Ready for Her Close Up

Meet the newest — and cutest — member of the Bravosphere: baby Kaia Lily! Us spent time with the little angel and her folks, The Valley stars Kristen Doute and Luke Broderick

- POLLY HUDSON & AMANDA WILLIAMS

For Bravo viewers, seeing Kristen Doute cry is nothing new. But today, on a shoot with Us to introduce her one-week-old daughter, Kaia Lily, with partner Luke Broderick, the tears are different. She’s not devastated or angry — the new mom is crying tears of joy. “I feel really lucky, really fortunate. Truly, I could not have dreamed this,” Doute tells Us. “She is the most perfect thing I've ever seen in my life.”

The arrival of baby Kaia is just the latest chapter in the ongoing reinvention of the woman formerly known as the wildest waitress at Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR. Doute, 42, first grabbed public fascination back in 2013 as an original cast member of Vanderpump Rules. Her tempestuous relationship with her live-in boyfriend, costar and coworker Tom Sandoval was the stuff of reality TV dreams (and real-life nightmares), and her time on the show featured numerous heartbreaks and roller-coaster friendships. In 2020, Doute’s contract with the show was not renewed. She lived mostly under the radar, training her focus on her clothing line, James Mae, until March 2024, when she made her TV comeback on the VPR spinoff The Valley; in November of that year, she revealed that she was pregnant after undergoing intrauterine insemination.

(She had experienced a miscarriage in 2023.)

Now on season 2, she and fiancé Broderick, 33, have become fan favorites, and, dare we say, the show’s voices of reason. Her calm, secure happily-ever-after is an almost unbelievable transformation — but this is Doute 2.0. In between diaper changes, she told Us about her fertility journey, the birth details, the costars she'd trust most with her bundle of joy (and who she wouldn't), and how she went from Crazy Kristen to Crazy About Kaia Kristen.