Lisa Vanderpump’s latest venture may also be her most beautiful. In the new show Vanderpump Villa, premiering on Hulu on April 1, the restaurateur behind Los Angeles outposts SUR and Villa Blanca opens the doors of Château Rosabelle, a hotel project housed inside a picturesque Haussmann-style dwelling in the French countryside, not far from the medieval city of Carcassonne. The Vanderpump Rules star has staffed the place with an entirely new crop of waiters and bartenders looking to make it big as reality stars, who must cater to the high-end guests while also navigating enough interpersonal drama to keep fans entertained. With any luck, they’ll end up in the stratosphere of reality television fame alongside Ariana Madix, Tom Sandoval, Scheana Shay, Tom Schwartz, and company, who are currently dealing with the fallout of “Scandoval” on season 11 of VPR.
In a new video for AD, Vanderpump opens the doors to the place where it all goes down. She and her team created Château Rosabelle at a roughly 22,000-square-foot property known in real life as Château St. Joseph, which is available to rent for weddings and other events.
“It’s got this majestic presence, which is what you need for a television show,” says Lisa Vanderpump in the video. “When I first found this château, one of the first things that really excited me about it was the height of the ceilings. That was so essential to me. To have the right kind of atmosphere. Big windows, lots of natural light.”
Though the 1879-built mansion was absolutely charming from the start, Vanderpump put her stamp on the property (in just three weeks) with help from production designer James McGowan. They added Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Pink to the walls in the foyer, which she explains changed the entire look of the multicolored mosaic floor. “I love pink, but I don’t like Barbie pink. I like sexy, blush, dirty pink, and this really fits in perfectly,” she says.
As chef Joshua Weissman welcomes AD into his Austin home in the latest episode of Open Door, he jokes that he doesn’t actually live in a kitchen.
The pair amped up the glamour throughout the home, adding mirrored furniture, intricate wall murals, damask fabric on the drawing room walls, and lots and lots of floral arrangements. Some of the furniture was borrowed from dealers in Paris, but other things, like an oversized candle holder and a Gothic mirror, are pieces from Vanderpump’s restaurants that were brought over from Los Angeles. The pool area was completely transformed, with fringed umbrellas and lounge chairs from Business & Pleasure Co. Some whimsical chandeliers from TomTom, the LA restaurant Vanderpump opened with Schwartz and Sandoval in 2018, hang from a large tree on the grounds.
In the trailer for the show, Vanderpump’s staff seems stressed out to say the least, but as the boss, she has quite a different view of things. ”Here, I am very comfortable,” she tells AD in the video. “It’s funny because I keep imagining myself buying a château and living here permanently.”
