my kindness for weakness and treating me like shit and being horrible. And she said, ‘You sound like you have big feelings.’ She said, ‘If you’re over it, there’s a whole world on the other side. If not, then go in there and speak your truth, no holds barred… And I thought, you know what, she’s absolutely right. I’ve got a lot to say.”
I ask whether she’s glad she came back, now that the show’s on air. “I am. It was liberating,” she says. “Even personally, I needed it. I’ve heard a lot of, ‘Dorit finally found her voice’. I don’t think that’s the case. I think for a time I felt broken, and I was fractured. I didn’t have a lot of support from the women. I didn’t have a lot of support from my husband. And being able to come out of such a dark place, and a lonely place, and then to start to feel this confidence and strength… This was the season that I needed to do. And I’m really pleased to see the audience resonating with it. I’m looking forward to a very strong, very empowered 2025.”
While Dorit is happy to chat about Housewives, it’s fashion that makes her most animated. On the show, she’s always turning a look, whether it’s streetwear from Off-White and Vetements, or her array of rare vintage suits and dresses. During one season, she wore a particularly memorable Vivienne Westwood corset with a Boucher print from the designer’s 1990 “Portrait” collection. When I ask her to choose a favourite vintage garment, she says she couldn’t possibly. “I’ve got some great Jean Paul Gaultier stuff, Tom Ford for Gucci… I’ve got this amazing leather coat that I wear as a dress. Some amazing Dior pieces, YSL, Mugler.” She holds her head in both hands, as if stressed. Says she’d have to check her closet.
When I ask what trend she’d like to leave behind as we approach the new year, she answers quickly. “Culottes. Never to be seen again.” And the trend she would like to see more of in 2025? “I love long skirts, I think that’s really chic. I feel like we haven’t seen that in a long time.” I joke that I’ll be watching to see if she wears any long skirts next year. “Well, now I’m going to have to do it just thinking of you,” she says, laughing and then looking faux-serious, before dialling up the charm. “In fact, I’m going to wear it and just know this: when I post me in a long skirt, I’m thinking about you, okay? And you are the only one who’s going to know. You’re going to go, ‘Oh my God, you don’t realise, she did that for me, guys.’ I’m putting together something. Rest assured, when I post it, I’m thinking of you. It’s for you.”
