Lala Kent is urging mothers to teach their children at an early age to listen to their intuition as she recalls being sexually assaulted by a talent agent when she was just 14. The Vanderpump Rules star, 30, opens up about her own experience early on in the entertainment industry in a PopCulture preview of Wednesday’s episode of Better Together with Maria Menounos.
“I don’t want this story to deter people from putting their kids in show business because I think it’s important to support your child and what they want to do, but you need to be cautious,” Kent, now the mother of a 1-month-old daughter Ocean with fiancé Randall Emmett, tells Menounos. The reality star then recalls coming to Los Angeles on vacation with her mother when she was 14, where she was discovered standing outside by a “very well-known agent.”
Videos by PopCulture.com
Taken by the Hollywood discovery moment, Kent’s mother sat in on their first meeting, in which the agency recommended taking the young girl to meet casting directors. With such a promising future ahead, Kent stayed behind in L.A. with a friend and aunt while her mother returned to their Utah hometown. “It sounds, you know when I hear myself say it, I cannot believe my mom would do that, but we were naive, so naive to all of it,” Kent shares.
When she showed up for her next meeting with the agent, Kent says she had a “pit in [her] stomach” and felt “sicker than a dog” about being alone with him. “The female intuition kicks in at a very young age and I think it’s important that moms tell their kids to listen to that,” she says. “It’s the only thing that won’t lie to you.”
Telling the agent she wanted to go home, the adult man took her to a back elevator she was unfamiliar with. “So I was thinking it was strange, but maybe he had a better way to get down to the parking garage,” Kent remembers. “He pushes the ‘stop’ that halts the elevator, and he leans in to try to, you know, put a move on me. I just remember putting my hand up and saying, ‘I’m only 14.’ And he backed off and he says, ‘We’re on the wrong elevator anyway,’ and we go back up and I get on the right elevator and we were never to speak again.”
Kent “learned something” from that moment, but it wasn’t something that she carries with her “every single day of [her] life,” she continues. When it comes to the talent agent, Kent continues, “I actually hate him very much. I don’t know where he is anymore.” The Bravo star reveals that when she told her mother about what had happened, she called the agency to “rip him a new a—hole,” the agency revealed he was no longer with them, and she was never able to track him down since. Better Together with Maria Menounos is available on Apple, Spotify and YouTube. Kent’s new book, Give Them Lala, is available for purchase now.
