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Lala Kent spoke out against Jesse Lally after she was seen confronting him about his “toxic” behavior against estranged wife Michelle Saniei on the latest episode of The Valley.
As Michelle, 36, reacted to their run-in and Jesse, 45, refuted claims of trying to “control” his former spouse, Lala, 34, labeled Jesse a “narcissist” as she accused him of manipulatory behavior and suggested he was trying to get a rise out of Michelle when he brought up a potential move to Orange County.
“I think [Jesse’s] a f*cking clown [and] I’m so the wrong audience member to have a narcissistic person to talk about fatherhood,” Lala noted on the May 27 episode of The Valley: After Show. “I also don’t like that he controls or attempts to control Michelle with their divorce and custody of Isabella.”
Lala was locked in a bitter custody battle with her ex-fiance, Randall Emmett, 54, over their daughter Ocean, 4, for years after accusing him of cheating months after her birth, and she recommended the attorney she used to Michelle amid her own split and custody battle over daughter Isabella, 5.
“I recommended him to her, and he will use Isabella to make her act in a way that she doesn’t want to be acting. But what do you expect?” Lala asked. “The moment you start threatening your child traveling or moving down south, the mom’s gonna lose her mind. So I don’t appreciate that he does that at all.”
At that point, after Brittany Cartwright, 36, mentioned that viewers weren’t seeing the full story in regard to what led Michelle to reach her “breaking point” with Jesse, Lala explained, “That’s what a narcissist does.”
“They have a skewed perception of reality, and they will almost make you think that you’ve gone crazy,” she revealed. “It’s smoke and mirrors … I wish I were a doctor to give you the textbook version, but I just know when [a narcissist] is placed in front of me, I can’t unsee it.”
Following the encounter, Michelle admitted she was thankful to Lala for having her back.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m not as strong or just don’t say anything … and just let him treat me the way he does. I loved that moment,” she reflected.
Then, looking back at her marriage, Michelle confessed that Jesse “had total control over me.”
“It was all about Jesse and nothing about me. And I think he got so used to that, and so did I, that that was just our dynamic. And so once I left, that completely changed, and I think that’s what really gets him,” she suspected.
In his own segment, Jesse slammed Michelle’s narrative about his “controlling” behavior and explained that when it came to wanting to know where she was going and when she’d be home post-separation, he felt he should know for safety and emergency reasons.
“Michelle has the narrative that I’m a very controlling person, [and] I did run a lot of aspects of our life. … [But] I wasn’t trying to manipulate her life or do things to hurt her to make me have some control over her,” he insisted.
Also on The Valley: After Show, Brittany noted that her estranged husband, Jax Taylor, 45, was diagnosed with narcissism during his time at a mental health facility in 2024.
“They said, ‘We can treat him for depression. We can treat him for bipolar disorder, but we’ll never be able to change his narcissism,’” she shared.
The Valley season two airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
