Sutton Stracke believes Kyle Richards is the “puppet master” behind Dorit Kemsley‘s claims regarding her drinking.
Following the latest episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which featured Crystal Kung-Minkoff, 40, informing Sutton, 52, of what was being said behind her back, Sutton lashed out at Kyle, 54, suspecting she was the one who prompted Dorit to insinuate that she may have a drinking problem.
“You gotta love Crystal because she will provide information,” Sutton noted on the December 13 episode of the RHOBH: After Show.
While Sutton knows that “everybody talks about everybody behind their backs,” she believes Kyle and Dorit set out to do harm.
“What Kyle and Dorit are doing, that’s intentionally damaging toward me … What is Dorit doing? She doesn’t seem like a friend to me,” Sutton admitted.
“Why do you think she did it?” Garcelle Beauvais, 57, wondered.
“I think, again, there’s a puppet master here. I think Kyle’s the puppet master,” Sutton replied.
Explaining her decision to present the information to Sutton, Crystal said that if she were in Sutton’s shoes, she’d want to know.
“If someone said about me, that I’m the type of person to put vodka in my coffee, it felt like the implication was that I am an alcoholic that drinks all the time. I would want someone to tell me so I could defend myself,” Crystal explained.
Still, Dorit felt that if Crystal had an issue with what she said, she should have vocalized that in the moment.
“I think rather than running off and telling Sutton, it would’ve been nice to say, ‘Oh Dorit, geez, that’s a pretty harsh comment.’ You defend Sutton in the moment. You didn’t mention that it’s a harsh comment,” Dorit reasoned.
“I think I said that I don’t think that’s true,” Crystal fired back. “That comment struck me and that’s why I brought it up.”
According to Dorit, she believes that if her comment was presented to Sutton along with the context in which it was made, it wouldn’t have seemed as offensive as it did.
“My intention when I said that was more of, ‘Listen, I know she is a drinker. She doesn’t hide the fact that she’s a drinker.’ It was kind of like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know if she’s the type that puts vodka in her coffee.’ But I think that because that comment was taken in isolation, it became a bigger comment,” she explained.
Dorit then said that her comment was made after learning about Kyle’s odd encounter with Sutton at Sutton’s house.
“Kyle was a little suspicious because she wasn’t used to that type of behavior from Sutton even though that to me doesn’t seem out of character for her at all. And her summation was that perhaps Sutton had had a couple of drinks,” Dorit noted. “I remember Kyle sitting there kind of wanting to say, not wanting to say, just say what you’re gonna say, especially if you said it.”
“It originated from Kyle,” Dorit added.
Meanwhile, in her own segment of the RHOBH: After Show, Kyle suggested that there was plenty more she could’ve said about Sutton.
“As soon as Dorit said that, I was thinking, ‘Sutton’s going to be upset about this comment,’” she began before Erika Jayne, 52, cut her off.
“But Sutton’s made some comments about you too,” Erika said.
“Oh, so many this season. By the way, by the time I heard some of the things that were said about me, I would like to go back and add to that conversation,” Kyle declared.
She then said that while she felt bad about what she said about Sutton’s drinking, she was alarmed and confused by her behavior.
“I felt bad about the comments with the drinking, but I didn’t really know with some of her behavior if that’s what it was,” she explained. “[But] I wasn’t the one who said it about the vodka and coffee so I was like, ‘I can’t control what everyone says around me.’”
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 13 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.