• Season 12 of Vanderpump Rules premieres on Tuesday, Dec. 2, on Bravo.
  • The first 11 seasons of the reality series followed wait staff at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurants, SUR, in West Hollywood and featured personalities like Scheana Shay, Tom Sandoval, and Ariana Madix.
  • Lisa revealed how she chose an entirely new cast for season 12 ahead of its premiere.

Bravo’s premiere diva, Lisa Vanderpump, knows a thing or two about reality TV. (See: Her legendary run on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the entirety of Vanderpump Rules, and her two spin-offs, The Valley and Vanderpump Villa.)

Now, she’s gearing up to whip a new SUR wait staff into shape on the show’s upcoming 12th season, which premieres on Bravo on Tuesday, December 2. After the Scandoval of it all between Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval, and Rachel/Raquel Leviss, the new season has a lot to live up to—and that isn’t lost on Lisa.

The restaurateur got candid about her casting process ahead of the season 12 premiere in a new interview with Us Weekly, where she revealed how everything went down. (Because, let’s be real…not everyone can be Stassi Schroeder.)

“I felt that Vanderpump Rules, it was at its high, being nominated for Emmys. We had great ratings, but I felt like we told the story. And I thought at some point that it became a little bit more complicated to film,” Lisa told the outlet, adding that she was honest with production about “not wanting to go down on a sinking ship.”

She admitted that after Sandoval’s cheating scandal with Rachel, “People didn’t want to film with each other. The dynamic was broken. It was shattered in so many ways.”

By the time everything went down, some of Vanderpump’s original cast members were exploring new ventures, which were documented in the later seasons of the hit series. For season 12, Lisa wanted to switch things up and follow an entirely new bunch of SUR employees, including Marcus Johnson, Natalie Maguire, Shayne Davis, Kim Suarez, Venus Binkley, Jason Cohen, Chris Hahn, Angelica Jensen, Audrey Lingle, and Demy Selem.

“I thought it was time to do something new. And I felt that we had many talks about it,” Lisa explained. “The restaurant business is to actually have access to a restaurant. It’s a very unusual situation. Most people wouldn’t do it or couldn’t do it.”

She continued, “I knew we had another group of cohesive people that had worked here for years. So I thought, ‘Okay, let’s put them on camera, see what the network thinks,’ and they loved them, but the authenticity was key to me. I didn’t want to start again and try to get a group of people together and have them start working for me. That wouldn’t have worked.”

As for the new cast, they’re mainly Gen Z, which Lisa thinks brings a whole new lens to the show.

“They were available emotionally to share the vulnerabilities. There’s some very interesting personal stories here,” she shared. “They’re lovely, they’re excited, they’re hungry, they’re working here. I don’t really want to do a show that kind of branches off. It’s about the restaurant business, and it’s about their lives and how they work together, and I think that’s a great nucleus to have. So they’re there with each other, because they have to be, and that drives [the] story as well.”

^^^ With that, we will be locking in to the new season to see how everything plays out. Season 12 of Vanderpump Rules premieres on Tuesday, December 2, at 9 p.m. EST on Bravo.