While I don’t usually interact with the women while they’re in production, on rare occasions I am asked to step in. For instance, a couple of years ago, NeNe tried to get out of joining Kim and Kandi on the last leg of their (classic!) Tardy for the Party Tour. She’d committed to riding on the tour bus, and the other ladies were going to meet up with them in Miami afterward. It was a potentially great way for all the women to come together at the end of the season. We really wanted NeNe on the bus.
“I don’t want to fight with Kim,” NeNe confessed.
I asked her to go on the bus and told her to do what she wanted once there. “Just go have fun,” I said. “Don’t fight. People love seeing you and Kim having fun together—you’re a great team.”
Ultimately, NeNe decided to take the bus with Kandi and Kim, and, of course, just as they were pulling out of Orlando, she got in a massive fight with Kim that lasted the entire four-hour drive to Miami. Now, I’m sure you think I was happy about that, but I was really sorry that Kim and NeNe ended up fighting, because I knew that it wasn’t what NeNe wanted. I can’t imagine that’s what Kim wanted. And that was the fight that caused the final rift in Kim and NeNe’s on-again off-again friendship. The two have barely spoken since, and I really miss seeing them together.
One of my hopes for the women is for them to come across as fun and interesting, to be happy, and to do well as a result of the show. The Housewives can also make serious money, especially when they use the show—with Bravo’s blessing—to brand themselves, the way Bethenny did with her Skinnygirl margarita empire, or Teresa with her Italian cookbooks. But, as it does for anyone, fame can have its own price, even though the prospect of fame is what draws most of the women to participate. In my not always successful role as counselor and guardian, I tell the women never to read what people are saying about them online. Not one of them has listened to me. I can’t say I can blame them—imagine becoming suddenly famous and knowing that complete strangers are writing and commenting about what you said or did months ago. And once they’ve looked, it’s hard not to look again, as fans’ opinions can change on a dime: One minute they hate you for calling someone a “Chinky Chinky Chinaman” (Ugh. See: Vicki, RHOC Season 2), and the next they’re crying with you as you send your daughter off to college.
On the night of the RHBH series premiere, I begged Camille Grammer to ignore what people were saying about her; having already seen the shows, I knew she was in for a rough season and told her as much, but I promised that the viewers would get behind her toward the end. I checked in with Camille a few times during that season and she was miserable. Her voice was heavy and she sounded despondent. At a time when she was going through such a low point in her life, the fans’ comments hurt her even more. I tried to convince her to poke fun at herself as a defensive strategy, but that’s hard to do when you just don’t feel like laughing at anything. In the meantime, she was labeled “the most hated Housewife in history.” But by season’s end, when Camille showed her true, vulnerable self after learning that her husband, Kelsey Grammer, had been cheating with a twenty-nine-year-old flight attendant, the fans could finally empathize. Camille was vindicated, and relieved.
The advice I give the ladies most frequently and emphatically is “Just be real.” Be who you are and own it. I certainly have tried to live my life exactly this way, and though I didn’t grow up to be a Housewife, it has otherwise worked for me.
My biggest problems with Housewives occur when they try to alter their personas and control how they appear. It’s like they’re trying to produce themselves, and it never works. The camera catches it all. What it caught in Washington, DC, was—literally—one for the history books.
When we decided to extend the Real Housewives franchise to Washington, DC, the country had just elected its first African American president, and we were interested in exploring the nexus of society and race among women in a place where proximity to political power, as well as money and an amazing shoe closet, dictates one’s status. My fantasy was that this group of Housewives would disagree—okay, maybe even fight—about affairs of state rather than affairs of the heart.
As we started filming, it seemed like our wish had come true; the women were indeed talking about race and politics and Washington insiders. But then the latter discussion became all too loud during the Thanksgiving weekend of 2009, when Michaele Salahi, a cast member, and her husband, Tareq, attended President Obama’s first state dinner in the White House, allegedly without an invitation.
What the Salahis were and what they wanted to be had been a topic of much debate and discussion among the other cast members long before the White House debacle. Michaele was a real character, kind of a bubbly space cadet who was a former makeup counter salesgirl longing to be one of the society ladies whose faces she painted. She was zany, untrustworthy, likable, and fragile all at once. Her husband, Tareq, reminded me of an incredibly litigious used-car salesman whose suits needed a good dry cleaning. We always suspected he was taping phone conversations with Bravo and the show’s producers, constantly collecting “evidence” and picking enemies.
When the Salahis told our producers that they were invited to the White House for the state dinner honoring India, no one had reason to question them. One of the first scenes we’d shot with the Salahis was a polo match featuring the ambassador
