Vail Bloom claimed that she had the chance to star in her own reality show after exiting Vanderpump Rules but ultimately turned it down.
“They offered me my own reality show at Bravo, but I said no,” Bloom, 40, said on the Friday, July 28, episode of the “Soap Opera Digest” podcast. “I don’t want to be ‘Vail Bloom.’ I need a script. It’s much more comfortable playing someone else than playing yourself on television. And that didn’t even feel like playing myself.”
Bloom got her start on the soap opera The Young and the Restless where she played Heather Stevens from 2007 to 2010. Her time on the series also scored her a Daytime Emmy nomination. Four years after her departure, Bloom joined Pump Rules for season 3 as one of the hostesses at SUR. However, Bloom revealed she wasn’t hired as part of the restaurant staff.
“I knew what I had to do, I had a function, I had a job, you know? I wasn’t actually a host,” she explained. “I didn’t get a paycheck from SUR, I got a paycheck from the production company, but everyone else genuinely got themselves into that much trouble. That was authentic.”
As for how Bloom got the gig in the first place, she admitted she spent a lot of time at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant. She was close friends with some of the staff who weren’t heavily involved on the show. One day, one of the executive producers approached her about the idea.
“So he asked if I wanted to just come, you know, hang out with my friends, but just kind of do stuff to help from a more traditional theatrical point of view, like, move the scene along, give it an arc, catalyze, so there can be a start, finish and an end,” she said. “And then also if things come up to feign innocence and genuinely ask questions because I didn’t know a lot of the drama. I had never seen an episode of it. I would steer clear of a lot of the drama that I would see erupting in the restaurant. I would go in my corner and meditate or something.”
Bloom stayed on the show for one season and was ultimately replaced by Lala Kent who has been a staple on the Bravo series since. Following her time on Pump Rules, Bloom went on to snag roles in several films including Too Late, Surviving the Wild, The Ghost Beyond and Orphan House. In 2023, she returned to The Young and the Restless to reprise her role.
Her brief time in the Bravo realm was not what Bloom expected. “The high [of the show] was that they portrayed me pretty well,” she said. “The low was realizing how many frickin’ people watch this show! I don’t know if I would have done it had I realized that.”
Despite being on the periphery of the onscreen drama, Bloom added, she’s still approached by superfans.
“It’s a funny thing. I was just at a fifth birthday with my daughter and maybe two and a half hours into hanging out with the moms, drinking rosé in the kitchen while there’s kids outside, [one mom] was like, ‘And I just have to ask you. Huge Vanderpump fan …’” she recalled. “Not that many [people] talk to me about it, but I realize when they do, they’ve been thinking about it the whole time. It’s kind of epic.”
