‘RHONY’: Heather Thomson Reveals Why OG Cast Feared New ‘Housewives’ – ‘You’re Either Fired or You’re Reduced’

Heather Thomson from The Real Housewives of New York City revealed that the longtime cast became so fiercely competitive they would do nearly anything to keep their jobs – which may have meant outshining any new cast member.

Insight into how new cast members were treated bubbled to the surface in Dave Quinn’s book “Not All Diamonds and Rosé.” The RHONY cast apparently bonded together to ditch new Housewife, Eboni K. Williams when she arrived at parties.

In a separate interview, Thomson reflected on the feeling of fear that threaded through the show, sharing that the OG cast felt like they had a target on their backs. And they would do whatever necessary to hold on to their position on the series.

Heather Thomson said she could sense fear with ‘RHONY’ OGs

Thomson admitted the original cast were worried that new cast members could take them out of the Housewives equation. She could tell the cast was different when she returned to the show.

“Well, I think that when there’s a shift in that particular atmosphere, there’s no gray really,” Thomson said on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast. “You’re either fired or you’re reduced, you know what I mean?”

“So with the new coming in, what’s the old adage? ‘In with the new out with the old. And in with the new.’ I mean, I think that there’s a level of fear that’s happening. And I think that that permeates throughout everybody. Not new and old, you know what I mean?” she added.

“The older fearing that they’re going to … this is now a career for them,” she observed. “You know what I mean? The people that have been there for a long time, I mean, 10 years, double digits, you know, is a career. What’s left? What do I do after? How do I maintain what I believe to be success?”

She noticed a shift this season in ‘RHONY’ OGs

“Right away it was different because they, they were newer on Housewives,” Thomson said about the newer cast members this season.

“And the older Housewives were responding to them in a way that I don’t know it wasn’t reminiscent of when I went,” she continued. “Like, when I joined the show the girls that had been on this show before me for three years, had a power. Had a sense of, we were here first. When I joined back with the new girls, that was gone.”

“They had everything down, you know, they delivered quickly, they jumped into scenes,” she shared. “They knew how to get the last word.” She added, “They knew how to jump in, like all that stuff.”

Competition for airtime was fierce on the show this season

She said there was a lot of self-producing to promote value when she returned. Adding, that the cast is no longer the ensemble cast she was part of in the past. “I will say like when I first joined the Housewives, you know, the old OGs were welcoming to the new girls, a new cast, but there was still a level of like, let’s not promote them too much,” Thomson said. “So there’s always been an underbelly of competition that I never really signed up to.”

“I wasn’t there to compete with the other women,” she asserted. “I was there to create through our own individual, you know, values and the ways we think about things or where we come from or where we were raised. That should be a place where we come together.” 

Nonetheless the competition and fear of losing a position on the show was very apparent to Thomson. “And your notoriety is what earns you, your income,” she said. “What’s second to that? All the income that comes from the show period, but then all the income that comes from being on the show, because you’re a celebrity. Because you’re well-known, you have notoriety. So there’s things that come with that as well that are now, how do I replace that? So I think that there’s a fear. And then there’s a fear from the new girls. Like, am I going to be good enough?”