“Ladies of London”'s Margo Stilley Says Her Panic Attack on the Show Led to Unexpected Health Discovery (Exclusive)

The Bravo star suffered a panic attack in the April 23 episode after insulting costar Mark-Francis Vandelli

NEED TO KNOW

• Ladies of London: The New Reign star Margo Stilley opens up after experiencing a panic attack in the April 23 episode of the Bravo reality show
• The actress details her postpartum journey after welcoming her daughter Della in 2023
• Find out where she stands with her costars today

When Bravo revived Ladies of London after the original series ended in 2017, it brought drama right out of the gate. By the end of the second episode, cast member Dara Huang (an architect and the mother of Princess Beatrice's stepson, Christoper Woolf) quit the show after she was caught lying during a hot mic moment.

Ever since, fans have been hooked to see how the friend group navigate fights big and small. One feud that has continued to brew throughout the season is between Margo Stilley, an American actress, and Mark-Francis Vandelli, a Brit who previously appeared on the reality show Made in Chelsea.

During the penultimate episode, which aired April 23, their fight reached a boiling point after Vandelli refused to speak with Stilley after a heated garden party exchange during a cast trip. Stilley called him "weird and creepy." The next day, Vandelli opened up about how that affected him, saying he spent "20 years being treated like a freak." While castmates tried to explain to Stilley why it was hurtful to call him a "freak," she corrected them that she only used the word "creepy." However, then she doubled down: "I do find him freaky." Her costars tried to show her Vandelli's side of the argument and encouraged her not to take his comments about her outfits too seriously, but she broke down crying and had a panic attack. She left the trip early without saying goodbye.

"I'm with two costars who I do consider my friends and they're just telling me what someone said about my clothes. There is no historical reason for me to have had that reaction," Stilley admits to PEOPLE. "And I remember being like, 'Am I dying? What the hell's going on?' It was just strange, I've never had a panic attack before. It was the first time I was able to admit, 'Okay, this is not normal stress. This is strange.'"

In an exclusive interview, the actress, 43, explains why she reached a breaking point and how it lead to a health discovery. Viewing the episodes, she says, "I'm watching myself just decline, decline, decline. I wasn't sleeping. On my days off, I would just lay in bed, but I couldn't rest. My friends were asking me, 'Are you okay? Is something else going on?' [Costar] Martha [Sitwell] kept going, 'Why aren't you being funny? Just be funny. And then everyone's going to love you in our friend group.' And I'm like, 'I don't have it in me. I don't know why.'"

After Stilley wrapped filming, she returned to Los Angeles, where she had been living full-time with her husband, Jacques Nenejian, and their three kids. (They share daughter Della Rose and Nenejian has two sons from a previous relationship.) They had relocated the family to London for the summer after Stilley was offered a small role in a TV series.

Both Stilley and her husband thought her mental health decline was due to the show, but she says once she got back to L.A., "I never got better, I got worse and worse and worse. And I never stopped crying, I would cry all day long." Finally, after about three months, a friend realized she might be entering perimenopause and she decided to seek help. Stilley visited Dr. Michelle Reyes at The Med Spot and after conducting a hormone panel, they discovered she had "no available testosterone, no progesterone and 30 times the amount of estrogen that any woman at any age should ever have."

"And I was like, 'Oh, I'm not an awful person, I'm not weak, I'm not a bad mom, I'm not a bad wife, I'm not a bad friend. I just am hormonally imbalanced." After a few months balancing out her hormones, Stilley says she started "feeling like myself again."

Looking back as the show airs, she realized she also never fully dealt with postpartum depression and Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER) that she experienced after her daughter was born in 2023. (D-MER is a a physiological condition where lactating individuals experience sudden negative emotions immediately before a milk let-down.)

"When I would pump, the color would drain from the world," she shares. "I would feel so sick and I would cry and I would feel so sad when my milk started to let down. It didn't occur to me that I could also just stop breastfeeding her. I just continued on for seven-and-a-half months."

She also dealt with postpartum depression too. "I loved Della so much, it was like I couldn't contain it. When I held her, I would get so much anxiety that I was doing something wrong or that I could hurt her or that something would happen," Stilley says about her state of mind after giving birth. "We had a baby nurse, and so I would just give her to the baby nurse because it was so overwhelming for me. I thought to myself, 'She'd just be better off without me.' And I was thinking, 'That's weird. Where'd that thought come from?' Because I know she wouldn't be better off without me. I knew that that wasn't the truth. Then I knew something was wrong."

She did about "six or eight weeks" of postpartum therapy and felt better, but admitted, she "never looked up how long it can last." She thought if she spent the summer in London, where she spent a lot of time before getting married, that would help. "If I could just get back to my old life and get back to myself, I'll feel better," she explains.

Then, she learned she landed a "friend of" role on Ladies of London: The New Reign as Martha Sitwell's bestie. "I was like, 'Oh my God, that's so perfect. Everything's lining up great. I'm going to be in London anyway," she says. "I'll join the show as a support from Martha and it'll be fun. A new adventure.'"

By episodes three or four, she says she was offered a main cast member position. "I just thought, 'This is so fun. I'm having so much fun. What an honor. Of course, I would love to do that.'

Looking back, she realizes she didn't have enough clothes to wear or the awareness of how much time filming would take. "I didn't know that I wasn't physically or mentally positioned to take on so much more responsibilities. What I didn't realize was that I was trying to build my life on a new life on completely broken foundations," she shares. "I didn't know that my kind of postpartum would not resolve itself. I didn't know that I needed to do hormone panels to see where my hormones were, to see if I was rebalancing at a normal rate, which I wasn't. I didn't know that I could have medicated myself. I had nannies and my husband was like, 'Why do you need so many nannies?' And I had shame, I was embarrassed. I was struggling to survive internally."

Now, she's "so grateful" that reality TV allows her to see her behavoir. "How else would I have known? I didn't believe anybody when they said, 'Are you okay? It feels like something more is going on.' I didn't know why they were saying that. Sure, Mark is talking about me within earshot. It's annoying. He won't make peace. But it's not a big deal. I was just hormonally imbalanced and I needed help."

Right now Stilley is living in L.A. and commuting to London for job opportunities but overall, she's easier on herself. She's also still close with her costars, Sitwell, Myka Meier, Misse Bequir and Lottie Kane. But as for Vandelli? They don't speak, in fact, they didn't communicate while doing press together for the premiere.

"I'm still not shutting the door to Mark," Stilley says. "I don't know if we can be close friends, but I know we can be bitchy friends together. We could definitely be fun friends. But I said some hurtful things and he said hurtful things. He would have to be able to let it go and move forward, and that's his journey."

She adds at the end of the interview, "I stand by my behavior. I stand by what I said and standing up for myself. It's not an excuse for anything. This is why I had a panic attack."

New episodes of Ladies of London: The New Reign air Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health challenges, emotional distress, substance use problems, or just needs to talk, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org 24/7.

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