5 Never-Before-Revealed Secrets From the #RHONY Set
Be prepared to love your favorite #RHONY episodes even more! Producers reveal five juicy facts about some of our favorite New York moments.
To celebrate the 100th episode of The Real Housewives of New York City, we've uncovered some never-before-revealed secrets straight from the RHONY producers. Find out what was happening behind the scenes of your favorite New York episodes.
1. Scary Island Secrets
"It was the last night on Scary Island. Bethenny spent the day cooking the big dinner, and she made extra crab cakes for the following morning. While the ladies were eating dinner, Kelly had her meltdown. There was so much drama, we needed to go into over time. We kept shooting for another few hours, but the crew was starved. There was nowhere to get food--we were also stuck on Scary Island. When someone on our production team suggested Bethenny’s crab cakes, we knew we had no other choice! The next morning the ladies woke up, hungover, and looking for food. We had to confess to the cast that, yes, we ate all the crab cakes!"
2. Marriage Equality Meltdown
"We are set to shoot at a marriage equality rally in front of City Hall. All the women are wearing their wedding gowns to show their support for equal rights. Sonja Morgan is the grand marshal and set to speak. It also happens that Alex McCord is very involved with the Marriage Equality organization. The night before the shoot, Sonja catches wind of the fact that Alex is also scheduled to speak the next day, has a massive meltdown, and threatens not to show up if she’s not the only one speaking from the cast. At 11 pm the night before, I’m contacting the head of the marriage equality rally to get him to explain to Sonja that she was never granted an exclusive speaking engagement at the rally. The head of the organization doesn’t want to lose the grand marshal so he retracts Alex’s speaking invitation. The next day, the ladies, dressed in their wedding gowns, have a huge fight over whether Sonja blocked Alex from speaking."
3. St. Barth’s Scandal
"Luann’s main story on that season of RHONY was her relationship with Jacques. She said that they were madly in love but that he wanted to have kids of his own while Luann wasn’t sure she wanted any more children. Regardless, the majority of the season we shot her assessing her fertility to see if she could make Jacques happy by giving him a child of his own. On the second day of the St. Barth’s trip, we find Carole and Heather whispering about how Luann had some guy over last night after the cameras had wrapped at the nightclub. They had no idea that we could hear their mics from across the room. As the new girls find out that we’ve been recording, they begin to do damage control. LuAnn starts to get suspicious and starts planning her cover-up. It so happens that the guy that Luann brought back to the house the night prior is scheduled to come to the house party tonight. Luann, thinking that she’s off camera and out of microphone range, calls to make sure he is going to pretend that he’s never been to the house before. Meanwhile, Ramona has figured out what’s going on and is hell bent on poking at the guy about the fact that he’s been to the house before. It was a very awkward night as the guy shows up and Ramona doesn’t let him off the hook. The next day, Luann pulls me aside and says, 'Tell me as a friend, how bad is it? Should I call Jacques?' I tell her, 'Call Jacques.'"
4. A Major Meltdown
"Aviva and Reid arrived at Ramona's awards show at New York Marriott Marquis, and Aviva had a full-on code five freak out, because she had to get on an escalator to go up to the ballroom. We were mic'ing Heather and Jonathan around the corner, and they witnessed her freak out by the escalator. Aviva was screaming that her leg was going to get ripped off...clearly this was the first time Heather saw how loud Aviva could actually be!"
5. Bathroom Issues
"A few of the crew members were using Sonja's toilet at her party in episode one in Season 5. Right before we started shooting, the toilet overflowed, and she blamed the camera crew for the excessive use of the lavatory. Luckily for us, we played this reality as some great reality before guests arrived. But you can't just blame the crew, her interns were no doubt clogging that bowl up with toilet paper long before cameras were rolling."
