‘RHOM’: How Producers Caught Lenny Hochstein’s Hot Mic Moment Revealing He Was Divorcing Lisa
Lisa Hochstein joined The Real Housewives of Miami in its second season back in 2011. A decade later, Peacock revived the series with Hochstein and other OG Miami Housewives, along with some fresh faces. The fifth season of the show, airing in 2022 and 2023, has chronicled Lisa’s divorce from husband Lenny Hochstein. Housewives producers were keyed in to Hochstein’s decision to split from his wife thanks to a hot mic moment capturing a conversation he had with a friend.
Lisa and Lenny Hochstein are getting a divorce
Lenny Hochstein filed for divorce from his wife Lisa in May 2022. The Real Housewives of Miami was in the midst of shooting its fifth season when the couple first separated.
In the first part of the season, Lisa speaks happily about her marriage as she celebrated a “good vibes” party and said that her union with Lenny was on an upswing. At the same time, elsewhere in their massive house, Lenny was having a conversation with a friend about his own plans, saying he would be single soon enough.
Lisa was shocked when she learned that Lenny wanted a divorce, and soon began dating a new girl. As the season progressed, fans saw Lisa living in what used to be their family home while Lenny quietly comes and goes, as he’s since moved out.
Lenny Hochstein’s hot mic moment revealing his plans
The now-infamous hot mic moment captured Lenny’s mindset right before he dropped the divorce bomb on Lisa. “In a couple months, I might be single too,” he whispered to a friend. He wasn’t on screen when it was said, instead with footage of their house being shown as the audio plays.
Lenny’s audible slip was hard to find for even for Housewives producers. “You just never know what’s there and you don’t always know what’s happening at these parties until you get back into the edit bay and you can really dissect and get into it,” Kathleen French, senior vice president of Current Production at NBCUniversal Television and Streaming told Page Six. French said it took “hours and hours and hours” for veteran Housewives producer Lauren Kaylor to track down the audio of Lenny declaring his plan to leave Lisa.
“One day, [Kaylor] was having a sandwich and she said, ‘I want to know what Lenny was doing during the party,'” French recalled. “She was listening to his audio the whole time and she was the one who found the hot mic moment juxtaposed with Lisa outside talking about how wonderful the marriage is.”
“There’s a certain style of producer. And I call them ‘part ferret’ because they just get in there and they listen,” she continued. “They’re looking for things and they just have an intuitive sense of what’s happened. It’s really what makes ‘Housewives’ ‘Housewives.‘”
Lenny has a new girlfriend
Since his estrangement from Lisa, Lenny has moved on to a new girlfriend. He’s been dating Austrian model Katharina Mazepa since last year, but told Us Weekly that he hadn’t started dating her until he’d split from Lisa.
“It is true that I am seeing Katharina but none of this happened until after the decision was made to get divorced,” Lenny said. “This is a very difficult time and I would ask for some privacy so that we can best take care of our children who mean the world to us.”
