Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (31 page)

The life of a Housewife is fraught with myriad small crises—from a costar’s household staff making fun of her on-camera to a castmate’s accusations on Twitter about plastic surgery—but here was a major crisis to put all others in perspective. The women were being attacked from all sides and they were scared—they didn’t want their reputations to be ruined or the show to be blamed, and all desperately wanted to do the right thing. The problem was, Emily Post never wrote any instructions on how to handle this kind of situation.

Evolution Media called a meeting with the women at Adrienne’s house. Within minutes, the press got word of the “emergency meeting” that would determine the fate of the show. In fact, its purpose was to calm the hysteria. At Adrienne’s house, the conversation veered all over the place. These women are insiders. They’re plugged into your TMZs and Radar Onlines and have friends at the LAPD, all of whom were floating multiple conspiracy theories. Some said it was murder, others that he had committed suicide because he was hiding a gay lover, another that he was in Brazil, alive and escaped. The women wondered why news of the business partner committing suicide wasn’t being reported; they felt it explained the depth of financial ruin Russell faced. They knew that he’d left a suitcase full of unpaid bills next to his body. Some of the women said that the Armstrongs had passed themselves off as people of means for years to enhance their image; it wasn’t just for the show. Despite how terrible they felt for Taylor and Kennedy, they all felt that nothing anyone had done or not done could have changed the decision that Russell Armstrong had made to end his life. Nonetheless, Lisa thought the show should be delayed. Camille thought it shouldn’t air at all—she’d been the one to out Russell’s physical abuse on the show.

I reached out to Taylor every way I could, but never heard back. Alex Baskin spoke with her many times and she was adamant that every scene be shown, that if people were really going to understand what happened, and connect with the story and maybe make a change in their own life if necessary, they’d need to see all the events as they happened. She didn’t want to keep silent anymore.

My mother, of course, was very upset and kept sending me press clippings and editorials. “What are you going to DO?” she pleaded. “I will watch it, but will anyone else?” As for me, I was having a hard time seeing the forest for the trees, worried that the outrage in the media was too loud for anyone to watch the series without being disturbed by the noise. My colleagues were more levelheaded.

Finally we decided, as we had with the Salahi scandal, to move forward and let the show speak for itself. If people could tune out the tabloid noise, they would see a very raw, real documentary about a circle of women trying to figure out how to help a friend who was in danger and who was going—by her own admission—off the rails. But we knew we had to be very sensitive—the press was all too ready to accuse us of exploitation no matter what we did, but we were mostly concerned with how our audience would feel. We wouldn’t use any scenes including Russell Armstrong to promote the show, and we edited out scenes with him in the early episodes, feeling that it was wrong to show him so soon after the suicide. We cut small mentions of Russell. We cut lines that weren’t funny anymore or that took on a new meaning, like Adrienne saying, “I could kill my husband, he bugs me so much.” We cut a scene in the season premiere of Taylor lingerie-shopping and a friend noting that her husband would die when he saw her in a certain outfit. There was a scene in the third episode illustrating how cold Russell and Taylor’s marriage was, and we cut it. He did eventually appear, though, and the reason was that we felt we’d do him a greater disservice by cutting him out entirely—you humanize him by seeing him instead of just hearing that he’s a bad guy. In the end, what we had, unfolding throughout the season’s twenty episodes, was an honest depiction of what happened to a woman in the midst of an unhappy marriage. She found the strength, with the support of her friends, to leave. It was real life.

For all the campy fun and pure escapism that the Housewives embody, more than once I’ve had to grapple with the difficult truth that reality TV captures real life not only in its lighter moments, but in the darkest times as well. No amount of wealth, beauty, or fame can immunize you from misfortune, tragedy, or despair. I do not believe to this day that Russell Armstrong killed himself as a result of the show.

My experience in reality TV is that the truth always ends up coming out. It might take some time and patience and even skillful reading between the lines, but it will be there. Leeches, grifters, pretenders, and manipulators are always exposed or expose themselves. Flawed people and flawed relationships are laid bare, whether it’s a controlling husband, a conniving friend, or an insolent and ungrateful offspring. Viewers are invested in the truth, whether it’s sweet or sordid, and the Housewives never disappoint, just as they never fail to provide equally honest moments of deep loyalty, tender vulnerability, and unself-conscious self-parody. There will always be those who disagree, but I know that while the root of this show is entertainment, it’s also laced with social commentary, and whether we’re getting to know these pretty people or their pretty little dogs, their lives are undeniably real. And sometimes real life isn’t very pretty at all.

REUNIONS

The Clayton High School Class of ’86 has reunions every five years, and I go back to St. Louis for every one. Most of us are still in touch, so there’s never that shocking moment when the music dims, everyone gasps, and we all whip our heads around to see the formerly nerdy chess club president walk in looking super-hot with the quarterback of the football team. There are no drinks thrown, no damning evidence suddenly produced with an accompanying shriek, no old feuds suddenly boiling over at the bar. I would describe these gatherings as “sweet.” And that’s one of the reasons there won’t ever be a
Real Housewives of St. Louis
. I’ve seen that show and, trust me, it’s nice, but it wouldn’t make good TV.

The same cannot be said for the reunions I host on Bravo. Allow me to quote Whitney Houston from
Being Bobby Brown
: “Aww HAYALL NO!” At first, the concept behind reunion shows was to tie up loose ends and avoid the following season turning into a rehash. They were also a way to extend the seasons of shows that were getting good ratings. But what started as a little jaunt down Memory Lane has evolved into a smoldering high-speed pileup on the Autobahn, and I’m equal parts horrified, mesmerized, and—mainly—excited. After all, I’m not only a producer, host, and boss, I’m also a superfan.

The reunions on Bravo started with
Project Runway
and
Top Chef
, and even though we were dealing with relatively down-to-earth personalities like fledgling designers and young chefs, you may be shocked to learn that these initial get-togethers were dramatic, drunken—and sometimes very ugly. The first
Top Chef
reunion featured Tiffani Faison running to the side of the studio to throw up, contestant Ken Lee threatening original
Top Chef
host Katie Lee Joel, and chef Stephen Asprinio calling Candice Kumai trash. At the time, I honestly wondered: Was this the most repulsive or the greatest thing I’d ever seen on TV? The answer, possibly, was yes to both.

The first OC
Housewives
reunion occurred without me, and for that maybe I’m grateful: Today it looks as primitive as the first episode of
The Simpsons
. The women gathered in Vicki’s backyard and sat on her tall, wobbly outdoor furniture, reminiscing directly to the camera. The next season, I hosted, but we still didn’t get the setting right, moving the proceedings into an antiseptic, football-field-sized studio where we sat far apart from each other on director’s chairs that made my butt hurt. When the women entered the studio, Jeana asked if the big fancy studio meant the show was a big hit. It was.

The set for the first
RHNYC
reunion was perfect. We convened at the Russian Tea Room; the women were seated close to each other on couches, surrounded by old New York City glamour. We positioned the biggest adversaries on either side of me. That season, like others that would follow, it was Jill and Ramona. I squeezed into the middle, which I’ve learned is always the best seat in the house.

The Housewives see the reunions as a last chance to rewrite their own story, and at the heart of it, isn’t that what all reunions are really about? You go to your twentieth determined to leave an even better impression than the last time, to have people say, “That person looks great/has their shit together/has really changed…” It’s a manipulation of sorts, but a manipulation that goes both ways. While the Housewives are trying to manipulate each other and (especially) the viewers, I’m trying to manipulate them into spilling their guts on television.

The Housewives both love and dread the reunions, and I can’t say I blame them. They typically take at least eight hours to shoot, because we let all the women talk and talk (and talk) until they feel they’ve had their say. This is when they have to face the harshest jury—the viewers—who fire direct, often angry, questions and opinions. Even though the Housewives have signed up for the show and everything that entails—and though they keep coming back for more year after year— answering intensely personal questions and getting roasted for your behavior on national television would be a grueling experience for anyone. It’s probably not unlike throwing your hat in the ring for public office, knowing that there’s a chance Matt Lauer is going to show up with that pic of your butt you drunkenly tweeted.

Often a Housewife attempts to use the reunion show to reposition her “character.” Sometimes, as in the case of Camille Grammer at the first
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
reunion, it works. She was sincere, vulnerable, and owned everything she’d said and done during the season. Viewers who’d been hard on her all season now saw a likable person beneath the boasting about the nannies and square footage.

As much as the women are trying to say their piece and reinvent themselves, the reunions can serve a larger agenda for Bravo: They can be a determining factor for deciding who stays, who goes, and when to pull the plug on a series itself. I’m sure that one of the reasons the DC Wives were so forthcoming at their reunion was that in their minds, the pickup of their show was in jeopardy and they had to deliver. And deliver they did, but their instincts were correct: The show was in jeopardy, and even a lively reunion ultimately couldn’t justify another season. In the end, the Housewives shows are still about telling the women’s stories, and if the story being told has no chance to grow or change, then it can’t go forward.

After the fourth
RHNYC
reunion, the chatter on social media about the women’s nasty negativity was so loud and strong that it not only reinforced what the producers and Bravo had been worrying about all season, it freed us to make our boldest move thus far: not renewing the contracts of Jill, Alex, Kelly, and Cindy.

Q
UESTIONS I CAN’T BELIEVE I ASKED ON NATIONAL TELEVISION:

Sonja, was your vagina rude to Kelly?

Camille, was the real reason you used a surrogate to keep your figure?