The cast of Vanderpump Rules—Bravo’s hit reality series about a group of sometimes-servers and bartenders in Los Angeles—will fight about anything: birthday parties, cheating accusations, rap lyrics, one another’s physiques, couch cushions, pasta. (Though to be fair, that one probably wasn’t about the pasta.) During the course of seven seasons, this group has hooked up and broken up, friendships have started and stopped, and they’ve seldom seen eye-to-eye on anything. Except their love of Brittany Cartwright, the Kentucky-born fiancé of reality TV’s reigning bad boy Jax Taylor.

With her Southern drawl and overwhelmingly accepting disposition, Brittany has been a breath of fresh air for the long-running series filled with characters once described as “pieces of shit” by one of its own leading ladies. Since making her first fresh-from-the-farm appearance in 2015, Cartwright has managed to swoop in and elicit a softer side of the cast’s queen-bee clique Stassi Schroeder, Katie Maloney, and Kristen Doute, women who refer to themselves as the Witches of WeHo. She made impetuous, hard-drinking, conscience-free British DJ James Kennedy feel remorse after he made her cry. She seamlessly charmed the show’s matriarch, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump who owns and operates SUR, the restaurant that serves as the series’ central backdrop.

The 29-year-old’s biggest hat trick, however, was pulling a feat few others could have managed: Taming Jax, a man who inspired headlines like “The Villain of Vanderpump Rules” thanks to his knack for lying, pot-stirring, cheating, and drunkenly stealing sunglasses while on vacation on Hawaii, which landed him a year’s probation.

The point is, Cartwright has become the unexpected moral center of Vanderpump Rules. But when I tell her as much when she arrived at the Glamour office, she demures. “I think they all thought I was just a little girl wanting fame or following them around [at the beginning]. I understand. I know what it’s like to have somebody new come around—you don’t know if you can trust them at first. But once they got to know me and realized who I was … what can I say? I try to be myself, and I take their friendships very seriously.”

It seems impossible now that the cast would ever doubt Brittany’s motives, but given her origin story with the show, it’s not too hard to see how they might have. As Brittany tells it, she and Jax first met in Las Vegas after her friend, a fan of the show, saw cast-member Maloney at a bar and asked for a photo. From there, they started taking shots when Jax walked up. “I found out later he was on a date with a girl that night. She walks away, and he comes up to me and gets my number.”

Brittany admits she thought he was hot, but she was fresh out of a relationship and figured nothing would come of it, especially given his role in the reality TV hierarchy. (“You just hear all of the rumors about everything.”) But then he texted her “good morning beautiful” the next day and asked to see her. They spent the rest of their time in Vegas together. “He told me after the first night we met that he wanted me to move to L.A.,” she says. She flew home to Kentucky instead, but they talked daily. She started going to L.A. every other week to visit. After two months, she moved to be with him. “I’ve never done anything that crazy before in my life. But it just felt so right.”

Moving to a new city came with its challenges: Brittany and Jax were living together in his tiny West Hollywood apartment and still getting to know each other. The studio didn’t have central air or closet space, and if she used her hairdryer the whole floor’s electricity would combust. And she now was on a hit reality show with little preparation. “[Jax said], ‘I think they’re going to want you to film. It’s probably not going to be a lot. Do you care?’ At first I was like, ‘Umm, I don’t know.’ I was so nervous.” His advice: Just focus on him and ignore the cameras. But, “That’s really hard when you’re brand new. By that time, he was a seasoned pro.”

“I didn’t really speak the whole first season I was on,” she continues. “I kind of just let Jax lead the way.” The first day she filmed, she went to SUR and met Vanderpump—an unexpected encounter that she wasn’t fully briefed on, thanks to Jax, who took her shopping beforehand to get an outfit. According to Brittany, she thought she was going to the restaurant to meet the cast, not her potential new boss. “He picks me out this sexy little romper because he was like, ‘All the girls dress sexy there. It’s West Hollywood.'”

What her new guy neglected to tell her that she wasn’t meeting Lisa to just say hello, but was about to undergo a job interview for a server position—viewers will remember this as Brittany’s first official scene—while wearing a barely-there romper, with no résumé prepared. “That was like one of the most nerve-wracking things I think I’ve ever done in my life. It probably will always be.”

When the rest of the cast did meet Brittany, they took to her quickly—a rarity for groups of women on reality TV who almost always seem to exhibit a type of xenophobic “you can’t sit with us” mentality when it comes to new and attractive blood. “I’ve been very lucky, I guess. I haven’t had any bad fights or anything,” she says. It’s hard to stay completely out of the drama, but Brittany usually refuses to pick sides unless a “girl code” is broken. And, shocking to anyone who regularly watches Bravo, her friends respect that. “I’m not huge on the drama,” she says. “I like to help bring people together more than push them away from each other.”

Kristen Doute told me via email that Brittany lends a “soothing, sort of calmness” during these chaotic moments. “[She’s] truthful but not judgmental … She’s humble and kind—something many people in L.A. lack.” Doute—a notoriously tough nut to crack—also said Brittany is everything she could want in a best friend. “She’s kind, sympathetic, trustworthy. My favorite thing about Brittany is her zest for life. She never fails to make me laugh. Her energy is contagious.”

So, yes, everybody on Vanderpump Rules loves Brittany. But with any type of spotlight and status comes a hoard of social media trolls. If she’s wearing too much makeup in a picture, they say L.A. has “changed” her. Some commenters will call her fake and posit she’s had her nose done. “I haven’t had any plastic surgery on my face,” Brittany says. “No matter what I’ve done I would tell it. I had my boobs done on national TV, so let’s be real. I’m not hiding anything. I had Botox once six months ago. I don’t even know if it’s still in there anymore. I had Kybella under my chin awhile ago. But I also lost 25 pounds. I hate when people say I got a nose job or my lips done, because I lose weight in my face.”

“I’ve aged,” she continues. “If you’re a true fan of Vanderpump Rules, go back to the first episode when I started. Look at how skinny I was! I gained weight on the show, then lost weight again.”

The plastic surgery comments don’t cut too deep—”If they want to say I had a nose job, whatever. I know I didn’t have a nose job.”—but the judgments on her character do. Like people saying, “I thought you were a Christian” after she posts a sexy photo. Those get to her.

Her fiancé and the rest of the cast help keep things in perspective. “Jax [will say], ‘Stop reading that, Brittany.’ I know he loves me, and that’s another reason I think [negative attention] doesn’t bother me: All these people comment on my looks, and I’m like, ‘Well, I’m engaged. I don’t care what you think.'”

When she does get overwhelmed by it all—with 1 million Instagram followers at press time, how could she not?—she says she craves alone time, snuggled up in bed with her dogs, Monroe and Kingsley. Her values kick into overdrive: She calls her mom every day. She talks to her friends back home (their group chat is called Cheaper Than Therapy). She prays and goes to church.

She also has a chat group with the women on the series—called the Pumpettes—where they share screen shots of nasty comments. They’ll joke about them and give each other compliments. “Because of Brittany I feel more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have,” Doute says. “In the social-media world we live in, it can be very easy to sweat the small stuff—whether it’s people attacking our character or physical appearance. She always picks me up when I’m down and is able to show me a more positive outlook.”

And, in true Brittany fashion, she’s found a way to hit back at haters with that positive outlook. “I swear it’s mothers who are writing mean things about my looks [the most],” she says. “So I’ve found the best way to get under a cyberbully’s skin: If they have kids and they’re writing horrible things, just go to their picture, tell them how beautiful their child is, and say that you hope one day their child never has to deal with cyberbullying like I am from you.” She says the trolls usually apologize.

Brittany says this season of Vanderpump Rules is her favorite yet. She dreaded filming last year, because she knew the issues she and Jax were facing were going to be an inescapable arc—a cheating scandal, after all, makes good reality TV. Now, though, she’s excited for everybody—cast members and fans—to see how much her man has changed and how hard he’s trying. Brittany says it’s the little things that really show the effort he’s making: He helps out around the house, he makes her (turkey) sandwiches, he buys her tampons at the store, he’ll surprise her with gifts, he’s even going to church on his own. “I’m so proud of him,” she says. “He has changed almost 100%. He tries harder at every single thing he does, and it makes me….” She tears up. “After his dad passed away, he could’ve spiraled out of control. Went crazy. Just became this horrible person, because he was so unhappy with himself. But he turned it all around and made every change he wanted to make to better himself.”

This new Jax also came with a marriage proposal during the season premiere. “I had an idea it might happen this summer, but I didn’t know it was going to be that early,” she says. “It was perfect.” Jax popped the question at Neptune’s Net, a classic, casual Malibu seafood spot. (“We love crab places. It’s what we do, whether we’re in Florida, Kentucky, anywhere we’re at we always find a crab place.”) The show’s editing made the location seem like a random choice, but Brittany says it holds importance, having been the scene of an early date and also a favorite of Jax’s late father.

Brittany cried watching the footage back. “He’s my best friend in the whole world,” she says. “We want to be together all the time. No matter what I always saw these good parts of Jax, even when we were fighting. People on the show only see the worst parts, of course, but knowing his heart and knowing how great he actually was kept me going. I loved him too much to let him go, honestly.”

And now, she’s looking forward to planning the wedding and the business ventures they’re starting (beer cheese, cocktail mixers). “I’m so excited for us to have a good season for once. This season is a lot of me and Jax being happy and our friends slowly getting on board with that. He had to prove to everybody that he really has changed.” Brittany says they also want to be parents, though it might be tricky with the show. “I don’t know how having a baby on Vanderpump Rules with all the drama…I think as we grow the show might have to grow a little bit too,” she says. “But we’ll see. I can’t imagine Jax not being on TV in some way.”

Whatever happens, Brittany trusts they can tackle it as a team. “It would be very easy to get lost,” she says. “At the end of the day you have to be very confident in yourself. I know I’m not a bad person. I know I have a great family. I know I have great friends. I know at the end of the day, I have to get back to that and being a Christian woman.”

Anna Moeslein is Glamour’s senior editor. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @annamoeslein.

Photographs by Michelle Rose Sulcov
Fashion stylist: Amy Hou
Hair and makeup: Mia Santiago at See Management

Lead image: Self-Portrait sweater, $340, self-portrait-studio.com. Shashi necklace, $58, shopshashi.com. Lady Grey ear cuffs, $180, ladygreyjewelry.com.