New Jersey was next. We threw out a casting net in three locations but were immediately drawn to the women from Franklin Lakes—featuring the original five Wives, all of them as Jersey at it gets. It was the first time we considered using women who were related to each other, and the intense family bonds added a whole new dynamic. Amy Introcaso-Davis, a Jersey girl herself, made several trips to the Garden State to rendezvous with the women. These ladies weren’t about to enter into this show lightly or quickly and had many questions about the process and ramifications, questions unlike any we’d heard in the past. For instance: “Has anyone been audited as a result of this show? Or wiretapped?” From the beginning, Caroline Manzo was their leader; everyone in the room seemed to defer to her. Teresa Giudice, an old friend of the Manzos whom we were eager to cast, dropped out of and then back into the show multiple times before we even started shooting. We never got a straight answer about why she kept changing her mind, and at some point I just stopped asking.
We shot the season and it was on the shelf for at least a year before it actually aired, which sometimes happens. We’re kind of like air traffic controllers, making certain all the different programs are lined up for prime landing and takeoff spots. I first met the Jersey ladies in person a few months before they were about to finally debut, when they came to the Bravo offices to meet our PR team. I rarely meet Housewives before their seasons are wrapped and in the can. I get to know them on tape, just like everybody else. (After all, it’s not a real “set” of a show I’d be visiting, like stopping by the Top Chef kitchen; If I went on-“set,” I would be busting in on what is essentially someone’s real life. So, I wait.) At that first meeting, the tension in the room was palpable. Remember, for them, all the drama you see in a season has already happened months before in real time, so when the show finally airs, it is like a post-traumatic flashback for them. The Jersey women hadn’t all been together since the infamous Teresa table flip, which had happened over a year earlier, even though viewers wouldn’t see it until the season finale. Grudges, hurt feelings, and resentments had been marinating for months by the time our PR team started discussing the launch plan for the show.
“You see what you’re in for, Andy Cohen?” Dina Manzo taunted me. “Are you ready for this?” Dina and her sister Caroline call me “Andy Cohen”—always both names. By this point, I considered myself an old hand at Housewife-wrangling, and I thought I did, indeed, know what I was in for. I thought wrong, of course. There was so much venom in that room that day, we could’ve shot the reunion right then and there. The only thing missing would have been the hideous Teletubbiesesque set. If you haven’t figured it out yet, there’s nothing I like better than sitting atop a powder keg in a roomful of loose cannons. That’s why I love my job. But making stars—Bravolebrities, if you will—out of everyday alpha women (and men) means that my role as producer can be particularly intense and unpredictable. In fact, I don’t feel like just a producer. I’m often a shrink, or a cheerleader, protector, peacemaker, and referee. I work with a team of really sharp people, including Shari Levine and Christian Barcellos, who are basically making an entire documentary every week, and my day-to-day contribution to the series includes screening multiple cuts of every episode and giving editorial notes on the show (change the music, hold on a shot of someone’s reaction to something, explain in an interview what was happening in a scene, etc.). When I’m not concerning myself with those fine details, I’m involved in casting, tracking stories with the production companies, and mapping out how they’ll play over the season, and the offscreen drama of picking up and negotiating the Housewives’ contracts between every season.
Yes, negotiating with a Real Housewife is a story unto itself, and one whose nitty-gritty details must remain confidential. Suffice it to say, the process can be tense and fraught with emotion. In the early, uncharted territory days, the New York women used Bethenny to do their collective bidding—they fancied themselves akin to the cast of Friends. She once called me from Jill Zarin’s closet to demand more money on behalf of the group in exchange for … something I can’t even remember now (more episodes? a reunion?). On Watch What Happens Live, Ramona’s tendency toward outbursts inspired the term “Ramotional,” and she’s always been that way. Before Season 3 of RHNYC could start, in a highly unusual move, Ramona insisted on accompanying her lawyer to the Bravo offices to negotiate in person. She arrived dressed to the nines, sporting sunglasses indoors. It wasn’t long before she decided that she didn’t care for the direction in which things were heading and Ramotionally stormed out of the room. That was the end of Ramonagotiating in person. Luckily, we were eventually able to hammer out a deal that looked okay to Ramona, with or without
