Kristen Doute Kneels at Black Lives Matter Protest Following ‘Vanderpump Rules’ Firing

Kristen Doute took a knee alongside boyfriend Alex Menache as the two attended a Black Lives Matter protest this weekend following her firing from Vanderpump Rules last month for racist actions in 2018. Menache shared a video from the protest on his Instagram Stories Saturday, in which the former Bravo star could be seen kneeling and wearing face masks to protect against the coronavirus.

“Thank you @iketweezy and @ronnyrock you are doing amazing things,” Menache wrote on the video. “Thank you for making his [sic] amazing community for 60 days. It’s so powerful and important. #kneelforjustice.” Saturday marked 60 days of nightly peaceful protests in Venice, California, that come after George Floyd’s death at police custody in May. In these regular protests, people gather together and kneel for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, which is the length of time fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.

Doute may have been fired from Vanderpump Rules, but has been staying close with her former castmates, returning recently from Kentucky, where she was visiting Jax Taylor and Brittany Cartwright. Doute was also spotted at lunch with Stassi Schroeder, also fired alongside her in June as well as newcomers Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni, who were called out for racist past tweets.

Schroeder and Doute were let go after former Vanderpump Rules co-star Faith Stowers recalled her experience as one of the only Black people on the show, recalling when the two women wrongfully called the police on her in 2018. At the time, the James Mae designer apologized on social media, promising to “do better” and saying her privilege “blinded” her to “ow dangerous my actions could have been to her.”

During the July 15 episode of Hollywood Raw with Dax Holt and Adam Glyn, Doute spoke on her firing for the first time publicly. “I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that I have so much to learn,”she said. “I know that’s super cliché and a lot of people say that but it’s absolutely true because I think that I thought that I understood racism but now I’m really learning about unconscious bias.” Doute added she has been “learning about anti-racism. Learning about how we can do things locally to really truly make changes and putting work into your community locally to make those changes I think [are] so important.”