Andy Cohen Was Right: ‘RHONY’ Season 14 Is ‘Petty’ and ‘Fun’ [Exclusive]
The Real Housewives of New York City is back, baby! RHONY purists were skeptical when executive producer Andy Cohen insisted the reboot would harken back to the golden days of RHONY and he was proved right after the season 14 premiere.
During an interview with Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Cohen said RHONY reboot questions were the top queries he’s received since announcing they planned to re-cast the series.
“The good news is it’s great. It’s a different show than the original RHONY,” Cohen insisted. “But it’s fun and it’s aspirational and fashionable and fun to watch and petty and everything that you love about the Housewives you’ll get from The Real Housewives of New York.”
Cohen also said the new RHONY will bring back the levity the original series was known to deliver. “It is funny. I mean, you know, listen, it’s got big shoes to fill in that category, but it is funny,” he said.
‘RHONY’ Season 14 definitely brings the petty back to ‘Housewives’ Andy Cohen said
The new RHONY cast delivered on Cohen’s promise when the key conflict centered around not wanting to be caught dead at an outdated restaurant and cheese.
The new cast includes fashion content creator Sai De Silva, model Ubah Hassan, luxury real estate developer Erin Lichy, former executive creative director and president of J.Crew Jenna Lyons, publicist Jessel Taank, and communications professional Brynn Whitfield.
Cohen said casting the reboot was done with care. “This is going back to the original formula in that it is a Housewives show and it very much feels like that,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
“We’re rolling dice here,” he admitted. “And I think we’ve got a team of people between Bravo, myself, and Shed Media who’ve been doing this for a very long time so, we did not take this lightly. We painstakingly recast the show.”
Producers “Looked at so many people,” Cohen added. “And we met people every way from Sunday before we wound up selecting this group. We took a lot of care in this, and I think it shows in who we actually chose.”
Do ‘RHONY’ fans have Eboni K. Williams to thank?
RHONY was rebooted after a flat, disjointed season 13. This included the introduction of attorney Eboni K. Williams, who thinks her presence was the impetus behind the cast shakeup.
“I’m rooting for these new women in this reboot,” Williams told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “This reboot is my legacy. This is a derivative of the disruption that my presence brought to this show. So I want these women to win. At the same time, they’re also not a preexisting group of friends.”
The new RHONY cast is relatively around the same age and new to Bravo. Williams had to break into an older cast who were set in their ways and knew their star power.
“I think they all admit this, they are a very hard group to penetrate,” she said of the RHONY OG cast. “And that’s why even Tinsley [Mortimer], one could argue, could barely penetrate. Leah [McSweeney] obviously barely penetrated. And yes, I definitely didn’t penetrate. And also it didn’t help that at some point I didn’t want to penetrate because I had seen too much.”
Some OG cast members are loving the new RHONY. “Loving the new girls,” Luann de Lesseps tweeted during the premiere. But not every RHONY OG is loving the new cast. De Silva said Ramona Singer was less than friendly. “Ramona was a total b**** to me at Art Basel,” she revealed on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.
The Real Housewives of New York City is on Sunday night at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
