Bethenny had met Jill several times out and about on the New York social circuit. They were just casual acquaintances, but that was all about to change forever. Jill had brought one of our casting producers with her to the polo tent. With the fate of her show on the line, Jill wanted to help. Jill, as we now know, is big on helping.
“I’m doing this show—we already started filming a little bit but we need someone else. It’s about housewives and moms. We need another housewife,” she told Bethenny.
Bethenny didn’t think she fit the bill. She wasn’t a housewife or a mom. She was a celebrity chef, or at least she wanted to be one. Jill’s husband, Bobby, brought over the producer. Bethenny shut down. She had nothing to say. But then her boyfriend, Jason, went into action. He opened up to the producer about his kids and his life with Bethenny. He was selling it; he was selling her.
In the car ride home, Jason encouraged Bethenny to do the show, but he also made it clear to her that he would have no part of it. Bethenny thought she had everything to lose—she had an endorsement deal with Pepperidge Farm and a diet/cookbook coming out. She’d already been a finalist (and lost) on Martha Stewart’s Apprentice.
“If I do this show, and it does badly, I am officially the biggest loser ever. I will have been on two reality shows,” she would later remember telling Jason. But perhaps against her better judgment, she agreed to let the producers put her on tape.
Back at Bravo, when I watched a tape of Bethenny, I was against casting her, even though I thought she was really funny. Simply put, it seemed lame to me to have someone who’d already been on one reality show turn up on another. Also thanks to Jill, we had another woman on tape, LuAnn de Lesseps, who seemed a bit dry, but I couldn’t resist the fact that she was a countess, and spoke about her title without a hint of irony. Her husband’s family had given America the Statue of Liberty! I lobbied for the Countess, and she was in. We continued to debate about Bethenny, and although I still had reservations, her acerbic wit and willingness to risk it all convinced us to offer her a contract.
My guess is that if you’re reading this book, you’re the kind of person who knows that the rest is Housewives history. Jill and Bethenny established themselves as a well-heeled Laverne and Shirley and RHNYC was a big hit, in part because the viewers loved their friendship.
Of course, it wasn’t all one big happy sorority party. I placed an important call to my parents in St. Louis. “You have to watch this!” I urged them, certain that New York would engage them in ways Orange County never could. Evelyn was duly amused and an instant habituée. Can a Jew say “Hallelujah”? My mother became wholly invested in the women, their clothes, where they ate, and how they spoke to each other. We began comparing notes like we’d always done with All My Children.
“I do NOT have a good feeling about THAT COUNTESS,” she’d say. “Your father just can’t STAND the sight of Simon. He has to LEAVE THE ROOM when he comes on! Actually all of them make him very nervous. He gets upset—you can’t believe it!”
“I just can’t get over that people speak to each other this way, in public places,” Dad said. “They make me very nervous, Andy.” Mission mostly accomplished!
A few years later, weeks before we began shooting Season 3 of RHNYC, I went with a friend to finally check out Bridgehampton Polo for myself and stepped right into a steaming pile with Jill Zarin!
“I am so fucking mad at Bethenny. You have no idea how horrible she’s been to me. I am letting it all hang out this season. It’s not gonna be pretty, Andy.”
You know I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love a good brouhaha, but I also knew that viewers liked seeing these two together. How would a ruptured relationship play on the show? Without trying to control the situation, I gently suggested to Jill that maybe they could work it out before the season started. To my utter chagrin, that failed to happen. All during filming I heard reports from the field: an awkward encounter at a fashion show, Jill playing LuAnn an old nasty voice mail from Bethenny, phones being slammed down—everything but a reconciliation. “No!” I thought. “These women are ruining everything. For us and for themselves!” I had a terrible feeling that the crack in this beloved friendship wouldn’t resonate with our audience and that it would spell the end of the show and doom the spin-off we were planning with Bethenny.
It turned out viewers were enthralled, and that fractious third season did better than the previous two. There was something weirdly relatable—or maybe cautionary—about two good friends calling it quits, possibly forever. And watching the other women play two ends against the middle and scurry back and forth across enemy lines was simultaneously painful and entertaining. (It was enterpaining!)
The next Housewives edition to premiere was Atlanta, which would go on to become our highest-rated of all the cities in the franchise. We’d been sitting on a casting tape for a show called Hotlanta for a while, featuring a group of affluent black women with energy and attitude. I was excited about the idea of doing a show featuring rich African Americans, a concept I hadn’t seen on TV since The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The Hotlanta women became The Real Housewives of Atlanta and all I could say was, “BAM!”
Linnethia “NeNe” Leakes was an instant standout, telling the camera even then, “I walk into a room and my eyes are popping and my lips are busting and BAM!” But every time I watched the tape I became more confused by Kim Zolciak. I didn’t understand her
