Lisa Rinna has been on a roll lately, channeling her signature chaos and charisma into a bold new chapter. Now the one-of-a-kind, shoot-from-the-hip superstar steals the show in Season 2 of Running Point with a cameo as herself. Brace yourselves: The Rinna-ssance has come to Netflix.
As Rinna tells Tudum, “You’ve got to go for it!”
Running Point stars Kate Hudson as Isla Gordon, the president of a fictional Los Angeles basketball team, who balances her high-stakes career, rowdy family, and topsy-turvy relationships. In Season 2, Rinna turns up at the home of Isla’s brother Sandy (Drew Tarver), whose actor boyfriend, Charlie (Scott Evans), met Rinna recently on a set. Suddenly, Charlie has become her “new favorite gay.” They’re shooting her (fake) reality show, The Rinna-ssance — which might be subtitled with her signature catchphrase, “Own it, baby” — only to be interrupted by Sandy, who was not aware that an entire film crew would be waiting for him at home. “Why,” Sandy asks, “is Lisa Rinna in our living room!?”
That question answers itself, of course: Rinna absolutely commands the camera with pitch-perfect comic timing — after all, long before reality TV, she honed her flair for high drama as a soap star in Days of Our Lives. As we’ve seen these past few years, she’s the most multihyphenate of meme queens. Most recently, she even took hold of the mic to host the Running Point red carpet premiere in Los Angeles. Is there anything Lisa f***king Rinna cannot do?
In an exclusive conversation, we caught up with the TV legend to talk about how she plays herself in Season 2 of Running Point, now streaming on Netflix.
Rinna makes her cameo in Episode 3. Running Point co-showrunner, writer, and executive producer David Stassen directs her showstopping turn. Rocking full glam and a theatrically avant-garde outfit, Rinna is in full diva mode, bristling after Sandy accidentally derails a key shot for her new reality show. “I’m wearing something that’s a bit over the top,” she says.
Rinna was thrilled to be part of a show co-created and co-written by Emmy-nominated Mindy Kaling, whom she got to meet in person at the red carpet premiere. “She was so kind, telling me how excited they were to have me. I was just honored because she’s such a talent and just a genius. She’s such a great writer,” Rinna says. “When you get to work with really talented, great people, it’s so exciting. So it was kind of a love fest.”
Of course, playing yourself might sound simple in theory, but when your persona is as heightened and self-aware as Lisa Rinna’s, it takes real chutzpah — and a willingness to push it even further — to make it land. What reads as effortless onscreen is actually a careful calibration of instinct, performance, and just the right amount of exaggeration. “She knows what she wants. She is a hustler. She doesn’t like to waste time, she’s there to have fun,” Rinna says of how she would describe the character of “Lisa Rinna.” “And she’s game for anything.”
Rinna’s most iconic one-liners ended up shaping her scene in Running Point. While filming, Stassen reminded Rinna of her most infamous Housewives quotes to dial up the exact brand of spice she’s known for. “The thing about Running Point is you improvise a lot. The director would throw out things I’ve said, from ‘Oof, you’re so angry,’ to ‘You never go after my husband!’ All those little pearls,” she says. “The key to playing Lisa Rinna is you’ve got to lean into the famous things that have come out of my mouth over the last eight years.”
Rinna (like so many) is drawn to Running Point because of Hudson’s Isla. The character has a messy, ongoing pursuit of balance — the kind that never quite settles but keeps shifting under pressure, as audiences will see in Season 2. As a fellow woman trying to hustle her way through the fast-paced grind of Hollywood, Rinna can relate. “Isla and I have things in common. But she has to deal with her family more than I would have to with mine,” she says.
As someone who has long put her most uncomfortable truths on display, Rinna offers a kind of hard-earned wisdom to Isla, encouraging her to loosen her grip and allow for imperfection. Whether balance is actually achievable, though, is another question entirely. Does Rinna think Isla will be able to juggle it all by the end of the season? “Yes and no,” she says. “We’re human. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t, but when you can’t, when there’s conflict, that’s what makes it funny.”
Though they didn’t share any scenes in Running Point, Rinna and Hudson go back decades. Rinna first met the two-time Oscar-nominated actor when Hudson was still a teenager, a memory that’s stayed vivid ever since. “We met at The Little Nell Hotel in Aspen. I’ll never forget it. We had a hot chocolate by the fire,” Rinna recalls.
Rinna and Hudson reunited at the Running Point premiere. “I was excited to see her at the premiere because I haven’t seen her in a while,” Rinna says. “I asked her on the red carpet if she remembered meeting in Aspen, and she did. I was like, ‘Really?’ She’s like, ‘Of course I do.’ ”
In her Running Point scene, Rinna gets dropped squarely into the middle of a simmering standoff between Charlie and Sandy. They’re a couple perpetually negotiating not just what they want from each other but from their lives more broadly. Her advice? Take a page from her own marriage to actor Harry Hamlin, her husband of 30 years. Their dynamic has long been held up — including on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — as a model relationship that’s both solid and stimulating. “There are times when we have differences of opinion, and that’s healthy,” Rinna says. “But as I say to Harry Hamlin, ‘Happy wife, happy life.’ As long as he follows that, it seems to work out quite well.”
Rinna says she’s seen just about every meme ever made about her — at this point, she might be one of the most meme-d women on the planet — and she even has a current most beloved. “My favorite one right now is, ‘It’s couture, honey. Look at the tag.’ That one from last year went viral in a way that I never expected,” she says.
In Running Point, The Rinna-ssance is a must-see reality TV show. And out here in the real world, we’re going through a Rinna-ssance of our own. Though Rinna has been a fixture on screens since the ’80s, she’s feeling a renewed wave of attention this year. Her viral — and best dressed — run as a villain in The Traitors has brought Rinna a kind of post-Housewives resurgence, putting her back into the cultural conversation. Why all of this adoring attention at this particular moment?
“I have questioned myself and thought, ‘Why now?’ You take Traitors, you take my fashion, you take everybody liking my memes and things — people are sort of rediscovering me,” she says. “I’m getting a ‘thumbs up’ instead of a ‘thumbs down.’ I much prefer to be liked than not liked. So I’m very happy about it.”
But would Lisa Rinna ever actually go all in on The Rinna-ssance, a solo reality show, the way her character does in Running Point? “If the right circumstances came along with the right people and it felt right — I’d probably do it. Harry would probably say it’s fine! As long as it’s not a Housewives show, he’d be cool with it,” she says. “I never say never.”
Watch Running Point Season 2 on Netflix now.
