Ally Lewber Runs On Intuition

In the lead-up to her 30th birthday, Ally Lewber started craving a big change. She’d been living in Los Angeles for nearly a decade, with a solid group of friends and a growing career as an astrologer and singer-songwriter. “Everything was good — perfect, really,” she says. But something in the universe was telling her to pivot. “Uranus, the planet of plot twists and change, was moving into my fourth house, and then my Saturn Return ended. So I knew something in my home life was going to change.”

After a series of unfortunate events last December, including her StarStruck podcast being canceled and her car getting stolen, Lewber made a decision: She was going to move across the country, alone, to start fresh. She ended up in Charleston, South Carolina, where she signed a lease in January, just weeks before turning 30. “I still don't even know if the move was right, but I think that's OK,” she says. “There was nothing to lose or gain, really. I just wanted to try it.”

Nine months into 2026, Lewber is still fully living in the moment, embracing her single era and not worrying too much about what comes next. We’re having lunch at The Wilson in NoMad, Manhattan, during her five-day New York Fashion Week visit. She’s been hanging out with friends like Southern Hospitality’s Maddi Reese, and is headed to see her former Vanderpump Rules castmate Ariana Madix star in Just In Time on Broadway. “It honestly didn’t hit me until this month how much has changed,” she says. Between a fresh home base and a new reality TV gig that brought her an even bigger audience, she’s had a year of trying new things and seeing what sticks.

You would have been the whistleblower, too.

Bravo fans will know Lewber from her two-season stint on Vanderpump Rules, which began when she started dating longtime main cast member James Kennedy in early 2022.

The two met through one of Lewber’s friends while she was living in Los Angeles and studying to be a meteorologist. She was familiar with the show from months of marathon-watching it during COVID, but filming with Kennedy and his friends was a whole new ballgame. “He really wanted me to do it with him, which at first I was really scared of. I was like, ‘No, you go to work,’” she recalls. “Then I quickly realized reality TV films all the time, and it was like, ‘Oh, they have to actually show his life.’”

She worried about ending up in the middle of explosive arguments (“I’m super not a conflict person”), but thankfully, that wasn’t the case. “I did end up really liking it — it was actually fun, and everyone was nice.” Viewers loved her as a level-headed girls’ girl who got along with the rest of the cast.

Despite her resistance to discord, Lewber made her mark during the show’s biggest scandal, when fans dubbed her the “whistleblower” of Tom Sandoval’s affair with Raquel Leviss after she clocked the two out dancing together in Season 10. (When I ask about this, Lewber laughs and jokes, “You would have been the whistleblower, too. Anybody outside that group would have been. I had a normal people rulebook, and that was odd behavior.”) The media frenzy brought her a following that helped kick-start her astrology career, but it came at a personal cost. “I was witnessing them all being very hurt by this. I think they knew the friend group would never be the same, and the show was going to end. It was just a lot of everything.”

Sure enough, in November 2024, Bravo announced VPR would return with an entirely new cast for Season 12. In January 2025, Lewber and Kennedy broke up after three years together. She didn’t have her sights set on doing reality TV again, but she wasn’t opposed to it, either. When her manager mentioned Netflix’s dating series Perfect Match, Lewber initially laughed. “I was like, 'Charlie, literally what?’ Charlie knows me. I'm shy.” She decided to give the casting call a chance, but with stipulations. “I basically told them, 'I'm looking for literally nothing. I would go to have fun and get a tan.’ They were like, ‘That's perfect.’”

Lewber’s casting on Season 4 marked the first time that a Bravolebrity had crossed over to the Netflix dating reality-verse. The experience was an emotional mixed bag for her. “It was fun until it really wasn't,” she says. She faced criticism from fellow cast members and the audience for dating around, which was tough to reconcile with what she thought the show was about. “It was hard to have to watch myself back. And then to also have to live through it in the comments, because I didn't get the feedback that I was hoping for. The media around it was pretty negative in some ways, and I'm just a girl there to have fun. My friends and family were like, ‘You were just being you.’ And I was.”

They knew I was joking, right? I was always being sarcastic.

At times, she considered trying to correct the record. “I wanted to get on my phone and explain my truth,” Lewber says. “We were there for a month and filmed 24/7, so there were so many good moments and storylines that just weren't even in there.” When I ask what she wishes she could say to people, she laughs. “They knew I was joking, right? I was always being sarcastic.”

Now, three months out after the whirlwind of Perfect Match airing, she has a better grasp on her emotions about it. “You can only feel sorry for yourself for so long, and then you wake up one day, and you're like, ‘Well, that was weird,’” she says. “Also, that is not going to define me.” She’s thankful for the people who understood her vibe. “Later, when I got out of my little hole, I started to see more of the nice reactions. And then I was like, ‘Oh my God, someone does relate.’ I just had to feel it for a minute to wake up and realize I was myself.”

You probably won’t see Lewber on another dating show, but she’s open to returning to the Bravoverse if the stars align. She’s friends with much of the Charleston-based Southern Hospitality cast, even making a brief appearance in Season 4 during Reese’s birthday celebrations. Lewber also plays her “coastal cowgirl” songs at Leva Bonaparte’s bar Zachary's Daiquiris once a week, but hasn’t committed to anything more. “Bravo hasn't called me. Maybe if they called with a paycheck and were like, ‘Hey,’ I would consider it. But I'm not dying to.”

Right now, she’s settling into Charleston routines and continuing to grow her creative outlets. “I would love to write more music and share more,” Lewber says. “I have five songs right now that I've been meaning to upload on Spotify for five months.” (Blame the laidback attitude on her 12th house Aquarius and Pisces rising. “Meanwhile, my Capricorn sun is like, ‘B*tch!’ They argue a lot. It's rough.”) She also hopes to keep doing astrology full time. “It's my passion. I can talk about that better than anything else.”

There’s no rush to meet her perfect match anytime soon. “I don't have a lot in common with straight men,” she jokes. Like with everything else, Lewber is learning to be discerning and to trust her gut. As they say, the ones who get it will get it. The ones who don’t? Don’t.