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Taylor Armstrong stars in the Bravo reality TV series The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and is using her celebrity to change women’s lives around the world.RELATED: It's over! Real Housewives star Taylor Armstrong splits from lawyer lover 'over backlash'
Armstrong’s new book Hiding From Reality: My Story of Love, Loss and Finding the Courage Within is an autobiographical account of her personal struggle with domestic violence, which ended tragically in 2011 with her estranged husband Russell’s very public suicide.
Armstrong has since survived the whirlwind media storm, and continues to live in Beverly Hills with her young daughter, Kennedy (6). Channeling her experience into positive action, Armstrong has volunteered for the 1736 Family Crisis Center for six years, and recently founded the Taylor Armstrong Foundation to expand her reach to local domestic violence shelters across the nation. She was also named Chief Creative Director of BeautyTicket.com, a new online personal shopping community.
From juicy housewife gossip, to authentic book inspiration, a college speaking tour preview and what really happened when the cameras stopped filming, get to know Taylor Armstrong in this DSD exclusive.
Q: Does the show accurately depict the women of Beverly Hills?
A: All of our relationship drama is very real. Unfortunately, our lives are not cookie cutter like people expected Beverly Hills to be. So I’m happy in a way that people have been able to see so much of how real these women are and that we really care about each other. And the fact that we get so emotional is because we are truly invested in each other’s lives and we are a part of each other’s lives.
Q: Off camera, do you think that Beverly Hills women are similar to the famous housewives?
A: I do. I think that -- taking the drama of my life, obviously, in this last year has been pretty significant and severe in some ways -- so that aside, just the regular conflict. There is a lot of pressure for women across the country and I think that our relationships get strained with one another because we’re trying to be moms and wives and have relationships and people get their feelings hurt. It’s probably a little more intense when you’re filming a television show, just because there are cameras there and you find that your emotions are a little more raw when you’re on camera.
Q: The franchise, especially Beverly Hills, is known for drama. How do the producers stage and encourage conflict?
A: We don’t have writers, so everything is just us interacting with one another. They really assist us in getting together in locations, because when you’re filming in a location they have to facilitate that. So they’ll organize for us to get together sometimes in a restaurant or something, which has to happen with insurance and permits to film. So in that respect they are involved, but the real conflict that occurs is all on our own, as much as I’m embarrassed to say that. [laughs]
Q: What are the most important lessons you’ve learned from having your personal life in the public eye?
A: When I watched season one of the show, I really didn’t like me, and I was just a shell of myself. I was trying to keep so much of my personal life off television that I was -- it looked like me in some respects, but the way I was dressing and acting didn’t seem anything like me. And that was a real wake-up call, to see how much of myself I had lost in my relationship. And also seeing my relationship play out on television. Although I knew there were things that were wrong, I could see such a difference between the way, just in our physical space together, how we interacted versus other couples on the show. It brought to light a lot, and I think was one of the biggest catalysts for us going into treatment and therapy in the beginning of last year.
Q: What is the message of your new book? What do you hope readers will take away from it?
A: The book starts out with me at a very young age and talks a lot about the self esteem issues that I didn’t address when I was growing up. Just being that young girl who felt like I always needed to have a boyfriend there to complete me. I think I became a serial monogamist in the seventh grade. Always needing to have a boyfriend to fill a void in myself that I wasn’t able to understand. But whenever I didn’t have a boyfriend I would have a level of anxiety, feeling like I needed someone to make me feel like I was worth something. So I think the biggest part of the message early on in the book is for young women to find that in themselves and to find their own confidence so they don’t feel like they need someone else. Because that’s when you can get into unhealthy relationships, the minute you feel like you need someone rather than they’re just a complement to you. That’s when you could allow someone to control you or to treat you poorly and you stay. And those things, left untreated, can snow ball into an abusive or significantly unhealthy relationship. You almost wake up one day and think, how did we get to this point? Because it does happen very slowly over time. And I’m hoping that the book will help people not run by all the red flags, because the red flags are there.
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