She needs a breather! Bethenny Frankel revealed in a new interview that she is “distancing” herself from The Real Housewives of New York City after filming a tumultuous season 8.
“I’ve been definitely distancing myself from the show this summer,” Frankel, 45, told Entertainment Tonight on Friday, August 12. “It was a long year – it’s definitely work.”
“I’m glad that the audience is enjoying it,” the Skinnygirl founder continued. “But I’ve left it behind.”
After meeting up with her costars to film the RHONY reunion earlier this summer — what she told ET was the hardest “by far” to get through — Frankel said the experience left her emotionally drained.
“It was very, very negative and I didn’t enjoy it at all. Something very dramatic happened … that questioned my integrity. If someone questions my business or my integrity I take it really seriously — I don’t just gloss over it,” she said. “So I think that maybe the fun and light Bethenny that people expect, with the quips and the comebacks weren’t there.”
The A Place of Yes author went on to explain that her fellow Housewives’ lack of honesty has prompted her to rethink her participation in the reality series.
“I live my life honestly,” she shared. “You have 50 percent of the cast that has a whole taboo, police line, ‘do not cross’ section of their life that is not discussed on camera and never has been. For legal issues and liability issues, Bravo doesn’t need to bring it up and it’s a difficult line to ride, and that may be why I don’t come back.”
As viewers are well aware, the mom of one — she shares daughter Bryn with ex-husband Jason Hoppy — butted heads with a handful of her RHONY costars this past season, namely Bravo rookie Jules Wainstein and longtime frenemy Luann de Lesseps.
On the June 8 episode, Frankel launched into a verbal tirade against de Lesseps, 51, and took aim at the “Chic C’est la Vie” singer’s love life, calling her a “slut, and liar and a hypocrite.”
And on the April 6 season 8 premiere, the Bethenny Getting Married alum voiced her brutally honest opinion of 35-year-old Wainstein’s slim physique. “She looks like a really thin girl — like, she looks like there is an issue,” Frankel said on the show. “I wrote a book called Naturally Thin. This is not naturally thin. It’s the kind of thin that makes people around you uncomfortable.”
Despite an attempt to put their differences aside, Frankel and Wainstein were unable to mend their fraught friendship. Since leaving all the drama behind her, the mogul is looking forward to focusing on building her brand.
“This is just a summer of freedom and doing what I want to do and definitely making some changes in my personal and professional life,” Frankel, who recently finalized her divorce from Hoppy, told ET. “I just launched a new watermelon-lime margarita with my new cocktail partners, so I’m deciding what my priorities are and how to lay it out.”
The Real Housewives of New York City airs on Bravo Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
