Lisa Vanderpump: ‘I’ve been given a platform in life – now I have a duty to help others’

Some houses have porches, other houses have basketball hoops in the driveways and others boast a bird bath in the front garden.

Villa Rosa has a moat populated by swans and turtles.

Avoid the sometimes overzealous welcome of those swans, pass through the mottled shade of two willow trees that arch over a wooden bridge and, all rather majestically, it leads you to the front door of Lisa Vanderpump.

This is no ordinary house.

And Lisa Vanderpump is no ordinary woman.

Vanderpump herself, perhaps predictably for anyone who has tuned into one of her hit reality TV shows, is sipping a cup of tea in the decadent surroundings of her Beverly Hills home as we sit down to discuss restaurants and razzle-dazzle. Or at least, that is the plan.

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Conversation doesn’t so much stray from the planned topics as deviate wildly, like one of Vanderpump’s gaggle of impeccably groomed dogs darting across the room and back.

Things begin with her burgeoning restaurant empire – now four in Los Angeles and a new cocktail bar in Las Vegas that has, since the interview, enjoyed a star-studded opening – and what separates her establishments from the rest. Talk strays to Brexit, Donald Trump and natural disasters (insert your own punchline here) and oscillates from side-splitting to tear-jerking.

Often you arrive somewhere with a plan and that goes completely out of the window. Other times, these interviews goes exactly as you’d expected.

In the case of Lisa Vanderpump, neither is true. But to find out how we get to that point you first have to understand the success of Vanderpump. And when you’re doing that, you can’t really just look at the restaurants or the television shows or the social media omnipresence; the hospitality empire branching out and the millions rolling in. You must take them all together.

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The reason I was so keen to meet Vanderpump and discuss her success is that, in many ways, it feels like she might have short-circuited the entertainment industry a little. I have a suspicion that this former actress, who is one of those people it is hard to imagine looking anything but utterly immaculate, may have stumbled across a cheat code in the 2019 digital economy.

Arriving with the theory that the restaurants benefits from the television shows, which in turn benefit from the social media presence, which in turn benefits from the TV shows, it feels like Vanderpump – along with husband Ken Todd – have created a remarkable cycle of self-sustaining success that doesn’t look possible to break.

The glamorous raft of self-created stars that fall under the Vanderpump umbrella are the greatest marketing tool a Los Angeles restaurant could dream of and they are all ready, at the touch of a button, to help out the hand that has fed them their dreams by sending a message out to a combined 32 million people.

Sitting down to find out more, I soon discover I have missed out a step from that cyclical diagram in my head. For Lisa, it’s the most important of them all.

“The dogs we have in our rescue centre have been pulled from kill shelters,” says Lisa Vanderpump, eyes wide and engaged.

“They’re owner surrenders, they’re victims of abuse, so, we’ve gone in and saved them.

“We take them just before they’re euthanised.”

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Vanderpump Dogs, on West 3rd Street, is less of a dog shelter and more of a luxury spa for canines. As Lisa describes the shelter that carries her name, it sounds more like a five-star hotel than anything you’d see at Battersea Dogs’ Home.

“They all live in living rooms. You walk in to the centre and it’s very much like this feeling – you have jazz playing, velvet sofas and chandeliers, puppy bakery and grooming.

“A lot of fabulous products and doggie bags, and carriers and clothes, and leash and collars.

“All the profits support the centre. We’ve just put in an agility park on the rooftop so they don’t have to walk across the street.

“So, you know, with living rooms and just, little games for them to play, all the beautiful fake turf grass where they can play, that’s been really good.”

The idea, Vanderpump says, was to “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to rescue centres.

“I think a lot of people felt that going to a rescue centre was, it could be too depressing, it could be intimidating.”

What she has created is a plush home for maltreated dogs to enjoy themselves and live again, rather than a dimly-lit hall of cages where they simply survive. It is the same care that is taken on the interior design of Vanderpump’s restaurants and the result is a room full of happy pups whose lives have been changed.

Unfortunately, the picture around the world is not quite as cheery. Vanderpump has spent years fighting the Yulin Dog Meat Festival and even produced a documentary to shine a light on the animal atrocities there. Closer to home, she helped write legislation through Congress that will save the lives of animals in America.

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H.Res.401 was worked on for years by Vanderpump and Congressman Alcee Hastings, eventually passing in September to outlaw the trade of dog and cat meat.

Charity work doesn’t end with animals, though.

The 58-year-old has also been a huge advocate for LGBT rights, regularly appearing atop floats at LA’s Pride parade, as well as supporting Route 91 Strong, a charity dedicated to helping the survivors of mass shootings.

She has been named LGBT Ally of the Year by Equality California, Woman of the Year by California’s state assembly and was given a star on the Walk of Stars in Palm Springs, one of the state’s gay hotspots.

Philanthropy has become as much of a hallmark for Vanderpump as the plush interiors of her restaurants, which is where you begin to realise that one couldn’t happen without the other.

Once you enter Villa Rosa via a pair of floor-to-ceiling glass doors, the décor is immediately stunning – yet difficult to describe.

Not of one style or era, the house is a perfect mélange of ornaments, pictures and trinkets. Flowers play a big role in the decadence that maybe shouldn’t work, but ultimately makes the house sing from every wall and surface.

“For the most part, everything in here is created and designed by me.

“Some people wouldn’t necessarily put an art deco bar next to an 18th century statue over there in the corner.”

A rose pink fingernail directs my gaze towards a polished wood bar that occupies one corner of the vast lounge. The style works, just don’t ask why.

On the coffee table are a raft of thick books, loaded with pictures of Ken Todd and Lisa Vanderpump’s children, family holidays, dogs (of course) and charity work.

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“My charity work is so important to me because I have been given a rare opportunity to help people,” says the self-described Dulwich girl. And after all of the questions digging into cocktails and cocker spaniels earlier on, that is probably the point here.

In trying to break down the elements of Vanderpump’s remarkable Stateside success, it becomes clear that the bonus factor might be the most important.

The restaurants and social media and television shows are symbiotic, they’re all mutually helpful in that they feed each other and benefit from each other. They all, however, feed into the philanthropy.

Route 91 Strong recently held a vigil on the first anniversary of the Las Vegas shooting at Pump, one of Vanderpump’s WeHo restaurants. For some survivors of that attack, it is still too raw, too painful, to go back to Vegas – where loved ones, friends or family perished – but the event in Los Angeles honouring the victims was a fundraising success.

It is nights like that which probably sum up Vanderpump’s universe best – a philanthropic exercise that made the most of what she has done with her world.

From being born in Kent, to acting, to living in France and then returning to America to, seemingly, conquer LA, it is not her restaurants or TV shows or Instagram or dogs that define her – but they all greatly contribute to the person.

“Call it fame, call it celebrity, call it what you want,“ she says with a finality.

“I think if you’ve been afforded a platform in life then you have a responsibility to help others. A duty, even.

“That’s all I’m doing.”