Randall Emmett is claiming that Jax Taylor threatened him after an investment venture didn’t pan out.
Emmett, 52, alleged during the Tuesday, August 1, episode of his “It’s a Racquet” podcast that Taylor, 44, invested $300,000 in one of his film projects — and lost $75,000 when the movie “fell apart.”
The film producer continued: “He then went on and started threatening me that if I didn’t pay him the balance back — me personally, not the company that took the money for a project — that he was gonna out me publicly and this and that.”
Emmett added that he was surprised by Taylor’s behavior, as he considered him “one of [his] best friends” at the time. “I was like, ‘Dude, we’re friends. Why are you threatening me? It’s disgusting,’” he said.
Emmett then accused the Vanderpump Rules alum of “playing a victim,” alleging that Taylor knew what he was getting himself into when he invested the money.
“I wanted to get his balance of $75,000 back, but I don’t owe him that personally. I’m doing that because I always considered him a friend,” he said, claiming that Taylor “begged to invest” in his projects and had previously made profits from two other investments with him.
“At a time when Jax didn’t have a job, [he] came to me in a sincere way and said, ‘Can I invest with you?’” Emmett claimed. “And I said, ‘Yes, an investment is an investment, it’s not a loan to me personally …’ And he knows as a grown man that an investment is a risk.”
Taylor, for his part, alleged during a May episode of his and wife Brittany Cartwright’s “When Reality Hits” podcast that he invested with the expectation that he would get his money back.
“Randall and I had a deal where I would invest in movies with him,” said Taylor, who claimed he invested $100,000 rather than $300,000. “They were bridge loans, and I would get a producer credit. I invest in the movie, I wait until the movie airs and then I would get my money back. There’s really no losing in this, it’s a pretty easy thing. He does it with his mom and dad, too.”
The Bravolebrity then claimed that Emmett made up some “bulls—t excuse” as to where the money went. “You took from a family man, I’m not a studio,” he said.
Cartwright, 34 — who shares son Cruz, 2, with Taylor — agreed with her husband, saying, “Randall, just pay him back.”
Cartwright also mentioned Emmett’s rocky relationship with their former Pump Rules costar Lala Kent. “Jax has been nicer than he should have been because we all know who Randall is. He was Lala’s ex, her baby daddy and he treated her terribly and did all this terrible stuff while they were dating,” she claimed.
Emmett and Kent, 32 — who share daughter Ocean, 2 — split in October 2021 amid speculation that he cheated. Kent later accused her ex-fiancé of tackling her after she confronted him about his alleged infidelity.
“He ran after me, tackled me and knocked me to the ground,” she claimed in a June 2022 Los Angeles Times exposé about Emmett’s alleged personal and professional misconduct. Emmett’s rep, Sallie Hofmeister, denied the allegations. “Lala Kent has lied and manipulated others in her desperate attempt to win full custody of her daughter, keep her name in the press and remain relevant in reality television,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
A documentary expanding on the exposé’s allegations titled The Randall Scandal: Love, Loathing, and Vanderpump hit Hulu in May. Although Kent didn’t participate in the film, her mother, Lisa Burningham, and brother Easton Burningham both did.
Emmett called The Randall Scandal “nothing more than a vindictive hit piece” and “a cheap attempt to capitalize on the current Vanderpump Rules fever” in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.
