Wendy Williams Revealed Taylor Armstrong’s Abuse Before Camille Grammer Shared It on ‘RHOBH’
In a shocking reveal, Taylor Armstrong from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills said Camille Grammer was not the first person to share that she was being abused in her marriage on RHOBH – but instead, it was talk show host Wendy Williams.
Armstrong said Williams made the remark on national TV when she was still on RHOBH. At the time the abuse rumors hadn’t made it to the RHOBH storyline so Armstrong denied the accusation. Of course, later, Grammer shared on camera that the cast was trying to protect Armstrong by not going public with what they knew about the abuse.
Taylor Armstrong from ‘RHOBH’ said Wendy Williams was the first person to publicly reveal her abuse
Some RHOBH fans may have seen the interview, but Armstrong said Williams’ comment came when chatter about her marriage started to surface on social media. “An interesting backstory was I did Wendy Williams promoting the show with Adrienne [Maloof],” Taylor recalled on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast.
“Wendy Williams kind of in the middle of the interview, she said he abuses you, doesn’t he?” she continued. “And it was another one of those like, what? Like I’m on national television. Of course, I was like, what? No, I know. I don’t even know what I said back to her. But she could see the dynamic in our relationship even in season 1. And that started coming out a lot on Twitter and you know, in the tabloids and stuff, like it’s obvious these two have a messed up relationship, but she was the first person to say it publicly. And of course, I denied it because that’s what people do.”
So did Adrienne Maloof know about Taylor’s abuse?
Armstrong does not think Maloof knew what was happening in her marriage at the time. But Maloof knew the marriage was in trouble. She wanted Taylor Armstrong to do RHOBH so she had money in the bank if she chose to leave her husband.
“Adrienne and I were close a long time before we ever did Housewives,” Armstrong explained. “Our babies were in Mommy and Me together. And we spent a lot of time together. Our preschool in Beverly Hills we’d go to coffee and you know, our kids would play together.”
“So there was definitely a lot of tension in my marriage and she knew that there was a lot of unhappiness there,” she continued. “And to that extent, I don’t know how much she could read into it, but it definitely did not appear as a healthy relationship.”
Armstrong added about why Maloof suggested she do RHOBH. “And I know that’s really one of the things she wanted for me was some chance to get out,” she said.
Instead, Taylor worked harder than ever to hide the abuse on ‘RHOBH’
Armstrong made it her full-time job to hide the abuse on the show, which ultimately impacted her mental and physical health. “Well, he was never really in the house with me. So rarely maybe we shot there together a couple of times,” she recalled.
“I was trying to hide my reality from reality,” she admitted. “And I was just doing my best to keep a lid on a pot at home from exploding. And then the attention on this show, I mentioned to Andy [Cohen] recently, it was such a different scenario for me being on this show because I would have the tension of fighting with the girls all day and then I’d go home to extreme tension at home.”
“So I never could catch my breath,” she added. “I’m sure you recall, I became very, very thin and people, I was in the tabloids a lot for being anorexic and it was so much more that I was so eaten up with anxiety over my daytime job and my home life combined.”
How to get help: In the U.S., call the RAINN National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 to connect with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area.
