Vanderpump Rules fans should go into season 12 with an open mind, according to show executive producer Alex Baskin.
“I’m excited about it,” Baskin said on the Thursday, April 24, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “The big thing that I keep emphasizing is we are not trying to do the thing that we did before. We’re not trying to make the show that we did before. You can’t do that. It’s very big shoes to fill.”
According to Baskin, he and his fellow producers knew they “would be met with some skepticism” when they announced that VPR season 12 would feature an all-new cast.
“The audience hasn’t had a chance to fall in love with the new group and the new show,” he said. “I think we’re going to win people over. It’s getting back to core principles [about] a very tight-knit group who works together, lives together [and] does everything together. I think it’s really fun.”
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He added, “It’ll be all the things that audiences loved about the show in the first place. It’ll be messy and just a fun ride.”
The first 11 seasons of Vanderpump Rules highlighted the personal lives of a group of waitresses, hostesses and bartenders at Lisa Vanderpump’s popular SUR hotspot in Los Angeles. The last season starred Katie Maloney, Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval, Scheana Shay, Tom Schwartz, Lala Kent and James Kennedy.
News broke in November 2024 that season 12 would feature an all-new group of SURvers.
“What a thrill it is to build on the legacy of this series by doing it all over again,” Baskin previously wrote in a statement. “With profound appreciation for the original group and their iconic run, we can’t wait for the audience to see a dynamic new group of coworkers and friends make their way through life together.”
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The new cast, whose identities have not yet been publicly shared, started filming earlier in April with Lisa Vanderpump, who previously teased that they will be able to live up to their iconic predecessors.
“When you have a restaurant, especially in Hollywood, with a revolving door of beautiful people who are all kind of normally rather large personalities because they come to Hollywood for a reason, it’s always complicated,” Vanderpump, 64, exclusively told Us Weekly in February. “I am sure it’s gonna be very different with these young little minxes when they get to work, but we shall see.”
Vanderpump further noted that there are “some very interesting characters” in the new batch of episodes.
“SUR has been around a long time,” Vanderpump told Us. “And as I [always] say, it’s a show we could have shot 12 months of the year.”
