Lance Bass Says He'd Been Trying to Get Lisa Vanderpump to Leave 'RHOBH' 'for Years'

Lance Bass said the other Housewives were jealous of "queen bee" Lisa Vanderpump

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills audiences may miss Lisa Vanderpump next season, but there’s one person who’s very happy she left: Lance Bass.

On Thursday, the singer sat down with PEOPLE Now and discussed his friend’s exit from the show after nine seasons, admitting that he’d “been trying to get her to leave that show for years.”

“I kept telling her like, ‘Look, one season these girls are going to take you down. They are going to plan. They are going to meet up’ … and they did. They waited years to bring her down,” said Bass, 40, who added of her castmates, “they went hard at her.”

Vanderpump, 58, who had a major falling out with her costars throughout the course of filming season 9 and skipped the reunion, announced her departure in June.

“The last year was a very negative year for me,” she explained in an interview with Extra. “I feel like we’re moving forward. They have had their resolution. I just had a horrible time with the show and the women. It was a very sad time in my life and it wasn’t made any better. I just decided to walk away.”

Bass admitted with a laugh that there was “kind of” an “I told you so text” exchanged between the two.

“But you know, Lisa has such a huge heart and, you know, she’s one of those people also that I say, ‘Don’t read the comments.’ But she’s one of those people that she wants everyone to like her,” Bass said. “She wants to prove, ‘No, no, I mean this.’ And you can’t change everyone’s minds.”

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He added that “not everyone is going to approve of everything that you do, so you just need to be yourself.”

As to why Bass believes Vanderpump’s costars allegedly brought her down, he said, “They’re jealous, c’mon now.”

“She was the queen, queen bee,” Bass said. “So of course a lot of jealousy comes in, and Lisa has this wicked sense of humor, this British humor that a lot of people don’t get. So she’s always poking, she’s always making fun, which I love.”

In fact, Bass understands what the Vanderpump Rules star’s “pokes” feel like firsthand.

“She gives it to me and my husband,” he said, referencing husband Michael Turchin. “I mean, all the time. I mean, she’s always making fun of me. But I love it and I embrace it.”

Weeks after Vanderpump decided to quit the Bravo show, Housewives boss and host Andy Cohen opened up to Vulture about what it would be like to see her again on his show Watch What Happens Live.

When asked if her future appearance would be awkward, Cohen explained that he had no intentions of bringing up the topic and noted that if Vanderpump wanted to say something, she could have done so at the RHOBH reunion taping, which she chose to skip.

“I don’t know. I’m not going to do a Lisa rebuttal show,” he told the outlet. “Her time to say her peace was at the reunion, and she gave up that opportunity.”

Still, Cohen is hopeful that Vanderpump will return at some point.

“We will miss Lisa Vanderpump,” Cohen told Wendy Williams in mid-July, adding that this isn’t the first departure from a high-profile star in franchise history.

“I love Lisa Vanderpump, but the great thing about the Housewives is it’s an ensemble show. We have a group of all-stars in Beverly Hills” he said, going on to reference two stars who left and ultimately decided to come back.

He said, “New York survived when Bethenny [Frankel] left, Atlanta survived when NeNe [Leakes] left for a bit. So People come and they go, and I hope that Lisa comes back at some point.”

Frankel, of course, recently announced she’s leaving The Real Housewives of New York City for the second time.