Rejoice, Vanderpump Rules fans! Due to the pandemic, Lisa Vanderpump's namesake reality series has been on a hiatus lasting months longer than most of Bravo’s other shows. But, filming is starting up for Vanderpump Rules’ ninth season now, and DJ James Kennedy explains why he thinks it will be “entirely different” than what fans have seen before.
Us Bravo-natics absolutely live for the dramatic ups and downs of the so-called friendships stemming from Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant waitstaff on Vanderpump Rules. According to James Kennedy, who is the on-and-off DJ at PUMP, we should expect something totally new simply because of the quarantine which hit the Beverly Hills/West Hollywood area (where the Vanderpump restaurants are located) pretty hard. He told E! Online:
I think this season will be entirely different than every other season, just like every past season has been different than the one before that. I think that the story continues. And I think that post-COVID, everyone has got a lot, a lot to catch up on. There were friendships that didn't exactly see the light of day until pre-COVID and then I haven't been able to chat it up with some people that I've wanted to chat it up with. So I just feel like this season is going to bring just a refreshing, refreshing new look.
James Kennedy is probably right that the dynamics will be very different in Season 9 of Vanderpump Rules. With most of last year’s cast being fired or having quit, Bravo confirmed recently that only a handful of alums are returning: Lisa Vanderpump, Tom Schwartz, Tom Sandoval, Katie Maloney, Ariana Madix, Scheana Shay, Lala Kent, James Kennedy, Raquel Leviss.
A lot of question marks remain about how the current Vanderpump Rules cast will navigate the new season. Will they address the absence of their former co-stars or just bypass talking about it at all? Who is planning to rise up and take on Jax Taylor’s “bad boy” instigator role on the reality show?
Last season, Vanderpump Rules fans saw James Kennedy make somewhat of a comeback tour. He went to AA meetings, got sober, re-established himself as Lisa Vanderpump’s go-to restaurant DJ, as well as rekindled his old friendship with Lala Kent. For those who think that Kennedy will take on Jax Taylor’s villain-like role or otherwise slip back into his own old ways, think again. He teased for Season 9:
It's been a long, hard year and I just feel like everyone has evolved and everyone has gone through so much, including myself, that I just feel that's it right and I just feel like it's going to be a great season. I'm at the peak of my whole young adult life and I just think that it's going to be great. The stories have so much left that's been untold, you know what I mean? There's just so much more to the stories and I'm just so excited to come back. Obviously I love filming and it's so fun to spend our summers like that. I'm excited for people to see my sobriety and I'm excited for people to see the James I've become, the man I'm becoming.
Fans can guess that the next season of Vanderpump Rules will probably entail how the cast managed throughout the quarantine, as we saw throughout the recent Real Housewives seasons. But, Vanderpump Rules will likely also focus on TomTom and the castmates’ newfound parenthood...Yikes? You can also catch DJ James Kennedy on an episode of Underserved with Lisa Vanderpump!
