Lisa Rinna spent decades building one of the most recognizable names in daytime and reality television before Season 4 of The Traitors cast her as an Original Traitor, a role that used her Housewife reputation against her from the very first episode.
Long before Beverly Hills, Rinna was a soap actress building a following one storyline at a time.
A Soap Opera Star First
Rinna spent years on Days of Our Lives, one of daytime television’s longest-running soaps, building the kind of on-camera instincts that would later define her reality-TV persona. That soap background gave her a level of performance polish that set her apart from castmates who’d built their public profiles entirely through unscripted television.
Eight Seasons of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
Rinna was a main cast member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for eight seasons before leaving the show in January 2023, citing death threats and what she described as increasingly volatile online discourse directed at her and her family. She’s married to actor Harry Hamlin, and the two share daughters Delilah and Amelia Hamlin, both of whom have built their own public profiles in fashion and entertainment. In 2024, Rinna signed with the modeling agency The Lions, a career pivot that put her name in a completely different industry conversation than reality television.
An Original Traitor Under Suspicion From Day One
Rinna entered Season 4 as an Original Traitor, and her Housewife reputation for high drama became a target almost immediately. Castmate Colton Underwood led early suspicion against her, treating her reality-TV pedigree as reason enough to watch her closely. Rinna’s most memorable move in the game came when she tricked castmate Yam Yam Arocho into touching her amulet, a maneuver that let her successfully carry out a murder without detection. She was banished in Episode 7, the second Traitor eliminated after Donna Kelce. In exit interviews, Rinna said flatly that she “didn’t care” by that point in the game and “wanted to go home,” and Underwood later noted that she hadn’t fought to stay the way he’d expected from someone with her Housewife reputation for confrontation.
Life Now
Between an eight-season Housewife run, a modeling deal in her sixties, and a Traitors season that used her own reputation as a strategic weapon against her, Rinna’s career keeps finding new ways to reintroduce her to different audiences, whether or not she’s the one holding the amulet.