Ryan Seacrest Defends Reality Producers Over Russell Armstrong's Suicide

Posted on Thu Aug 18th, 2011 3:15pm PDT By X17 Staff

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ryan Seacrest -- who is plenty familiar with reality TV -- defends Bravo in the wake of Russell Armstrong's suicide.

The network has come under fire with some blaming the show as part of the reason Russell hanged himself. Russell, the husband of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' Taylor Armstrong, was found Monday night. Seacrest says:

"In terms of the psychological analysis, for the competition shows they do quite a lot of that in terms of the background checking ... it's just one of those unfortunate situations."

Seacrest is the executive producer of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Food Revolution.

Said Seacrest:

"I feel like I stand up there and encourage people to speak their mind and talk about what they're feeling ... if people haven't talked about it, it was by choice ... I think today in the world that we live in, being honest about who you are as a performer and feeling comfortable with it as a person is probably the best policy."

Seacrest told THR that he hopes Idol will take home some Emmys this years as his contract comes to a close. As to whether he'll be back for another season, he says he'd love to.