On a mini-episode of her Untraditionally Lala podcast that debuted Monday, ‘The Valley’ star Lala Kent and her co-host brother Easton Burningham answered fan questions on a variety of topics about her life on- and off-camera, and including the current state of her relationship with former assistant Jessica Walter.
During the episode, Lala also opened up about why ‘The Valley’ isn’t covered on the podcast.
According to Lala, it’s not her choice to refrain from talking about the show on her podcast.
“When I signed my contract and we started doing the photos and filming and we had the air date, they told me, ‘By the way, you cannot talk about the show. Just pretend that you’re not even on it.’
“And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s very different from when I was on [Vanderpump Rules]. We were very much allowed to talk about that show, so this is a little bit different,’ but I didn’t realize how hard that line was where it’s like, ‘No, literally, don’t say a word,’” she said.
That prohibition seemingly didn’t apply to Easton and his and Lala’s mom Lisa, who had been recapping the show on their own before being instructed to stop.
“We had people that were not happy about the recaps happening and it’s easier to just say, ‘Can you please be quiet?’ because I will” Lala said. “I do listen. I just thought I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, then it is getting other people to not care,” Lala said.
“There’s a handful of people on this cast that are extremely sensitive, which I didn’t have to deal with on the last show that I was on my previous show. Everyone knew the drill.”
“We talked about podcasts all the time when we picked up cameras again and no one was calling and complaining and crying about things,” Lala added.
While she can’t talk about the show itself on her podcast, Lala did talk about two of her castmates when she answered a fan who wondered if she had been invited to Jasmine Goode and Melissa Carelli’s wedding earlier this month.
“My best friend since kindergarten has been trying to get pregnant for eight years and is finally expecting a little boy with her husband at the end of August, so I went to Utah to celebrate that and had massive FOMO,” she said. “Loved being in Utah, that was a no-brainer. Obviously I’m going to be there with my bestie, but I had FOMO looking at the content that people were posting. I just wish they would have fallen on different weekends. That’s OK. All is good.”
Also good— or at least OK— is Lala’s co-parenting relationship with ex Randall Emmett, the father of her eldest daughter Ocean. (As The Ashley previously reported, the pair came to a custody agreement for Ocean in March 2025.)
“Yeah, it was great, came to a close,” Lala said.
Lala also touched on her sobriety and reaching her seven-year sobriety birthday. She shared in response to a fan question that her sobriety is the thing she’s most proud of that she’s not really been able to cover on either reality show she’s appeared on, though for understandable reasons.
“Yes, they’d want to cover it, and even if you say, ‘you can,’ you still feel— because it’s an anonymous thing— so a lot of people kind of respect that,” Easton said. “Even if you’re like, ‘Come and follow me,’ they’re like, ‘We would love to but you’re going to see other people who are anonymous and now you’re [exposing] other people ,’ so it’s very hard, so I agree with you that they haven’t shown it.”
“They haven’t shown it because they haven’t been able to,” Lala confirmed. “They were like, ‘Can we film you with your sponsor?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely not, that’s work that I do behind closed doors.’ ‘Can we film you in a therapy session?’ ‘No, because in real life I wouldn’t bring a friend to my therapy session, let alone an entire camera crew to air it on TV, so that’s not happening,’
“But I mean, even when they ask me about my day-to-day with sobriety, it’s just not ever quite made the cut until this season where my seven-year sobriety birthday actually happened during filming.”
Lala wrapped up the episode answering if she was still friends with Jessica, her former assistant and co-host who was abruptly exited from the podcast in fall 2024.
Following listener outcry over Jessica not only leaving the show but doing so without given a proper sendoff, Lala downplayed the closeness of their relationship. (Fans questioned this because Jessica worked for Lala for years, vacationed with Lala’s family and was in the delivery room when Lala’s daughter Sosa was born.)
During a December 2024 podcast episode, Lala stated, “At the end of the day, she was my employee. She wanted to go and move on with her life and I would be a crazy person to not say, ‘Go and achieve everything you want to achieve.’ And people are wanting an explanation. I’m like, I don’t know how to break this down.”
Now, though, it seems that Lala and Easton had a better sense of how to break it down.
“We have reconnected and I absolutely adore her; I always have and I always will,” Lala said of Jessica. “She and I, I don’t feel like we went south, it was, I could not in the moment give her …”
Easton then jumped in.
“Can I say this? Because I was reading comments, sorry to interrupt you, people really can’t wrap their mind around that, like, the timing, they’re like, ‘There’s something deeper, it’s deeper, it’s deeper’ …”
Lala interjected, “It’s not deeper.”
“And it’s not deeper,” Easton agreed.
“It’s not deeper,” Lala said. “She was one of my dearest friends and my rock. On the other side of that was she was my employee. There were things that we wanted to do and build together to further her in her career, and then things happened where the timing did not allow me to give her what she wanted in that moment and she had to make a really big decision, which was to walk away from me. And it was painful and I was devastated by it, but it’s where friendship and personal and business kind of collided and it was one of the hardest breakups I’ve ever experienced in my life.
“We still text and check in with each other because she will always be one of my most favorite humans on the face of the earth,” Lala insisted. “And if I could snap my fingers and give her everything she wanted and more— and deserved, career-wise— I wish I could have, but timing and just things that had shifted, I couldn’t give to her in that moment and I think she was, ‘I have to take a leap of faith and move on,’” Lala continued.
“And there’s no ill will for her wanting to do that, you know?” Easton replied.
“And I understood that,” Lala said.
“…The hardest part was not being able to give her what she wants at the time she wanted but knowing that Lauren [Lala] could, in due time, but she had been, you know, you just start looking and you’re like, ‘But I have it ready now and I can’t wait another X amount of time’ …,” Easton replied.
“And I understood that,” Lala said.
“But I would have given anything because she deserved everything she wanted, but I couldn’t,” Lala said.
“But you guys are talking again and things are looking great with where you are in the things…” Easton responded.
“It wasn’t deeper than that,” Lala said.
Jessica launched The Date My podcast last year, where she aimed to help one person find love over the course of 10 on-air dates. Its first season aired last year. She now works with true crime digital creator Annie Elise.
(Photos: Instagram)
