December 8, 2023 • 14 mins
Bethenny discusses the private lives of the Real Housewives. What’s for the show and what isn’t…and how does that line get drawn? Bethenny reveals personal experiences to examine the debate. Plus, booze issues, production staff issues and who’s in and who’s out of the Housewives Bubble?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The real Blouzewives. So between a Hulu Nightline special, Rolling Stone,
and The Collider, there's an onslaught of articles that are
crystallizing and combining the stories of alcohol abuse being highlighted
on television and downfalls on real Housewives. And if you
(00:37):
think about it, I think it's been reported that there
are like one hundred and fifty to one hundred and
seventy five housewives, so I personally think at least ten
that have had a brush with the law, a dui,
been arrested, blacked out, something that really was drastic. So
(00:58):
allegedly at at least five to ten percent of housewives
have relapsed or had some stressful experience culminating in the
abuse of alcohol. Do we honestly believe that these ten
to twenty women would have had this same heightened peak
(01:23):
and crash with a not on reality television. I can
personally tell you that I know of at least ten
housewives that have taken anti depressants, anti anxiety something to
take the edge off as a result of being on
the show, because the pressure is so great, the pressure
to look like you have money, the pressure to have
(01:45):
a storyline, the pressure of fame, the pressure of battling
your skeletons coming out of the closet, the pressure of
other people constantly talking about you, Sleepless nights, trips that
are like a pressure cooker designed for confide like so
women can really get into it, and then recover reunions
that people come out of and say that they felt
(02:08):
like they went through a war. Women are dehydrated, exhausted,
and need days to recover from these reunions where you
rehash these manufactured conflicts that you would never have entered
into were you not on the Housewives. The money is
too tempting, the fame is too tempting. But at the end,
there's a pot of gold for some, for the very
(02:31):
few that fight their way to the top make it
out alive. The rest are just casualties of the Real
Housewives atmosphere. So when Andy is asked about the reality
reckoning and responds with I'm just focusing on the joy,
that's a bag of bullshit, because there's no other reason
why Bravo and Shed would be putting out all these
(02:52):
statements about implementing psychological professionals and measures and tests and
alcohol controls, et cetera. And as Liam McSweeney said in Nightline,
even bar is designed for profit to sell alcohol. Stop
someone when they've exceeded a reasonable amount of alcohol consumption.
(03:16):
But on the Housewives, which is not a legal workplace,
excessive alcohol consumption by people that are known addicts in
the environment is a positive. Everybody gets excited when the
addict falls off the wagon, gets wasted, does something stupid
and crazy, because in this upside down that's a positive.
(03:36):
That's performing well at work. And now this two paste
is out of the tube, the genie is out of
the bottle, and we've opened Pandora's box. And I'm sorry,
not sorry. So yeah, if biting the hand that fed us,
that hand deserves to be bitten. In thinking about the
(03:58):
Housewives and like Kyle and Mauricio's breakup, or Dorriad and
PK and what's going on with them or all of this,
I was talking to my therapist about in my adult career,
I was raised in an environment where you have to
mention it all. You don't really have a private life.
(04:19):
Kyle cannot not talk about what's going on with her
in Mauricio. She doesn't have that option. Dorie cannot talk
about her relationship with PK the girl on the new show.
I saw something about like she had to talk about
her boyfriend. Now she's on a reality show, she cannot
not talk about her relationship with her guy or anyone
like literally, Nini, who you're dating, it's what they've signed
(04:42):
up for. And Nini's not even on reality TV anymore.
But I was thinking. I was talking to my therapists
and she said, you are trained in an environment where
you have to share your entire private life, and you
don't live in that environment anymore. And it's funny because
when I talk about deprogramming from that and how that
(05:03):
desensitizes you from normalization, how you think things are normal
that aren't, and it's the upside down. How something happens
and you just know that it would be great for
the cameras. Where are the cameras, like, and you want
to capture it or save it for the cameras. Or
someone else does something that you know they did privately,
and you really feel that it's unfair that they're not
bringing it into the show. Because you're being forced to
(05:25):
bring in whatever you're doing into the show. The producers
might say, you have to talk about this thing that happened,
and Jane is sleeping with her you know, best friend's husband,
and you know about it, and you're being held to
a standard that they're not because maybe they're better at
sleuthing or and it all comes to the surface. And
I left that environment and in no area of my life,
(05:49):
whether it's my daughter or my relationship, or my health
or my aging or anything, I don't owe anyone anything.
I don't have to tell anyone anything about my life.
And I think we live in this world, even on
social media where like people have followers. They may not
be famous, but they are speaking to an audience. We
feel like we have to, you know, tell people about
(06:11):
our lives. Where's Paul or when does Brittan see her dad?
You know, like, what are they think I'm gonna post
Brinn and her dad on my social media, Like it's
my responsibility to let them know what our custody schedule is,
how much time is how much time does Brin spend
with her dad? You're out your fucking mind. When's last
time you fucked your husband? Like you think you're gonna
(06:32):
come in my social media and say something like that
to me, I'll do you just blocked, like you said,
It's like, who the fuck do people think they actually are?
Like they're gonna come into my social media and like
say that to me. Someone yesterday was like, I'm distracted
because of the piece of food on your mouth. I
had a tiny piece of seaweed, like tiny. I didn't
even see it. Fuck you. I can have whatever I
(06:54):
want in my mouth. I can grub chocolate all over
my face and post a video in my own house
because I'm a very rare breed of people who post
on social media what I want to post. I'm making
an ice cream cake in my kitchen and pajamas, haven't
washed my hair, and I've been in bed for three days,
and I have a piece of ice cream or a
sprinkle on my nose. It's my own fucking prerogative. And
it's my own body, my own ice cream, my own sprinkle,
(07:16):
my own post, my own choice. Why don't you boast
your daughter more on here? What? Like everybody feels entitled
to everybody else's information. Someone's on television, now this was
to tell you everything about themselves. Now, when I put
myself in my ex on a reality show about our relationship,
(07:36):
you bit damn fucking right. You want to know because
I dragged you in. I brought you in. I brought
you to a fairytale wedding. I thought told you everything was,
you know, perfect. Then it started to unravel, and I
felt a responsibility to tell you everything was imperfect. I
didn't even have to do that. I felt some legal
obligation because I brought you in that I had to
bring you out. You know, like j Rod are perfect,
(07:58):
they're perfect. They're perfect, they're perfect. Then they break up
and they want privacy, and it feels like you brought
us in, so now you got to take us out. Megan.
I always bring up Megan Fox because every day they
were gushing over their love and they were sharing butd
and they were making out and it was they were
one person. One day, something happened with infidelity or something happened.
I don't know if they're together anymore. They went dark.
(08:19):
They may not even be celebrities anymore. I mean they
just went into a cave. Something went on with the
two of them. They went totally dark. And but you know,
even having a publicist, well you know, and mine's great, like, well,
you're gonna have to say something. I got like ten
phone calls today. Okay, so what I don't want to
talk about brit, I don't want to talk about my
custody schedule. I don't have to say anything, you know
(08:41):
what I mean? Like, things go on and you can
just choose what version of public or private you want
to be. You don't have to talk about anything, to
talk about the food on your mouth. You can be
a private person, even if your public or a social
media person, or even in your own neighborhood and your
own cul to sec at your own country club. It's
very empowering to just like not talk about what you
(09:02):
don't want to talk about, and have whatever private life
you want to have, and do what you want to
do and don't. It's only when you get really hypocritical
that people get bothered, Like you're asking someone else to
share their information, or you told everyone it was perfect,
or you pretended you were perfect. You pretended you were perfect,
or you pretended you were so kind and so nice
(09:22):
and so loving and wonderful. Then if you're not kind
and loving and wonderful, they're gonna fucking come after you.
It's just interesting what people's expectations are of you, what
entitlement they have to you, everybody is now public property
because they're posting about themselves. So where's the line. Another
(09:43):
interesting thing about becoming desensitized to what's normal. I never
liked having a crew in my house, And now what
happens is they set up tape and everything in your house,
like to stay for part of the season, sometimes because
they know they're gonna keep shooting or they're gonna be
in one room a lot, so they just keep the
set up there. And what happens when they're shooting in
(10:03):
your house is an entire couple of trucks come and
the leanst it could ever be if you're a psychopath
and like you're having like a like a China party
of crystal and you wanted no extra footprints. The smallest
they could ever be would be a producer, a sound person,
two camera people, and like probably like five people. But
(10:26):
like on a real normal shoot, there could be twelve people,
like in and out of your house or in your driveway,
or things get scratched. People are like laying down on
floors to try to watch on the small screen, like
inside what they call video village. And I never liked
it in the beginning. I tolerated it more but in
the beginning it wasn't as big of an ordeal, Like
there weren't budgets like there are now. So that I
mean it's got Beverly Hills. It has to be shot
(10:47):
like a Coca Cola commercial. Now now you see those
interviews and they're usually usually done in another studio in
New York. They are probably on Beverly Hills. They set
up a room or a green screen in a room
and a backdrop and you just like go and your
makeup and there, but like it's a lot in your house.
And recently I did something on Nightline and there were
(11:08):
literally two one to two camera people, one sound person
and two producers on my property. I was like, I
had hives. They did nothing wrong, they were invited to
be here. I don't like someone coming into my space
and I feel totally violated and invaded one of camera
crew's at my house even though they're here because I
(11:28):
asked them to be. And it's because I have PTSD
from housewives for so long, Like my daughter's home and
like she's growing up in a world, and it was
so infrequently it maybe happened her whole life. Two three
times where she walks into the house and there's a
camera crew everywhere. Like I felt violated for her, Like
she's trying to walk in and there are people everywhere
that she doesn't know. She has to do like a
(11:48):
nice fake smile and be polite, and like everyone's everywhere
and the dogs are shaking and nervous because it's a
whole thing, and like I didn't like the way it feel.
Made me feel bad. It really really did made me
feel bad. It's just another one of those things you
guys wouldn't know about shooting a show like The Housewives,
that you can have twelve people inside your house two
to three times a week and they're lovely people and
(12:10):
they're nice, or you were just like not, you just
had bad news, you're in a bad mood, someone just died,
you have your period, you had a bad business call,
and like you've got to be nice to everybody because
they're in your home and like you know, and and
they feel bad too. They don't want to intrude any
more than you want them to intrude. They feel like
they have to creep around. It's the worst for them.
It's just a very strange dynamic. And I don't miss that.
(12:43):
Another thing about housewives is the difference in the relationships
you'll have with housewives off the show. There's nothing on
the table. There's no competition, there's nothing charge. There's no
one who's got andy'sier more than you or the other.
There's no like avoiding talking about secret topics that only
people that are on a show can know. There's no
like what talk you know. You can't talk about the
(13:05):
money you got or the opportunities you got, or where
you went or what was sent to you for free,
because everybody's always like grabbing and competing, and people can
pretend on different casts. It can be Salidlake, it can
be Beverly Hills, it can be wherever. And I know
people on all those shows, and they all will talk
about what they got with someone else didn't get there
in the middle. They got to sit next to Andy.
(13:26):
The others didn't get invited to go on the trip
to go to another country, only me. Like every housewife
is the same, every and they all just really are
in this other constant competition. Even if it's not overt,
it's subtle. There's something very subtle about it, and it
goes on with everyone everywhere, and it's all consuming if
(13:48):
you go out to dinner with multiple people from the
housewives sphere or the reality TV like that sphere, it's
eighty percent of what's talked about. It's just too tempting,
and everybody who's talking obviously the other person. It happened
at our big dinner in LA There was a housewife
there and she was talking about plot lines going on,
and Jenny Garth was sitting there and had no idea
(14:09):
what she was talking about. I didn't know what she
was talking about, but she was in the bubble, so
she thought that we all knew what she was talking about.
No one knew what she was talking about. Literally, no
one knew what she was talking about. And she was
going on for a while like a housewife way of
like no, and it's ridiculous because I did that, and
they did that, and that's what's going to happen. And
I said this, and I was just like, you were
(14:30):
talking another language. It's a world unto itself. It's like,
it's strange that everyone in that environment cult like environment
thinks that everyone else knows what's going on with them.
The real Blouzewives. So between a Hulu Nightline special, Rolling Stone,
and The Collider, there's an onslaught of articles that are
crystallizing and combining the stories of alcohol abuse being highlighted
on television and downfalls on real Housewives. And if you
(00:37):
think about it, I think it's been reported that there
are like one hundred and fifty to one hundred and
seventy five housewives, so I personally think at least ten
that have had a brush with the law, a dui,
been arrested, blacked out, something that really was drastic. So
(00:58):
allegedly at at least five to ten percent of housewives
have relapsed or had some stressful experience culminating in the
abuse of alcohol. Do we honestly believe that these ten
to twenty women would have had this same heightened peak
(01:23):
and crash with a not on reality television. I can
personally tell you that I know of at least ten
housewives that have taken anti depressants, anti anxiety something to
take the edge off as a result of being on
the show, because the pressure is so great, the pressure
to look like you have money, the pressure to have
(01:45):
a storyline, the pressure of fame, the pressure of battling
your skeletons coming out of the closet, the pressure of
other people constantly talking about you, Sleepless nights, trips that
are like a pressure cooker designed for confide like so
women can really get into it, and then recover reunions
that people come out of and say that they felt
(02:08):
like they went through a war. Women are dehydrated, exhausted,
and need days to recover from these reunions where you
rehash these manufactured conflicts that you would never have entered
into were you not on the Housewives. The money is
too tempting, the fame is too tempting. But at the end,
there's a pot of gold for some, for the very
(02:31):
few that fight their way to the top make it
out alive. The rest are just casualties of the Real
Housewives atmosphere. So when Andy is asked about the reality
reckoning and responds with I'm just focusing on the joy,
that's a bag of bullshit, because there's no other reason
why Bravo and Shed would be putting out all these
(02:52):
statements about implementing psychological professionals and measures and tests and
alcohol controls, et cetera. And as Liam McSweeney said in Nightline,
even bar is designed for profit to sell alcohol. Stop
someone when they've exceeded a reasonable amount of alcohol consumption.
(03:16):
But on the Housewives, which is not a legal workplace,
excessive alcohol consumption by people that are known addicts in
the environment is a positive. Everybody gets excited when the
addict falls off the wagon, gets wasted, does something stupid
and crazy, because in this upside down that's a positive.
(03:36):
That's performing well at work. And now this two paste
is out of the tube, the genie is out of
the bottle, and we've opened Pandora's box. And I'm sorry,
not sorry. So yeah, if biting the hand that fed us,
that hand deserves to be bitten. In thinking about the
(03:58):
Housewives and like Kyle and Mauricio's breakup, or Dorriad and
PK and what's going on with them or all of this,
I was talking to my therapist about in my adult career,
I was raised in an environment where you have to
mention it all. You don't really have a private life.
(04:19):
Kyle cannot not talk about what's going on with her
in Mauricio. She doesn't have that option. Dorie cannot talk
about her relationship with PK the girl on the new show.
I saw something about like she had to talk about
her boyfriend. Now she's on a reality show, she cannot
not talk about her relationship with her guy or anyone
like literally, Nini, who you're dating, it's what they've signed
(04:42):
up for. And Nini's not even on reality TV anymore.
But I was thinking. I was talking to my therapists
and she said, you are trained in an environment where
you have to share your entire private life, and you
don't live in that environment anymore. And it's funny because
when I talk about deprogramming from that and how that
(05:03):
desensitizes you from normalization, how you think things are normal
that aren't, and it's the upside down. How something happens
and you just know that it would be great for
the cameras. Where are the cameras, like, and you want
to capture it or save it for the cameras. Or
someone else does something that you know they did privately,
and you really feel that it's unfair that they're not
bringing it into the show. Because you're being forced to
(05:25):
bring in whatever you're doing into the show. The producers
might say, you have to talk about this thing that happened,
and Jane is sleeping with her you know, best friend's husband,
and you know about it, and you're being held to
a standard that they're not because maybe they're better at
sleuthing or and it all comes to the surface. And
I left that environment and in no area of my life,
(05:49):
whether it's my daughter or my relationship, or my health
or my aging or anything, I don't owe anyone anything.
I don't have to tell anyone anything about my life.
And I think we live in this world, even on
social media where like people have followers. They may not
be famous, but they are speaking to an audience. We
feel like we have to, you know, tell people about
(06:11):
our lives. Where's Paul or when does Brittan see her dad?
You know, like, what are they think I'm gonna post
Brinn and her dad on my social media, Like it's
my responsibility to let them know what our custody schedule is,
how much time is how much time does Brin spend
with her dad? You're out your fucking mind. When's last
time you fucked your husband? Like you think you're gonna
(06:32):
come in my social media and say something like that
to me, I'll do you just blocked, like you said,
It's like, who the fuck do people think they actually are?
Like they're gonna come into my social media and like
say that to me. Someone yesterday was like, I'm distracted
because of the piece of food on your mouth. I
had a tiny piece of seaweed, like tiny. I didn't
even see it. Fuck you. I can have whatever I
(06:54):
want in my mouth. I can grub chocolate all over
my face and post a video in my own house
because I'm a very rare breed of people who post
on social media what I want to post. I'm making
an ice cream cake in my kitchen and pajamas, haven't
washed my hair, and I've been in bed for three days,
and I have a piece of ice cream or a
sprinkle on my nose. It's my own fucking prerogative. And
it's my own body, my own ice cream, my own sprinkle,
(07:16):
my own post, my own choice. Why don't you boast
your daughter more on here? What? Like everybody feels entitled
to everybody else's information. Someone's on television, now this was
to tell you everything about themselves. Now, when I put
myself in my ex on a reality show about our relationship,
(07:36):
you bit damn fucking right. You want to know because
I dragged you in. I brought you in. I brought
you to a fairytale wedding. I thought told you everything was,
you know, perfect. Then it started to unravel, and I
felt a responsibility to tell you everything was imperfect. I
didn't even have to do that. I felt some legal
obligation because I brought you in that I had to
bring you out. You know, like j Rod are perfect,
(07:58):
they're perfect. They're perfect, they're perfect. Then they break up
and they want privacy, and it feels like you brought
us in, so now you got to take us out. Megan.
I always bring up Megan Fox because every day they
were gushing over their love and they were sharing butd
and they were making out and it was they were
one person. One day, something happened with infidelity or something happened.
I don't know if they're together anymore. They went dark.
(08:19):
They may not even be celebrities anymore. I mean they
just went into a cave. Something went on with the
two of them. They went totally dark. And but you know,
even having a publicist, well you know, and mine's great, like, well,
you're gonna have to say something. I got like ten
phone calls today. Okay, so what I don't want to
talk about brit, I don't want to talk about my
custody schedule. I don't have to say anything, you know
(08:41):
what I mean? Like, things go on and you can
just choose what version of public or private you want
to be. You don't have to talk about anything, to
talk about the food on your mouth. You can be
a private person, even if your public or a social
media person, or even in your own neighborhood and your
own cul to sec at your own country club. It's
very empowering to just like not talk about what you
(09:02):
don't want to talk about, and have whatever private life
you want to have, and do what you want to
do and don't. It's only when you get really hypocritical
that people get bothered, Like you're asking someone else to
share their information, or you told everyone it was perfect,
or you pretended you were perfect. You pretended you were perfect,
or you pretended you were so kind and so nice
(09:22):
and so loving and wonderful. Then if you're not kind
and loving and wonderful, they're gonna fucking come after you.
It's just interesting what people's expectations are of you, what
entitlement they have to you, everybody is now public property
because they're posting about themselves. So where's the line. Another
(09:43):
interesting thing about becoming desensitized to what's normal. I never
liked having a crew in my house, And now what
happens is they set up tape and everything in your house,
like to stay for part of the season, sometimes because
they know they're gonna keep shooting or they're gonna be
in one room a lot, so they just keep the
set up there. And what happens when they're shooting in
(10:03):
your house is an entire couple of trucks come and
the leanst it could ever be if you're a psychopath
and like you're having like a like a China party
of crystal and you wanted no extra footprints. The smallest
they could ever be would be a producer, a sound person,
two camera people, and like probably like five people. But
(10:26):
like on a real normal shoot, there could be twelve people,
like in and out of your house or in your driveway,
or things get scratched. People are like laying down on
floors to try to watch on the small screen, like
inside what they call video village. And I never liked
it in the beginning. I tolerated it more but in
the beginning it wasn't as big of an ordeal, Like
there weren't budgets like there are now. So that I
mean it's got Beverly Hills. It has to be shot
(10:47):
like a Coca Cola commercial. Now now you see those
interviews and they're usually usually done in another studio in
New York. They are probably on Beverly Hills. They set
up a room or a green screen in a room
and a backdrop and you just like go and your
makeup and there, but like it's a lot in your house.
And recently I did something on Nightline and there were
(11:08):
literally two one to two camera people, one sound person
and two producers on my property. I was like, I
had hives. They did nothing wrong, they were invited to
be here. I don't like someone coming into my space
and I feel totally violated and invaded one of camera
crew's at my house even though they're here because I
(11:28):
asked them to be. And it's because I have PTSD
from housewives for so long, Like my daughter's home and
like she's growing up in a world, and it was
so infrequently it maybe happened her whole life. Two three
times where she walks into the house and there's a
camera crew everywhere. Like I felt violated for her, Like
she's trying to walk in and there are people everywhere
that she doesn't know. She has to do like a
(11:48):
nice fake smile and be polite, and like everyone's everywhere
and the dogs are shaking and nervous because it's a
whole thing, and like I didn't like the way it feel.
Made me feel bad. It really really did made me
feel bad. It's just another one of those things you
guys wouldn't know about shooting a show like The Housewives,
that you can have twelve people inside your house two
to three times a week and they're lovely people and
(12:10):
they're nice, or you were just like not, you just
had bad news, you're in a bad mood, someone just died,
you have your period, you had a bad business call,
and like you've got to be nice to everybody because
they're in your home and like you know, and and
they feel bad too. They don't want to intrude any
more than you want them to intrude. They feel like
they have to creep around. It's the worst for them.
It's just a very strange dynamic. And I don't miss that.
(12:43):
Another thing about housewives is the difference in the relationships
you'll have with housewives off the show. There's nothing on
the table. There's no competition, there's nothing charge. There's no
one who's got andy'sier more than you or the other.
There's no like avoiding talking about secret topics that only
people that are on a show can know. There's no
like what talk you know. You can't talk about the
(13:05):
money you got or the opportunities you got, or where
you went or what was sent to you for free,
because everybody's always like grabbing and competing, and people can
pretend on different casts. It can be Salidlake, it can
be Beverly Hills, it can be wherever. And I know
people on all those shows, and they all will talk
about what they got with someone else didn't get there
in the middle. They got to sit next to Andy.
(13:26):
The others didn't get invited to go on the trip
to go to another country, only me. Like every housewife
is the same, every and they all just really are
in this other constant competition. Even if it's not overt,
it's subtle. There's something very subtle about it, and it
goes on with everyone everywhere, and it's all consuming if
(13:48):
you go out to dinner with multiple people from the
housewives sphere or the reality TV like that sphere, it's
eighty percent of what's talked about. It's just too tempting,
and everybody who's talking obviously the other person. It happened
at our big dinner in LA There was a housewife
there and she was talking about plot lines going on,
and Jenny Garth was sitting there and had no idea
(14:09):
what she was talking about. I didn't know what she
was talking about, but she was in the bubble, so
she thought that we all knew what she was talking about.
No one knew what she was talking about. Literally, no
one knew what she was talking about. And she was
going on for a while like a housewife way of
like no, and it's ridiculous because I did that, and
they did that, and that's what's going to happen. And
I said this, and I was just like, you were
(14:30):
talking another language. It's a world unto itself. It's like,
it's strange that everyone in that environment cult like environment
thinks that everyone else knows what's going on with them.
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