The Bravosphere is chattering after a recent The Real Housewives of New York City update, including show alum and newly-minted Floridian Bethenny Frankel.
“New York City was my playground,” Bethenny, 54, said in a Friday, May 9, TikTok video. “It’s poetic [and] it’s bittersweet.”
Several hours earlier, speculation swirled that RHONY would not be returning for another season with new stars Jenna Lyons, Brynn Whitfield, Erin Lichy, Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Jessel Taank and Racquel Chevremont. Bravo, however, debunked the claims in a statement to Us Weekly.
“Nothing is official,” a network spokesperson said at the time. “The show hasn’t been canceled.”
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A source later confirmed to Us that Bravo hasn’t made any concrete decisions regarding RHONY’s future after season 15.
“Final decisions haven’t been made, and they are seeing if they can find a solution,” the insider explained to Us. “The network and producers have been debating whether or not to bring it back.”
Per the source, none of the current stars have been offered a contract for a potential season 16, as crew members are still “figuring out how to make it work.”
“The audience didn’t catch on to the show and ratings are not what they were with the original cast,” the insider shared with Us, also acknowledging that show OGs like Sonja Morgan, Ramona Singer and Luann de Lesseps are still beloved by viewers. “Some of the fans were let down. If you don’t keep the old cast, it becomes a different show, and fans didn’t connect to it.”
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While fans wait with bated breath for an eventual update, Bethenny said in her social media video that the potential change is the “end of an era.”
“That show was an alchemy of disaster,” Bethenny, who left RHONY in 2019, recalled of her show tenure on Friday. “It was a flawed group of women in a flawed city, authentically being ourselves — unhinged, unmatched [and sent] shockwaves through real social life community in New York … and people loved it because it was real.”
Since stepping away from reality TV, Bethenny has been focused on her business ventures and raising 15-year-old daughter Bryn. The mother-daughter duo recently left their home in the Big Apple for a new compound in Florida.
“We were down in Florida and something very personal transpired,” Bethenny recalled on her “Just B” podcast earlier this week. “I don’t want to get into all the details of this now, but something happened, and my daughter, who had said years ago, ‘I want to move to Florida,’ she cried to me.”
She added, “I’m like, ‘We can’t. There are a set of circumstances, and we can’t. … At that time, it was just a concept, and I couldn’t have imagined living in Florida. So, she said, ‘I want to move to Florida this trip,’ and I was, like, ‘Something had happened.’”
According to Bethenny, she could tell that Bryn “meant” what she said about leaving her hometown.
“She begged me. She didn’t have to beg me, like, she was like, ‘I really want this.’ I know my kid and I knew that once this was presented … that she’d want to move,” the Bravo alum, who shares her daughter with ex Jason Hoppy, said. “I was just like, ‘F***ing f*** it, OK.’”
