Stassi Schroeder's Second Act

Receiving birthday advice from Stassi Schroeder is like getting communion from the Pope. And here, on the eve of my 36th birthday in early December, sitting poolside at a Hollywood Hills mansion—the setting of today’s photo shoot—I receive the blessed words: “Go to Magic Castle.”

I side-eye her. “It's like a haunted house,” explains the reality star, “but with magic everywhere and alcohol and food.” I’m familiar with the venue. It could be fun, sure, but not exactly the over-the-top spectacle, the near-religious experience, I’d anticipated from her. Because long before Scamanda or Scandoval, before Mormon Wives or Love Island, Schroeder’s birthdays were the stuff of reality TV gold: maximalist, dramatic, almost mythic. “It’s my fucking birthday” might as well have tolled like church bells across the Bravoverse, separating the anointed OG fans from the newer reality converts.

Sensing my hesitation, she pivots, quickly upgrading her recommendations to something more on-brand: The Polo Lounge for caviar towers, McCarthy salads, and martinis? Or maybe Sunset Tower? It is haunted, she adds, as a draw.

She keeps workshopping options, trying to land on something suitably extravagant. I stop her. It’s not that her suggestions are lacking; it’s just that I’ve come in expecting a version of Schroeder that no longer quite exists. “I resent my birthday now,” she says. “I feel so embarrassed by how big of a deal I made [my birthdays] on TV that if I were to do that now, it feels like I’m playing into a character or a trope.”

She’s acutely aware of her lore as a 20-something chaos agent immortalized on eight seasons of Vanderpump Rules. But now things have changed: she’s 37; a married mother of two; a podcaster (with episodes streamed on Netflix); a host (The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 3 reunion); an author (three memoirs-slash-advice-books); and an internet personality (3.5 million Instagram followers).

And the most significant change from early-twenties-reality-days? She’s now an executive producer, calling the shots on her return to TV with a new Hulu series, coming July 29, titled House of Stassi.

Even the show’s name—a change from the previously announced Stassi Says—signals a departure from the self-absorbed persona that once defined her. The original title reminded her of “bossy Stassi.” Instead, she needed it to reflect her current life. “It’s not just about me. It’s about my family and my chosen friends…the people in my home that make up the house.”

But just as Schroeder has evolved, so has the reality genre. When Vanderpump Rules first started airing in 2013, dysfunction felt novel, not commodified (consider: Schroeder was the original girl on reality TV whose best friend slept with her ex). In today’s attention economy, cheating scandals, legal drama, and on-camera implosions are practically table stakes across every franchise. So did Schroeder still have what it takes to compete in the new landscape?

Yes, she reassures, because reality TV is her bread and butter; what she was raised on. “I started doing it when I was 16 years old—that is more than half of my life,” she says. (Her on-screen career began in 2005 with The Amazing Race, then TeenNick’s Queen Bees.) “[Reality TV] excites me. I feel passionately about it…I will bleed out for this.”

She still knows that audiences may be expecting a bit of that old birthday tyrant Stassi, but she’s standing strong in her growth and excited for fans to witness it. “The last time people saw me, I was this crazy girl…crashing out, dark passengering,” she says. “I work really hard. I try really hard and I’m constantly trying to build the most for my family, and I’m proud of what I’ve done in the last five years.”

But, she admits, there’s still some edge left: “I still crash out. It just looks different.”

Nowhere is Schroeder’s evolution more apparent than in front of the cameras. The lenses may be trained on the star—both Marie Claire’s from this shoot and Hulu’s, who are filming today to use as footage on the show—but Schroeder is focused on the people there supporting her: her husband, Beau Clark, her 5-year-old daughter, Hartford, and her sister, Georgi. During a particularly sweet moment, Schroeder has to stop shooting to console Hartford, who doesn’t want to leave set. (It’s not fully clear what Hartford’s more sad about saying goodbye to: her mom or the cameras.) While it’s clear Schroeder is well-versed in good TV and had a built-in audience, this second act didn’t just materialize for her. Networks weren’t clamoring to give her carte blanche on a new project. “That’s not how Hollywood works,” she explains. “You really have to fight for things.” It was also because her entré back into the spotlight came with a caveat: she didn’t just want to be cast, she wanted to be in the driver’s seat. “I was very certain that if I'm going to do reality TV again I need to be able to say, ‘No, you can't show this with my kids.’ I'm protecting my family at this point.”

So she set out on a three-year “arduous journey” of pitch meetings and developing sizzles, alongside two producing partners and friends from her Vanderpump Rules days, before landing with Scout Productions (the team behind Queer Eye) who were willing to let her step into an executive producer role. She was involved in every stage from funding to filming. “I have marched my ass into Disney studios and the Hulu offices countless times,” she says. And being an EP wasn’t meant to dull or censor. In fact, her pitch was that she knew what made the genre tick: “I can see where the cracks are. Why a certain show doesn't do well or why one does.”

The result is House of Stassi, which will mark the first time audiences will witness her world in nearly five years—not the heightened drama of her twenties, but something more intentional. “People have seen my lowest moments, my highest moments, all of it,” she says. “This is the first time they’re seeing what my life is actually like now.” That life, she says, includes a role-reversed household where she’s the primary breadwinner and Clark, 46, is the stay-at-home dad, and friendships that have fractured and reformed over time—including with former VPR co-star Katie Maloney.

“No one knows that we had a falling out for years,” she says of her relationship with Maloney. “Now we're rebuilding our friendship after growing in two completely different directions.” The situation with Maloney is exactly the kind of impetus for the show’s concept. “I don't see TV shows out there that explore how when you get to a certain age and you all choose different paths in life, how that affects your friendships and then how you come back together.” In developing the show she didn’t want the glossy escapism of shows like The Kardashians or a completely dark portrait of adulthood. “We’re starving for something that’s not just aspirational or depressing,” she says. Instead, she wanted something that is messy but functional, ambitious but grounded.

“This is what it’s really like when you grow up.”

By the time Schroeder and I chat next, in early March, production has wrapped on House of Stassi. She Zooms me from her home office; I’m expecting a shell of who I met on set—someone nursing an emotional hangover after weeks spent performing for the cameras. But she sounds almost buoyant from the experience.

“Damn, I feel good,” she says. “It felt like one long therapy session.” Reality TV, she argues, works best when it forces you to face head-on what you’d sweep under the rug in real life. “You have to say what you’re thinking out loud—otherwise there is no show,” she says. But this time there’s no drink-throwing-fist-fight-level antics. “We just got all of our shit out on the table in a constructive way, being respectful of each other while being open and vulnerable and honest.”

Those open and honest conversations extended not just to her castmates but within her marriage. She and Clark (previously a casting director) have been together since 2017, even giving fans a glimpse of their courtship during seasons 7 and 8 of Vanderpump Rules. But just because Clark has been a part of the reality circus before didn’t mean he wasn’t cautious to re-enter the fray. Schroeder was confident their relationship could withstand the pressures of TV: “We’re a solid, stable marriage,” she says. Still, she’s protective of him, especially when it comes to the scrutiny that can follow reality TV. She kept reminding him: “What people in the comment section say, it doesn't matter. We need to just know that we always have each other, we're each other's priority.” And like any good executive producer, she also advised him to focus on honesty “because that is what makes a good reality TV show. And that is what people relate to and want to see.”When I ask if there were boundaries that she and Clark had in place ahead of picking up cameras, whether around their relationship or their kids, she says no. Everything was fair game, until it wasn’t, an open-ended conversation. Mainly, because that’s how she likes to live her real life.

“I don't like living with skeletons in my closet. I don't like living with secrets. It stresses me the fuck out. I prefer to live very openly so everyone knows my shit,” she says. “Because then it's like, ‘you can't catch me on anything.’”

Speaking of skeletons in closets, it’s impossible to talk about Schroeder’s reality TV legacy without reckoning with how abruptly it unraveled. In 2019, she was on a career high: Vanderpump Rules had just aired a season that culminated in her on-camera proposal from Clark; she was a featured speaker at Glamour’s “Women of the Year” event; her book, Next Level Basic, landed on The New York Times best-seller list; and a filmed destination wedding in Italy was on the horizon.

Then, in June 2020, amid the Black Lives Matter movement, she was fired from Vanderpump Rules after past racist actions against a former co-star resurfaced. A wave of scrutiny followed about previous egregious actions and insensitive comments made on her podcast. She lost her management and brand deals, retreated from public life, married Clark in their backyard, and quietly had her first child. A 2021 appearance on Tamron Hall intended as a public reset landed with a thud. In 2022, the tone began to shift. Schroeder released her second book, Off With My Head, a more candid accounting of that period and the work she did to recognize her ignorant behavior, including intensively working with a diversity coach. Gradually, she re-entered the public sphere—reviving her podcast, launching a book tour, and picking up hosting gigs for series like Tell Me Lies and The Gilded Age. She even waded back into reality TV in 2025 with cameos on Vanderpump Villa.

“I didn’t realize how privileged I was,” she says of her past self. While it was a “powerful, extreme” year for her, she is thankful for the scrutiny and the firing, a forcing mechanism to grow. “I was incredibly selfish and chaotic and I just feel like I didn't consider other people before I did things or said things. And if I were still in Vanderpump Rules, I'd probably be the same person. This time away from reality TV has shaped who I am now.”

But that doesn’t mean she’s left it behind; the experience still shapes how she moves through the world. “There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the canceling,” she says. “I have this insecurity: Is this person I'm meeting, do they think these things about me? And that's my burden to have, and I'm okay with it. But it's not like it just happened and then I came back. No, I will live with this for the rest of my life.”

Particularly, she’s glad she can now parent from a place of more mindfulness. “These are things that I can teach Hartford. These are things that I can make sure that she is now aware of.”

Like most moms, Schroeder is often thinking about what she passes on to her kids. (In addition to Hartford, she and Clark have a 2-year-old son, Messer.)

For one, that big birthday energy is now redirected to her daughter: “I'm just creating a birthday monster,” she says, adding with a laugh, “so I can live vicariously through her.”

But there’s also the not-so-sterling parts of her TV reputation that Schroeder will have to answer for. For now, Hartford has seen only a sliver of her Vanderpump Rules reel (her parents’ proposal scene) and Schroeder is not planning on introducing her to more any time soon. It’s not that she’s running from her past—Schroeder has made peace with the show that launched her. She hasn’t watched the recent reboot (she’s been busy) and avoids popping into SUR, joking it would feel “like Mickey Mouse going to Disneyland,” but ultimately she embraces it. “There was a time when I would try to escape it and be like, ‘I don't talk about Vanderpump Rules. Let's pretend it never happened.’ I'm past that phase. I'm now at the phase where I really appreciate it and I know that’s why I am where I am. I have a lot of fond memories of that experience and I know that it'll always follow me.”

But that doesn’t mean she wants her kids to take cues from it. “I don't want Hartford to watch it and then be like, ‘Oh, that's how we act when we're 20 years old.’ It's not. I was kind of a dick,” she says. “So I’m hoping she watches it once her frontal lobe is formed.”

It’s clear becoming a mom has fully evolved Schroeder’s grasp on fame and ambition. A younger Stassi might have pointed to Kim Kardashian as a career north star, now it’s Kris Jenner—someone who built a family empire. “When you become a mom, all you want to do is give your kids everything that you didn't have, or every possible advantage, set them up for success,” she says. She still regularly wavers about putting her kids in the harsh lights of Hollywood and agonizes over if she should be posting them on social media. But she says her decisions to film them for the show were cemented when she reframed reality TV in her mind as her “family business.”

“This is what I'm good at…I'm just hoping that, you know, I'm able to protect them throughout this process.” She hopes the exposure and the access from these current opportunities will help set them up for whatever path they choose when they grow up.

Still, Schroeder’s selective when it comes to her career: she has no interest in becoming an Andy Cohen-style host; won’t slap her name on just any product or collab; and is turning down book deals until she has something new to say. And while a stint on The Traitors seems perfectly attuned to her brand (murder, macabre, exposing liars) she’s definitely not interested in going on a competition show. She hasn’t even watched it. “I just go based on gut feelings…does this make me feel excited and peaceful? And when I imagine going on a challenge game show I get a pit [in my stomach].” Not to mention, Traitors is an NBCU entity, and she doesn’t trust the network anymore. “It would be like throwing me to the wolves.”

She looks to peers like Paige DeSorbo and Hannah Berner as inspiration for what Bravo girls can accomplish, but she can’t be sure what the future of content creation looks like. “The old rules are out,” she says. “There are no new rules yet.”

For now, she’s focused on what she’s already done: getting House of Stassi made, filmed, and on air. “Even if it were to flop—which it won't—but even if it were, I'm so proud of myself to have been able to make that happen. That's a win.” It might not be her birthday, but that sounds like reason enough to celebrate.

Photographer Joelle Grace Taylor | Stylist Maren Taylor | Hair Stylist Bradley Leake | Makeup Artist Diane Buzzetta | Creative Direction Alexa Wiley | Entertainment Director Neha Prakash | Producer Erin Corbett