Bethenny Frankel revealed her personal and professional relationships with Andy Cohen have taken a toll because of her idea to unionize reality TV casts and crews.
“I can tell you with great certainty that everyone at Bravo likely despises me, including Andy Cohen, because it’s very personal and because they have to protect the realm,” Frankel, 52, shared on the Thursday, August 31, episode of Rob Lowe’s “Literally!” podcast.
She continued: “It’s a very complicated thing I walked myself into whilst also burning bridges and seeming like I’m biting the hand that fed me, but I fed myself. There are a lot of people who didn’t get fed.”
Earlier this year, Frankel — who starred on eight seasons of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City — questioned why reality TV workers weren’t a part of the ongoing Hollywood writers and actors guild strikes for fair pay and better contracts.
“We’ve always been the losers,” she stated in a July 19 Instagram video. “During the last writers strike, we were providing all the entertainment and that’s really when the gold rush of reality TV started.”
Frankel went on to note that while she earned millions because of her reality TV career, little of the money came from appearing on RHONY. “I have never made a single residual,” she claimed. “So either I’m missing something or we’re getting screwed too.”
Her comments gained further momentum following her three-part podcast interview with Vanderpump Rules’ Raquel Leviss (who now goes by Rachel). During the interview, Frankel defended Leviss, 28, after she received severe online hate because of her affair with costar Tom Sandoval.
“Immediately after I [interviewed Raquel], I then come back with a set of points that are a jumping off point — being a person that negotiates for a living — saying, ‘These are things that I think are far, 10 points, that people should receive,’ because I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to start a union in a night,” she explained on Lowe’s podcast. “So, in the meantime, there should be this modification of language that goes into contracts because for three decades, there’s been no principal, no governor, no one in charge of this whole group.”
Following the success of the interview, SAG-AFTRA reached out to Frankel to help support her idea for a reality TV union. “And while we’re talking about a union and what that would look like, they also want to know in the short term what they could do to help,” she stated. “And I was saying there should be some language, some contract language that goes into these contracts that everybody in reality knows to include.”
Frankel added: “That genre needs a union because those people aren’t even reading other people’s words. They’re taking such risks by being their own voice,” Frankel explained. “And right now, during this strike, they’re going to be the ones that everybody goes to for cheap labor.”
Last week, Frankel revealed that she and Cohen, 55, have not talked since she made her initial strike comments. “Some people say to me, ‘Oh, wow, is Andy mad you’re doing this? Have you spoken to him?’ And I say, I have not, but I’m sure he is,” she said during an episode of her “Just B” podcast. “And this is not a target on Andy. This is not a target on Bravo. This is about a systemic issue in the entertainment industry.”
