Bozoma Saint John wasn’t home when she learned her Malibu house was burned down by the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires.
“How are you holding up?” Andy Cohen asked her on the Tuesday, January 21, episode of Watch What Happens Live. She replied, “Well, that’s kind of a hard question, you know. It’s a difficult time because there are so many people who have lost everything and it makes me wonder, you know, about just how we can be resilient and how you can continue to go on when things like this happen. And I’m trying my best.”
When asked if she had time to prepare for the fires, Saint John, 48, revealed she was outside of the U.S. when her house was impacted. “I was in Zambia and saw my house on Twitter, and that’s how I found out that it was gone,” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star shared. “It was devastating and I felt so helpless.”
She added: “There was nothing I could do. You can’t send anybody to go get anything or anything. And so, I just tried to make my way back as quickly as possible.”
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Saint John owned her home for “about four years,” but noted that she worked 25 years to be able to afford it. “[I’m] in deep grief. I mean, I try not to compare grief to anybody else’s or anything like that, but the hard thing is that it was more than just a house,” she continued. “It was not just my home, but a home for my family and my friends. I had a keypad on the house, not a keyhole so that people could just put in a code and go in whenever they want. And so, we all lost a home.”
As for how her daughter, Lael, 15, is holding up, Saint John said her only child is doing “alright” and is finding “community” in friends who also lost their homes. (She shares Lael with her late husband, Peter, who died of cancer in 2013.)
Santa Ana winds have caused wildfires to spread across the L.A. region since January 7, destroying numerous homes, schools and businesses and forcing thousands to evacuate.
Saint John announced the loss of her Malibu residence via an emotional Instagram post on January 9. “This is the house I wanted. The house I prayed for. The house I worked in blood, sweat and tears for,” she wrote alongside photos of herself and her daughter in the house over the years, as well as footage of the wildfire damage. “The house that I put a keypad instead of a keyhole in the front door because I wanted all my family and friends to have a code and use the house whenever they wanted.”
Saint John said she found “peace” with the home “after battling with racist neighbors and a community that made me have to buy it in a trust within a trust so no one would know that widowed, single Black woman with a teenager was buying on the exclusively-held beach.” She added: “This was my EFF YOU I’m here house.”
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She concluded her post by writing, “This is an unimaginable loss. I grieve with the rest of Los Angeles as it burns… and even though I’ve found even words to write here, there’s nothing that I could say in this moment to describe this feeling.”
Several of her fellow Bravo stars offered their condolences in the comments, including RHOBH’s Dorit Kemsley. “I AM SO SORRY MY FRIEND. My heart is absolutely broken for you, Lael and the entire family,” Kemsley, 48, commented, while The Real Housewives of Orange County’s Shannon Beador wrote, “I am so sorry!!!”
Check the LAFD website for local wildfire alerts and click here for resources on how to help those affected.
