The Valley‘s Jesse Lally claims he was more than just friends with Anna Nicole Smith before her death.
During the Wednesday, June 5, episode of Teddi Mellencamp and Tamra Judge‘s “Two Ts in a Pod” podcast, Lally, 43, was asked whether he hooked up with Smith after they worked on a 2002 photo shoot for the now-defunct dietary supplement Trimspa.
“For a year or two,” Lally alleged. “I would come to L.A. and she’d be in New York every once in a while.”
Lally recalled how the pair connected after working together. “We were shooting in Miami [in] 2002. And the first time I met her — the first layout was an old James Dean and Marilyn Monroe photo where Marilyn’s naked on a mattress and James Dean has no jeans and no shirt on in front of her,” he noted. “I literally walked over with no shirt on, sat down and she’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Anna Nicole.’ And I’m like, ‘Nice to meet you.'”
He continued: “Then we moved out to the beach and I grabbed her and I pulled her down into the water. We were shooting with Antoine Verglas — a famous fashion photographer — and everybody was so pissed because her hair was wet, her eyelashes, all that stuff and it ended up being what they ended up using.”
After the photo shoot, Smith was concerned that she would get sick from being in the ocean all day.
“And I’m like, ‘I have a ton of supplements and vitamins and stuff in my room.’ And I was literally in my room that night,” he recalled. “She called me. I was having a bottle of wine in the room, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I can come up to the room.’ And it was funny. We did a couple’s massage.”
Lally looked back fondly on the time he spent with Smith, adding, “We were just kind of like two little kids messing with each other.”
The Bravo star previously posted a throwback photo of himself and Smith in 2013,, writing via Instagram, “#Tbt keeping it classy with #annanicolesmith.” Lally was also asked about the pair’s bond during his Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen debut in May, noting that they “remained friends” after their photo shoot.
Smith found fame when she landed her first Playboy cover in 1992, and her life was later documented on a short-lived reality series titled The Anna Nicole Show. Smith’s personal life made headlines in 1994 when she married J. Howard Marshall II — who was 63 years her senior at the time.
Smith, who welcomed son Daniel in a previous marriage, became a widow one year after she tied the knot with the oil tycoon. Following Marshall’s death, Smith ended up in a lengthy battle with his family members over his estate.
The model welcomed her daughter, Dannielynn, in September 2006. Days after the birth of her second child, Smith’s son died in his mother’s hospital room from an overdose. Smith died five months later at the age of 39 following an accidental drug overdose.
Lally, for his part, put his life on display when he joined The Valley, a spinoff of Vanderpump Rules. While filming the first season, which debuted in March, he was still married to Michelle Lally, but the pair called it quits shortly after production wrapped.
“We still had our issues [while filming]. But I didn’t think — until I watched the show, I was like, ‘Wow, it was really that bad. Like, I did not see it at all,'” Jesse admitted on Wednesday’s podcast episode. “We had kind of swept everything under the rug.”
Jesse argued there wasn’t anything that could have been done differently, adding, “Nothing. Knowing what I know now and being with [my girlfriend Lacy Nicole] who is so incredible and is an amazing mother. I wouldn’t go backwards, always, always upwards.”
