A Mother’s Plea: Lala Kent Urges Parents to Stay Away from SeaWorld in New PETA Campaign

For Immediate Release:
May 12, 2025

Contact:
Allyson Spellman 202-483-7382

Trapped underwater and crying out in frustration, Vanderpump Rules star Lala Kent appears in a new PETA campaign calling out SeaWorld’s legacy of cruelty and revealing how marine mammals suffer in the abusement park’s tiny tanks. In an accompanying video spot, the mother of two cries as she shares how being separated from her children—a nightmare that’s all too real for mother orcas held captive in marine parks—would be “nothing short of someone taking your heart away.”

“Orcas are meant to be in a pod. That is how they thrive,” says a tearful Kent. But she notes that at SeaWorld, “babies were being torn away from their mothers. These mammals swim up to 150 miles a day together and you’re telling me that we’re going to keep them in a tank for the rest of their lives? It just devastates me because I know what that bond looks like between me and my girls.”

When given the chance, orcas often remain by their mother’s side for their entire lives. But at SeaWorld, many calves were torn from their mothers and shipped to other parks around the country, often leaving their anguished mothers crying out in grief. More than 40 orcas and over 500 other dolphins and whales have died—many prematurely—in SeaWorld’s tiny tanks, and those who remain can do little more than swim in endless circles and lash out at each other in frustration.

“If I had a parent standing in front of me talking about how they’re taking their kid to SeaWorld, my first word would be ‘don’t,’” Kent says. “Don’t go—shut these places down so they don’t exist anymore.”

Corky—the longest-held captive orca in the world—currently languishes at SeaWorld after being taken from her mother and ocean home off the coast of British Columbia in 1969. She was used for years as a breeding machine at another facility, but none of her calves survived past 47 days. Her last pregnancy ended in a miscarriage when her dead baby was found at the bottom of a concrete tank at SeaWorld.

As a devoted mother, Kent knows that SeaWorld and other marine parks teach children all the wrong lessons—that it’s acceptable to imprison animals, to separate them at will, and to watch them go insane from loneliness and deprivation—which is why she’s instilled in her daughters that “We do not go to SeaWorld. We do not exploit animals—period.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kitsfor people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.