Lisa Rinna Says She 'Could Not Be Happier' with Life Post-RHOBH: 'I Get to Express Myself' (Exclusive)

Lisa Rinna is in a sweet spot in life.

The actress, 61, gave PEOPLE an update on her life at the InStyle Imagemaker Awards in Los Angeles on Oct. 24 nearly two years after she announced her departure from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Joking that she got to “wear Balenciaga to the InStyle party,” Rinna said there isn’t much to complain about.

“I’m happy,” she shared. “I get to express myself in ways that, like, no one’s stopping me. Nobody’s telling me I’m bad for doing it, and if they are, I don’t care. It’s so much fun, our girls [Amelia Gray and Delilah Belle] are thriving, Harry [Hamlin]’s thriving. I could not be happier. Life is good.”

Hamlin recently sat down with Andy Cohen on his SiriusXM radio show where he gushed over his wife’s success. He explained that leaving The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was a good decision for her, sharing that she is now “living her best life.”

“I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the last season that she was on,” Hamlin told Cohen. “That show was so terrifying for her, so horrible. And such an icky moment in her life that she's had to say ‘No.’ And by saying no and not going back, she has now transformed herself into an amazing fashionista, an amazing actress. I mean, she's just killing it everywhere she goes.”

“I absolutely love it,” Cohen said. 

Rinna left the reality show in early 2023, announcing her exit in a simple email that read: “I will not be renewing my contract and I will not be coming back to RHOBH. Thank you so much for 8 years!!!! All the best, Lisa.”

She went on to return to her roots doing scripted projects, recently starring in the Lifetime horror movie Mommy Meanest. 

“I had been talking to Lifetime right after I left Housewives about doing a movie,” she told PEOPLE in May. “We had a meeting and they asked me what kind of a movie I wanted to do. And I said, ‘I'd love to play either a murderer or somebody really, really crazy,’ and they were like, ‘Oh my God. We love it. We think we have something for you.’”

“So they had sent me an idea first that was truly a murder story and I loved it,” she added.

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Shortly after, the writers’ and actors’ strike happened and that film fell through, which led her to Mommy Meanest. The film is based on a true story about a mother who sends her own daughter hundreds of bullying, anonymous text messages.

“Lifetime came back to me and they said, ‘We have another idea. What do you think of this?’” she recalled. “It hadn't even been written yet. And I was like, ‘Oh, I love it. I love it. Let's do it.’”

In the movie, Rinna plays the “crazy” mother, but she said she still hopes she will get to portray a killer one day.

“I still need to play a murderer,” she said. “ I just want to play different things that I've never gotten to play before. That’s not happened yet, so that'll be next maybe.”