The Skinnygirl margarita has been spilled. One of the fan favorites from Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York series almost never made it to episode 1.
According Us Weekly, Bravo Executive and Real Housewives Producer Andy Cohen explained why he initially didn’t want Bethenny Frankel on the show.
“The reason that Bravo didn’t want me on, Andy Cohen didn’t want me on, was because I was already on a reality show,” Bethenny said on her Just B With Bethenny Frankel podcast.
“So, I had some slight — basically no — awareness. Like, I was nobody, but to him that was, ‘You had a pre-existing profile,’ meaning they wanted it to be real,” she said.
Bethenny participated in the first and only season of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, a spinoff from the original Apprentice that aired in 2005. She finished as a runner-up. Bethenny said recent members of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast would have never made it as cast members in the franchise’s earlier years due to their street cred. “They wanted it to be real people in New York that are not famous, that didn’t have a pre-existing profile,”
But, it appears Andy has done a switcharoo on that condition, and has and continues to fill the RHOBH cast with familiar names of women who have (or pretend to have) socialite clout or are in the entertainment industry.
Bethenny admitted she was a cheerleader for one of the current cast members of RHOBH before she was cast to the show. “That’s why Lisa Rinna didn’t get on for years. Andy used to say to me, no, he wasn’t interested in her, and I used to say, ‘She’d be great.’”
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Original RHOBH cast members Kyle Richards and sister Kim Richards were former child actors. Lisa, Garcelle Beauvais and former cast member Denise Richards are current actresses, Bethenny pointed out.
Bethenny, the sassy RHONY single opposed to housewife, appeared to be the only one in the series’ history that didn’t care one way or the other if she came back season-after-season. This could be mostly due to the fact the ambitious hustler always had fruitful side projects.
Bethenny cashed in on her witty, in your face truth she likes to deliver, and went on to become a reality celeb.
She appeared on RHONY from its inception in 2008 until 2010 for three seasons. She quit to premiere her own Bravo reality show Bethenny Ever After for three seasons from 2010 to 2012. If interested in watching her life as a new mom and new wife to former husband Jason Hoppy, unfold into a train wreck you can stream it on Peacock. She also launched a talk show, which lasted one season.
She took a break while picking herself up after her marriage fell apart, then returned to RHONY from season 7 to 11 in 2015 to 2019. She had a side gig called Bethenny & Fredrik in 2018, in the form of a reality show where she teamed up with Fredrik Eklund in NYC to renovate and flip houses using their own money. In 2021, came the launch of her reality competition The Big Shot with Bethenny, where business moguls competed to be second in command to Bosslady Bethenny. No current word on whether Bethenny has any more reality in store for viewers in 2022.
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TELL US – DO YOU LIKE WATCHING UNKNOWN NEWBIES JOIN THE REAL HOUSEWIVES’ SERIES? DO YOU PREFER A NAME YOU KNOW TO JOIN REAL HOUSEWIVES CASTS? WHO WANTS TO SEE BETHENNY MAKE A THIRD RETURN TO RHONY?
[Photo Credit: Charles Sykes/Bravo]