The Vanderpump cast loves the sitcom Friends; Lisa Vanderpump has called Vanderpump Rules “Friends on steroids.”

THERE WERE NO BRAVO CAMERAS around as the girls were tanning and getting their nails done when we met in October. Vanderpump mostly shoots in the summer months, with episodes often wrapping before filming the reunion in March. The beauty routines were in preparation for the next day, when they would film the show’s seventh season main titles at SUR. These are the very over-the-top opening credits, in which the cast is tasked with looking sultrily into the camera, performing various typical activities (mostly mixing and carrying drinks) in slow motion, before posing for a large group portrait at the end, in which Lisa sits front and center. The show’s theme song tells us, “These are the best days of our lives.”

While Stassi (magnetic personality, very firm handshake) and I waited for Brittany and Katie to get dressed (upstairs, and down the hall, respectively—Brittany and Jax moved into Tom and Katie’s building last year), Stassi complained about being hungover. She still had the most energy in the room. Stassi is the show’s Tracy Flick disguised as Regina George, the wittiest—and most cutting—of the group. She made a dramatic exit after a season three sex-tape scandal only to return, hat in hand, soon after, which ended up getting her out of having to work at SUR, though she endured a long antihero arc. She and Katie didn’t speak for a year and a half.

A New Orleans native, Stassi is also the only member of the cast with previous reality TV experience (aside from a few who moonlighted on The Hills). In 2005, she appeared on The Amazing Race; then in 2008, at 19, she was on a show called Queen Bees, in which bossy, self-obsessed girls from across the country were supposed to turn their behavior around for a chance at $25,000.

After a quick tour of Jax’s man cave, resplendent with framed hockey jerseys, where Brittany had hung her ceremonial Hooters sash from a lamp, the group walked to brunch at The Belmont, a gastro-pub type bar where the Vanderpump gang often hangs out. A short disagreement about where to sit occurred; Brittany was worried about her tan running if she sat outside, but sat anyway, until the girls realized she was annoyed. “Sometimes you’ve just got to speak up and say, ‘No, I want to fucking go in,’ Brit,” Stassi chided affectionately. The OG Vanderpump girls treat Brittany (who arrived a few years in) like a kind of precious doll, both for her sweet disposition and for the fact that she, somehow, has tamed Jax, which is tantamount to house training a rhinoceros. Their engagement was filmed for season seven.

“I never wanted to be on TV. I never wanted to be an actor or an actress,” Brittany, who is 29, said once we were seated in a booth inside. Everyone had to be up early (10:00 a.m.) the next day, so Brittany had a tequila shot; Katie and Stassi had Aperol spritzes. Brittany didn’t even really watch Bravo before she was on it; she had heard what Vanderpump Rules was about, “and why in the world would I ever want to go watch that?” But she met Jax in Vegas (where else?) and he coaxed her to move to Los Angeles, where she got a job at SUR, which also means a job on Vanderpump Rules. Hooters was on her résumé.

Between the three women, two of them had shared a partner, and two of them had fallen out. In the real world, not to be confused with the reality world, they might never have to see each other again. Instead, inconceivably, they were best friends. Even some of their small dogs are related. “It’s like going to therapy 24/7,” Stassi said of airing everything out on camera. Katie agreed. “I feel like our friendships and relationships are so solid because of the things, the traumatic things, that happen on the show. Because we’re forced to talk about it more and talk and from every angle and defend yourself and be accountable.”

Katie has had some of her most personal moments aired on the show, including her wedding last year, to Schwartz, which seemed, at moments, like it wasn’t going to happen, not least because her fiancé kept kissing other women. She earned the nickname “Tequila Katie” for a few drunken outbursts and something called “rage texting”: “Being called a drunk for two years,” she recalled, “was not very fun, because I’m not a drunk.” Instead, Katie, delightfully chill, actually seemed to have the healthiest attitude about being on the show: mostly grateful but also tired. “I always say I’m not doing this show for my health.” Katie is also the only cast member who has Instagram DMed with Vanderpump fan Rihanna.

Of course, the obvious payoff of sticking it out on Vanderpump regardless of public humiliation is the “platform,” a word that has come to mean, in reality parlance, the ability to sell products. Every cast member has outside gigs, be it a makeup line (Katie), a podcast (Stassi), or promoting sponsored content on Instagram (everyone). Katie, Stassi, and Brittany have more than 3 million Instagram followers combined. The platform means trolls, too, which affects the women more than their male counterparts. “That’s the worst part of what we do,” complained Brittany, who, as a Christian, gets her own subset of Christian trolls. Katie reported losing 300 followers after posting on Instagram in support of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who had just finished testifying to Congress against Brett Kavanaugh, which surprised Stassi, who cried out, “I haven’t seen that in the group chat!”

Unlike actors, real people grow up, or at least they try; the human body can only survive on Red Bull and Xanax for so long. And in its upcoming season, the Vanderpump cast will finally be able to shed at least one production constriction: They will be allowed to stop working at SUR, or, at least, to work less. Much of that is because the Toms, Schwartz and Sandoval, went into business last season with Lisa and her husband, Ken Todd, on their latest restaurant, TomTom, so they are now, instead of bartenders, minority owners, at a 5 percent stake.

And it’s partially because actually serving food has become too difficult with the notoriety of the show; now, it is only feasible for the cast to moonlight at SUR and Pump, another restaurant, opened in 2014, to greet fans, and run a few drinks. “It’s mostly like hosting,” Brittany described. She and Katie are still technically on staff; the next day, they would have to wear the old SUR uniform, a translucent paisley-printed scarf, essentially, worn as a halter dress. “You bust your ass as a waitress so you don’t have to waitress anymore,” Katie said, “but now I’m forever a waitress.”