“Flipping Out” star Jeff Lewis is confirming reports that his friendship with longtime pal and co-star Jenni Pulos is finished, spilling the beans in a revealing chat on his SiriusXM radio show “Jeff Lewis Live”, airing on Andy Cohen’s Radio Andy channel.
“It’s true,” Lewis said, as reported by People. “Jenni and I did have a fight which then resulted in a rift… I haven’t spoken to her in three months.”
The “rift” was first reported by People, with a source claiming the two had a serious falling out during filming of the show’s upcoming 11th season.
“It’s sad. They used to be inseparable but their differences just got too big to overcome,” said the source.
“They found fame together so there was always this thought that nothing could tear them apart, but that hasn’t been the case,” the source adds. “They’ll never come back from this. It’s over.”
However, Lewis revealed on his radio show that there’s a lot more to the situation than a fight, alleging that Pulos reported him to the show’s production company, Authentic Entertainment, for alleged “abuse and victimization.”
According to Lewis, after a lengthy investigation cleared him of “all abuse and victimization charges,” Pulos then “doubled down” by reporting him “for wrongfully terminating her off her own show” while making “allegations of a hostile working environment.”
Pulos’ allegations, said Lewis, “put my entire career in jeopardy. My family, my livelihood, everything,” adding that the whole nasty mess will likely result in the cancellation of “Flipping Out”.
“I just lost my job. I’m pretty sure of that. But I need to get in front of the story and I have to tell my side of the story. I’m a dead man walking, but I have to tell my story,” he declared.
“I would never do that to a friend of 15, 16 years,” he continued. “I would never put someone — I love her family, I love her kids, she’s a godmother to my child, I would never do that to her.”
Lewis also opened up about the “silly” fight that led their friendship to crash and burn. “This fight was no different than any other fight in the 11 years on ‘Flipping Out’,” he said. “This fight, I never thought in a million years that would ever break us up… This was no different than me yelling at a contractor for being late or someone causing me $5,000 of repairs.”
At the root of the problem: Pulos’ contention that her work on “Flipping Out” was holding back her acting career, and after what Lewis characterized as a “civil” followup conversation, he felt “this fight, or argument, it actually ended up yielding positive results.”
Added Lewis: “We had lunch together, we talked it through. We made the decision. And even though she didn’t say, ‘I’m moving on’ — I’m the one that had to use those words — it looked like a sense of relief for both of us. This is what we had to do. I felt like it was a very successful meeting.”
Meanwhile, Lewis had one more bombshell to drop: Pulos hasn’t actually worked for his firm, Jeff Lewis Design, for several years, but had been employed the network.
“Jenni has not worked for me. She has not been working for me for several, several seasons. She is working for Bravo,” Lewis said, apologizing to viewers for the show’s chicanery that made it seem as if she did work for him. “These are my employees, these are my clients, these are my houses, this is my life, but she is employed by Bravo,” he clarified. “She shows up the day of filming, she leaves the day we are done filming. She doesn’t work for me seven months out of the year. She’s not on my payroll.”
According to People, reps for Bravo and Pulos declined to comment, while Authentic Entertainment did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
