Mention it All: Reality Reckoning

Headlines don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. Here is the current breakdown of the Reality Reckoning from the person who started it…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Mention it all the reality reckoning. So there have been
many headlines and stories about this reality reckoning that I started,
and people are wondering, why is she doing that? Is
she biting the hand that feeds her? She had this platform.
Isn't this what everybody signs up for? What is she doing?
So I'm going to explain to you the full and

(00:32):
real story about what I'm doing and why and how
it evolved and how we got here today. So mention
it all the reality reckoning. So I have heard about
the writers strike, the actor strike, and I just off
the cough posted a video saying why aren't reality stars
on strike and that we should have a union because
I know that my content is all over the world

(00:56):
that I did fifteen years ago, before I ever knew
that there would be a peak cockstreamer or any streamers
or gifts or memes or anything YouTube clips, social media.
I go to Australia and I'll see my entire body
on the back of buses promoting shows for Hey You Australia,
which I never even knew existed because it didn't exist.

(01:17):
So we signed our lives away, not realizing where it
would be distributed for decades to come and people say, well,
this is what you sign up for, and it is
what we signed up for then, but we did not
know what the world would become, and we did not
know that there would be streamers. And this is effectively
what actors are fighting for. And people say, oh, well,

(01:39):
you guys don't have talent and you're not actors, and
that's what people are really paying for. And with the
writers and actors strike, now reality stars are being relied upon,
just like the last strike, to provide all of the content.
So now it's going to be a gold rush for
reality talent and they're being exploited without compensation. Now many

(02:01):
people sign up for it and are happy to be
treated poorly because they just want the fame. But does
that make it right? And many people I've come to
learn have horrific stories that are yes, also abusive and illegal,
but they're scared because they've ruined their lives and reputations
through this medium and the only way to go back

(02:22):
and make a living is through this toxic medium. So
it's like chasing the dragon, and this medium gets them
back in to constantly try to clear their name. So
people say that I'm biting the hand that feeds me
by bringing this up, when in fact I fed myself.
Andy Cohen didn't want me on the Housewives, and most
housewives and reality talent gets discarded by the side of

(02:45):
the road and is not successful like I am. I
was always an entrepreneur. I was always someone who could
figure out a way to make a living. And since
being on reality television, I've done hundreds of millions of
dollars in relief work. Without reality televison, I've done an
amazing job at making a lot more money and being
more successful since reality television. And yes, it did give

(03:07):
me a platform, but it gave many people a platform,
and no one has had the same experience as I
am have, so I created my own success. Yes, they
gave me a platform. Yes I am grateful that I
got that platform, but I also fed them because they
were able to get a different caliber of talent who

(03:27):
all wanted to be successful entrepreneurs since me, I created
the model for using it as a vehicle to promote
a product, and my product was made fun of in
the beginning because of an ugly logo and because of
arguments with other people. It can go both ways. I
fought through and I made it successful, but it's definitely

(03:50):
a double edged sword, so let's put that to the side.
I'm just answering the fact that biting the hand that
feeds me. When I made a post saying why don't
we have a union, it exploded and everyone agreed with me.
I wasn't thinking about anything legal. I didn't know anyone
would come out of the woodwork. I was speaking for
myself and saying my content has been exploited. And it

(04:12):
made me then think of all the other people who
I had heard about who or I've seen whose lives
were ruined. People who are on The Bachelor who said
something inappropriate that ruins their life and they got paid
nothing and they can never get a job again. Or
people on The Housewives that are called horrendous names, or
whose kids get bullied, or whose businesses get shut down,

(04:33):
or who get fired. Those people were exploited and the
episodes still air and they get no compensation. I first
thought of my personal experience, because that's what I have,
But then I started thinking about all the other people.
So all I did was say something, And once I
said something, all these people came out of the woodwork,
and people who are interviewers were saying to me, do

(04:56):
you know how the Supernanny was exploited or Caitlin Bristow
was exploited or all these different people. I hadn't even
thought of it. Then my messages were blowing up and
all these people were coming out, and I thought, oh
my god, Wow, people really have been exploited in ways
I didn't even think of. There are examples that I
knew of where there was a big cover up by
the network on this boat incident that we were on,

(05:17):
where it was very dangerous and there were only two
life vests and it was definitely a liability, and the
production company and the network had meetings and investigations trying
to cover their own ass. Okay, no one died like
that was fine. We didn't press charges and nobody would
press charges because they all were still part of the machine,
still working as part of the machine. And that happened

(05:38):
in the Harvey Weinstein scandal. People were still working in
the machine and didn't open up their mouths until it
became so big that they could not open their mouths.
Gwyneth Paltrow was the first person to give it really
credibility from a macro perspective from a very successful, respected
actress that really took it to the next level. So
people who are making money off of the machine won't

(05:59):
speak out again. It happens. It happened in people making
money off of opioids, It's happened in many different industries.
It's not like the minute I say something, people are
going to give up their fame or their show that's
paying them, even if it's not the right pay, or
even if they're not being treated right. So now I
said something, and people who had been discarded and whose
lives had been ruined started reaching out to me. So

(06:22):
I thought, oh, but even before that, I went online
and said, these are ten terms that I think would
be fair. This is before it became illegal practices that
I was being made aware of. I was just saying,
these are terms based on compensation for exploitation. It wasn't
about illegal practices, it wasn't about abuse. It was just

(06:43):
about that this group of people risk their jobs, their reputations,
and here are terms. So of course no one's going

(07:04):
to respond to my terms. Of course, Bravo or a
network isn't going to reach out to me and say, hey, well,
respond to your terms. They don't need to. And I
saw them get noticeably more silent. And I saw Andy
Cohen and watch What Happens Live be a little more
sensitive and a little more watered down and sanitized. And
I watched people get nervous. But to what end? I

(07:26):
reached out to one lawyer because I wanted someone to
sort of write up in a formalized way what I
had voiced in these ten terms that I did on
TikTok and Instagram. I wanted there to be a reason
that a network would respond. So in other words, people
won't usually respond unless they get a legal letter than
they're required to respond. So I wanted a lawyer to

(07:49):
memorialize a jumping off point with these terms that I
set on social media to send to networks, so that
they would possibly respond like to send to like a
Bravo and they would respond to my terms as a
jumping off point and say, this is a good idea.
We do agree with you. People are being utilized and
exploited and we're using their content and we've never given

(08:12):
them a dime of the merchandise, and we've said that
the Bethany clause means we take a piece of their
business to the end of time, and I just wanted
something in writing. But what happened was when this lawyer
got involved and I had all of these people who
had started reaching out to me about different forms of
abuse and workplace violations, it opened Pandora's box. The lawyer

(08:35):
couldn't believe the influx of complaints and abuse, so then
they the lawyer, Brian Friedman, brought on another lawyer, Garrigos,
Mark Garrigos, who has represented many people in different class
action lawsuits. So Brian Friedman has represented many people wronged
in entertainment lawsuits, like whether it's Gabrielle Union or they

(08:59):
rep and Megan Kelly, and Mark Arragos has represented other people.
And many of you will have a problem with some
of the people that they've represented. You may hate it,
but they are lawyers and they represent that's their job.
They represent different types of cases. It doesn't mean that
they're not good lawyers. It doesn't mean that they're bad people.
You are just saying that you don't like some of
the people that they've represented, which is fair, But that

(09:21):
has nothing to do with the fact that the two
of these powerhouse lawyers got involved because there were valid
cases here. So now it became something bigger. So they
announced a big statement and they put Bravo on notice,
an NBC, which is one hundred and eighty million dollar company,
they put them on notice saying, hold all this footage,
hold all this documentation, because these are things that we

(09:42):
as lawyers have found. This is not my lawsuit. This
is not Bethany suing anyone. This is not Bethany saying
that anything happened to her. So this was just opening
Pandora's box. The person who recommended me and referred me
to these lawyers, to Brian Friedman, are want the most
powerful people in Hollywood, because Hollywood noticed, and even the

(10:03):
entertainment industry and agencies, those people that represent many of
these reality people, many of the production companies, many of
the people. They recommended me to these lawyers because they
agreed with me that there should be a union and
that the exploitation is that this business is fraught with exploitation.
So think about that. The very people that make a

(10:25):
percentage off of the production companies and the talent in
this multi now billion dollar sphere of reality television recommended
me to these lawyers because they know that there needs
to be an end to this exploitation, that the line
has been crossed. So they also agreed that there should
be some sort of a union. So on a parallel

(10:48):
path from all of these lawsuits and Bravo being put
on notice, we get the SAG after a union reaches
out to me and agrees that there's been exploitation and
agrees that NBC and Bravo have been exploiting talent and
that they want to work towards fair practices for this talent.
Many of this talent that wants to stay there right

(11:10):
now because they want to make the money. They need
the income, and they don't want to bite the hand
that is currently feeding them. So those people who won't
speak up, as much as it would be courageous for
them to speak up, I understand why they won't publicly
speak up because they want to make money. So when people,
when other members of the Housewives franchise come out in

(11:31):
defense saying I'm biting the hand feed that fed me
and why would I do this A they're being pushed
forward by Bravo PR because the Bravo PR machine is
on full tilt now because there's a massive, massive literary
piece coming out in a credible publication in a few months.
This is a credible publication and there are major, major

(11:53):
pieces coming out. So the Bravo pr machine is at work,
and they want to get some of their successful workhorses
that are currently employed by them to say things like
Bethany's biting the hand that fed her. That's ridiculous. Yes,
this medium was good to me. Yes, this vehicle paid me.
I did not know about a lot of these violations.
And I did not know about this stuff because I'm

(12:16):
a smart person that would have never tolerated this. And
I had a lot of power because I brought in ratings,
because when I left Bravo, the ratings dropped them. When
I came back, they went back to where they were,
to the tune of about a million and a half years.
So Bravo is not going to mess around with me,
nor is a production company. But there are weaker talent
that have been discarded, and the way that they go
back every year is because in their personal lives, their

(12:39):
real lives, their reputation has been destroyed. They have nowhere
else to go. And the way that Bravo gets talent
to come back every year, and the production companies get
talent to come back every year after they've been abused
and discarded is by saying to them, you get to
change the narrative. You get to come back this time
and you get to set the record straight. So they
beat you down and then they they're saying, you get

(13:01):
to build yourself back up. Because the name of the
game of this forum of reality television is I've always
said it's a zero sum game. Someone is always winning
and someone is always losing. So if you're winning, you're
on top of the world making all this money. So
there's a recent pr thing saying that I pitched a
show to Bravo a few months ago, and all of

(13:22):
a sudden, now I'm realizing the grotesque and horrible treatment,
the brutal treatment. The facts are because page six posts
something that they just heard and just throw it up.
It doesn't matter tomorrow they can post something different. The
facts are, and I have all the receipts and my
lawyers have all the receipts that over. About two years ago,
I was in Nantucket and I pitched a project to

(13:45):
a production company called Pop. A man named Matt Anderson
he worked on He produced Miami Real Housewives, Atlanta and
married to medicine, and I pitched him on Bethany. The
next chapter, me being in Connecticut and the people around me.
I had spoken to Andy Cohen and pitched it to him.
He loved it. We did a beach walk. He loved it.
And Bravo was interested in and Bravo basically said to

(14:07):
Matt at pop, go flush us out, go develop it.
So they started sending me women to be around me,
and only one hundred times did I say to them,
I don't want this to be a housewives. I don't
like that culture. This has to be anything but housewives.
I don't want this to be housewives. They kept saying
to me, it will not be housewives, but lo and
behold they were casting all these different women. We kept

(14:27):
flushing it out. I was producing it. It was my concept.
It also involved this podcast narrating it. And it was
this whole concept that started between eighteen months and two
years ago. I have every receipt from my lawyers. We
were about to be at the signing point, like in
April and May, and I had been punting it so

(14:49):
much so that the production company kept saying that I
had been punting it, and my lawyers didn't like the
production company's practices because they had been casting people and
developing the show, and they they wouldn't give us the
materials that they had been casting. And it was my
concept that I pitched them about a group of people
in Connecticut who was I surrounding myself with in my
next chapter in Connecticut. But the types of women they

(15:10):
were casting made me worry that it was getting a
little housewivesy, and they've produced a lot of housewives and
I started getting cagy and didn't want to do it.
Someone reached out to me from the Bravo sphere and
said to me that the production company Pop and Matt Anderson,
my partners, had produced Married to Medicine, and that they

(15:32):
had allegedly stolen the show Married to Medicine from a
cast member. I don't know who the cast member is.
I don't know the story, but they had been stealing.
They had stolen the show allegedly, and things that had
been going on in the interaction and in the deal
negotiating between myself and this production company were making me
feel worried that they were going to try to do

(15:53):
this Connecticut ensemble show without me, which was a concept
that I pitched Andy that I pitched them, and they
were to try to get cute and figure out another
way to do it and call it something different, but
still do it in Connecticut because they had spent time
and money flushing it out, and I didn't like the
way it felt, and it really was like bullseye. I
felt like they were going to steal the show. And

(16:14):
this other person said to me, while they stole Married
to Medicine. And then I found out that it resulted
in a massive lawsuit and a settlement. So I called
my lawyer at Grubman and said, I don't want to
do it, pull the plug on the show. I just
don't want to do it. So that was in like

(16:34):
April May. So today page six was trying to paint
a picture where like just months ago, I was pitching
a show about Connecticut and all of a sudden, now
I think the practices are grotesque. I was pitching a
show eighteen months two years ago, and now it was
getting to contract stage and this production company was really

(16:56):
selling it to Bravo, and I pulled the plug at
the last minute. And I believe they're probably still trying
to do it. And this is the production company that
was in a conflict about stealing a show. So that's
what that latest page six is about. And that's why
it's great to have your own voice, your own platform,
your own podcast, because I get to flush this all out.

(17:16):
Now you're seeing Bravo scramble and water things down and
wash things down by different articles. Like I said of House,
I've saying I'm biting the hand that feeds me, and
people pitching this story about I was pitching Bravo and
isn't that convenient? But what's really going on is they
are very nervous. There are sub lawsuits going on as well.

(17:37):
The Morocco Ultimate Girls Trip is also currently a big
source of conflict for Bravo. Brandy Glanville and Carolyn both
have two sides to the story about an alleged sexual assault.
Brandy has information about herself being told to act a
certain way. Caroline also has taken up legal representation. There

(17:57):
are two sides to that story, and Bravo has coincidentally
just completely shelved that project. In addition, Watch What Happens
Live has become very watered down. It seems like Bravo
is on full alert and they have been extremely responsive
and nervous about this pending lawsuit from many people in

(18:20):
the Bravo sphere via these lawyers that I brought in
about a union at about residuals. So Pandora's box has
been opened as far as the union goes. I have
a very important meeting this week with the union and
that should move forward to hopefully protect these people. So
there's a lot swirling. I just wanted to say to

(18:42):
you directly. Oh. In addition, people have been speculating why
am I doing this? Am I starting my own network?
Am I representing talent? The answer is no. I literally,
off the cuff, made a comment about the fact that
reality stars should be part of a union because of
exploitation without compensation. That evolved into terms that I thought

(19:04):
would be fair, which evolved into a big Hollywood, big
way giving me the name of a lawyer to try
to get a response on those terms, which evolved into
probably over one hundred reality stars reaching out to me
about them being violated, abused, and exploited without compensation, ruining

(19:25):
their lives. It evolved into a lawsuit from many of
the Bravo talent exposing practices that I did not realize.
Bravo was complicit in. And I would like you to
know that I've known Andy Cohen for years and we

(19:50):
always have been colleagues. Now, I was one of his
favorites as a housewife, and he always enjoyed me, and
I always enjoyed him. But we weren't quote unquot good friends.
And I mean that to say that I met his
son once or twice. Every time he's come over my
house where I've come over his, we've been talking about
the industry and the business and housewives, and we've both

(20:12):
always had an agenda in the relationship with one another.
I have never really clearly been able to view him
and his business practices without him being in some sort
of employer adjacent role, meaning he's not my direct employer.

(20:33):
But there have been projects that I've pitched him. There
have been negotiations that I've done with him about being
on the Housewives, about coming back to the Housewives, about
different projects that he's pitched me, and that I've pitched
him about what I come back for Ultimate Girls trip.
I always had a foot in that door. So my
relationship with Andy was connected to business at all times.

(20:55):
From the minute I met him. It was always connected
to business, but it was some of the I knew
through business who I was also friendly with when I
left the Housewives, and I had the highest rated series
premiere in Bravo history for my spinoff. I was invited
to his Christmas party, but only one time in one year,
and I've never been invited back. So when you say

(21:15):
everyone thought we were really good friends, we were friendly,
but we were show business friends. We were colleagues, and
we both always had an agenda. And there's been a dance.
And when I came out with Rewives, it's the first
time that I saw him publicly speak out against it,
which was ludicrous because Rewives is about is a podcast

(21:38):
about a machine that I helped to create, and I
don't exploit that. I'm not exploiting those people. Some people
have said, oh, why would I keep my rewives podcast
when I'm in the middle of this big reality reckoning.
I'm not telling people to watch the episodes. I'm not
trashing anyone, I'm not exploiting anyone. I'm simply using a

(22:00):
show as a vehicle to talk about human issues with
non Bravo talent. So that's asked an answered. Everyone's trying
to come for me with some sort of agenda based thing,
and I'm right here, you can ask me any questions.

(22:27):
So Andy publicly denounced Rewives, and then it backfired on
him because it was in every publication for weeks and
my podcast Rewives went into the top five and has
been an outrageous success to the tune of millions of downloads.

(22:47):
So that backfired so much so that they asked me
to come on watch What Happens Live. When Watch What
Happens Live hadn't wanted me to be on, but the
fans were asking so much about it that they had
me go on. I thought we were going on in
a normal, friendly capacity, so I went on there and
the public spoke there was an ambush. My daughter was
with me. She was really sad, to be honest, it

(23:09):
really hurt her. She thought we were going on to
be on a show, and she was like, why were
they so mean to you? And truthfully, I believe that
I kept the peace there and I went onto that
show and allowed myself to be ambushed because the door
was still a little bit always open. Would I ever
go back? And why burn a bridge and shut a
door even though you know you're not going back? Why
scorch that kingdom if you know you might go back.

(23:32):
What if everything goes to shitt and you just want
the paycheck for going on one of those trips or
something that you've been invited on. And now I'm at
a point where like, no, there's no number to put
me on one of those trips because I didn't realize a
lot of behind the scenes, I really have noticed that
it's evolved into being something disgusting and toxic that I
was fully part of. I admit that I was part

(23:53):
of it. I was part of the machine. I was
the golden child, the shining example of the machine. I'm
not hiding behind any of my ayes. I've said negative
things to people on the show, et cetera, And the
truth is I don't hold any of the people accountable
on the shows. That's what they were trained to do.
If you ever saw Game of Thrones, the Unsullied are

(24:14):
trained warriors. Whether it doesn't matter whether it's Erica Jane
or Lisa Rinna or Luanne de les Seppe or Kelly
Bensimone or Bethany Frankel or Ramona Singer, all of these
people have been seen doing horrible things on these shows
that they haven't been seen doing off those shows for
many of these cases, because they are trained for ratings.

(24:36):
What are the people on vander Pump Rules trained for ratings?
You do something bad, and you do something negative, you
are rewarded for that behavior. You fall off the wagon,
the cameras fly in, you get a divorce, yay, you
go bankrupt, wonderful, You're going to jail. Bring the cameras in.

(24:56):
The line has gotten blurred from when I started, and
diff diferent things were what was focused on. The more
that this medium, in this genre has celebrated things that
are terrible, the more they've made more and more money
for honoring and highlighting workplace violations, emotional abuse, sexual exploitation,

(25:22):
and we just keep digesting it because it's what keeps
being served to us, and no one has stopped it.
And I understand it's ratings. What happened on vander Pump's
Rules when they got up to like millions of viewers
for what for a cheating scandal on a show fueled
by alcohol with bartenders and band members, none of them
that are married, and an affair became the biggest thing,

(25:43):
and somebody won and somebody lost and the worse it gets,
the better it is for the pockets of Bravo. So
at some point the music will have to stop, you know,
because people and you will say, they signed up for this,
they signed up for this. Okay, these people signed up
for it. They signed up for what they didn't even know.

(26:06):
And every year they're rewarded for bad behavior, and every year,
the deeper they get into it, they can't work anywhere else.
They've ruined their reputation. Housewives are women in their fifties
and sixties who often do terrible things. They can't work
anywhere else, they've ruined their reputations. And yes they got
a second chance, and yes they weren't in the workforce,

(26:27):
and it's amazing that they were able to make money,
but it's not something that's widely respected. It's something that
is compensated. But like Porner, it's not widely respected. So
this world of salacious reality television has definitely pushed the envelope,
and myself included and many of you. Things will develop.

(26:48):
You're going to see things you did not know. You're
going to see things more clearly and start to think
about what you're consuming and how dirty you felt after
consuming it because the football keeps moving, and these shows
are not designed for conflict resolution. They're designed for conflict conflict,
and they're not designed to punish someone if they do

(27:11):
something wrong. So this has not been something that was
like a grand plan. I opened up Pandora's box and
now I can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
And I'm on this path, and it's definitely slightly scary,
like in the back of my mind, because things like this,

(27:33):
you will during times like this, you will make enemies
and it won't be popular. And the sheep are definitely
not gonna like when someone breaks out, especially someone who
is so successful. But I have a beautiful daughter to
think about what she consumes in her future. I have
a good relationship, I have a very successful business. I

(27:53):
have a thriving bank account, and I don't have to
put up with things that I don't think are right
for other people in society. And I get to be
cause driven and it doesn't matter if people hate me
or cancel me, because I'm okay. Nobody has anything that

(28:14):
I want. It's why I have my own YouTube series
content to the people. It's why I don't go back
to network television. I don't want someone else controlling my content.
My story, my life, and my YouTube series and my
podcast get more views and listens and more downloads than
network television now. So people have the freedom to use

(28:35):
their voice, and it takes courage. So I'm mentioning it
all and not letting all these little choppy publications decide
to tell you the story. That's the true story, that's
the mention it all story, and it is still developing
and you're going to see a lot of explosive things
coming out that are going to surprise you, and it's
going to be something different every day, every week. So

(28:58):
I wanted to frame this entire story ahead of time
so you know it all from here and it will
evolve and it will change. Thank you for listening. Stay
tuned for more