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| The Real Housewives of New York City | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | Reality television |
| Starring |
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| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 15 |
| No. of episodes | 291(list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producers |
|
| Camera setup | Multiple |
| Running time | 41–43 minutes (approx.) |
| Production companies |
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| Original release | |
| Network | Bravo |
| Release | March 4, 2008 (2008-03-04) – present |
| Related | |
The Real Housewives of New York City, abbreviatedRHONY, is an Americanreality television series that premiered onBravo on March 4, 2008. Developed as the second installment ofThe Real Housewives franchise, it has aired fifteen seasons and focuses on the personal and professional lives of several women residing inNew York City.
The cast of the first season consisted ofBethenny Frankel,Luann de Lesseps,Alex McCord, Ramona Singer, and Jill Zarin. Other housewives that starred in multiple of the first thirteen seasons includeKelly Killoren Bensimon,Sonja Morgan,Carole Radziwill, Heather Thomson,Dorinda Medley andTinsley Mortimer. The series wasrebooted in its fourteenth season, making it the first series in the franchise to be completely recast. The cast of the most recent fifteenth season consisted of Sai De Silva,Ubah Hassan, Erin Lichy,Jenna Lyons, Jessel Taank, Brynn Whitfield andRacquel Chevremont, withRebecca Minkoff serving as a "friend of the housewives".
The success of the show has resulted in three spin-offs:Bethenny Ever After,Bethenny & Fredrik andLuann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake.
While in pre-production, the show was initially titledManhattan Moms. It was later rebranded to become the second installment of the then-newReal Housewives franchise.[1] Thefirst season premiered on March 4, 2008, and starredBethenny Frankel,Luann de Lesseps,Alex McCord,Ramona Singer andJill Zarin.[2] Cast members were paid for their appearances on the series. Bethenny Frankel, for example, was paid $7,250 for the season.[3]Kelly Killoren Bensimon was added to the cast for thesecond season, which premiered on February 17, 2009.[4] Thethird season premiered March 4, 2010 and saw the addition ofSonja Morgan as a main cast member, along with Jennifer Gilbert in a recurring capacity. In August 2010, Frankel left the show in order to expand her Skinnygirl product line.[5] Cindy Barshop replaced Frankel for the show'sfourth season, which premiered on April 7, 2011.[6] After the fourth season, McCord, Zarin, Killoren Bensimon and Barshop were effectively let go from the show.[7]
In April 2012, Bravo announced a revamp to the cast for itsfifth season, integratingAviva Drescher,Carole Radziwill, and Heather Thomson into the main cast. The season premiered on June 4, 2012.[8] Production for thesixth season was set to begin on May 8, 2013, but the cast instead chose to go into salary negotiations with Bravo, effectively delaying shooting.[9] Drescher, Morgan, Radziwill, Singer, and Thomson renewed their contract in May 2013, while de Lesseps was demoted to a recurring role.[10][11][12] The sixth season premiered on March 11, 2014, a year later than planned with Kristen Taekman as the latest housewife.[13] Drescher was dismissed after the sixth season.[14]
Theseventh season premiered on April 7, 2015, featuring the return of Frankel and addition ofDorinda Medley, while de Lesseps returned in a full-time role. Taekman and Thomson exited the series after the season ended.[15][16][17][18] For theeighth season, which premiered on April 6, 2016, Jules Wainstein was added to the cast, while Thomson returned in a guest appearance, Taekman did not return.[19][20] Wainstein left the show in September 2016 for personal reasons.[21] Theninth season premiered on April 5, 2017.Tinsley Mortimer joined the cast, while former housewives Thomson and Zarin appeared as guests.[22][23] Thetenth season premiered on April 4, 2018, with the cast of the ninth season returning. Drescher, Killoren Bensimon, Thomson and Zarin all appeared as guests.[24][25] It served as Radziwill's final appearance on the show.[26]
Theeleventh season premiered on March 6, 2019.Barbara Kavovit joined as a friend of the housewives, and Zarin appeared as a guest.[27] Frankel departed the series after the season for a second time.[28] Thetwelfth season featuredLeah McSweeney joining the cast, which premiered on April 2, 2020.[29] Zarin and Thomson appeared as guests in the twelfth season. Mortimer and Medley announced their departure from the series in June 2020 and August 2020 respectively.[30] Mortimer coincided her announcement with her relocation to Chicago, to pursue her romantic relationship with Scott Kluth,[31] while Medley later stated she was fired from the show.[32] Thethirteenth season premiered on May 4, 2021, withEboni K. Williams joining the series, in addition to Heather Thomson and Bershan Shaw appearing as friends of the housewives.[33] In September 2021, it was confirmed by Bravo that the thirteenth season reunion was officially cancelled.[34]
On March 23, 2022, it was announced that following the thirteenth season's negative reception, the showrunners had made the decision to "most likely" recast the show from scratch for the fourteenth season, and create a second version of the show following some of the show's original housewives, referred to asRHONY: Legacy orRHONY: Throwback.[35] Although the series has partially shifted its cast before,[7] this marked the first time that the network had decided to completely replace the cast. As a result, the series’sfourteenth season was billed as aseries reboot, with little to no connections to the original cast of the series.[36] It was later announced that de Lesseps and Morgan would star in their own spin-off series titledLuann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake.[37] Filming for the spin-off began in July 2022 in the small town ofBenton, Illinois.[38] The series premiered on July 9, 2023.[39] The fifth season ofThe Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip, a spin-off featuring various women fromThe Real Housewives franchise, being billed asRHONY Legacy premiered in December 2023 onPeacock.[40] Taking place inSaint Barthélemy in the same villa that was featured in the fifth season, the cast includes Killoren Bensimon, de Lesseps, Medley, Morgan, Singer and Taekman.[40]
Sai De Silva,Ubah Hassan, Erin Lichy,Jenna Lyons,Lizzy Savetsky, Jessel Taank and Brynn Whitfield were announced as the cast of the rebooted fourteenth season on October 16, 2022.[41] Savetsky exited the series midway into filming the season on November 16, alleging that she had received anti-Semitic hate across her social media accounts.[42] Thefourteenth season premiered on July 16, 2023.[43] In March 2024, Bravo announced that the show was renewed for a fifteenth season, with all six housewives from the fourteenth season returning.[44] In April 2024, it was announced thatRebecca Minkoff would be joining the series in a friend of capacity.[45] In June 2024, it was announced thatRacquel Chevremont would also be joining the fifteenth season of the series as a full-time housewife.[46] Thefifteenth season premiered on October 1, 2024.[47] In February 2025, ahead of the conclusion of the fifteenth season reunion, it was announced Minkoff would be exiting the series after one season.[48]
In May 2025, a spokesperson for Bravo toldUs Weekly speculated reports of the franchise's cancelation were untrue.[49][50] This was in response to a report published byPage Six suggesting the franchise had been canceled by the network, with "hopes" to revive it in the future;[51][52] in response to the Page Six article, Frankel made claim on herTikTok that the franchise had indeed been canceled.[53] De Silva responded to the cancelation as "fake news" on her social media pages,[50] while Cohen supported claims that "nothing has happened" with the franchise.[54] Cohen further addressed the report on hisSirius XM radio show, stating, "We are between seasons", revealing producers had met with ten potential new housewives to join the franchise.[55][56] The following month, Whitfield announced her departure, citing her decision to step away from reality television.[57]Summer House co-starsPaige DeSorbo and Lindsay Hubbard, as well as makeup artist Daisy Toye have been named as potential new housewives.[58]
During BravoCon in November 2025, Cohen revealed information regarding the sixteenth season and its cast would be announced "soon".[59] That same month, Lyons announced her exit; she disclosed that despite being invited back in a "friend of" capacity, due to her unwillingness to film her personal life, and ultimately decided to depart.[60]
| Cast member | Seasons | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | ||
| Bethenny Frankel | Main | Main | ||||||||||||||
| Luann de Lesseps | Main | Friend | Main | |||||||||||||
| Alex McCord | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Ramona Singer | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Jill Zarin | Main | Guest | ||||||||||||||
| Kelly Killoren Bensimon | Main | Guest | ||||||||||||||
| Sonja Morgan | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Cindy Barshop | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Aviva Drescher | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Carole Radziwill | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Heather Thomson | Main | Guest | Guest | Friend | ||||||||||||
| Kristen Taekman | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Dorinda Medley | Guest | Main | ||||||||||||||
| Jules Wainstein | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Tinsley Mortimer | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Leah McSweeney | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Eboni K. Williams | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Sai De Silva | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Ubah Hassan | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Erin Lichy | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Jenna Lyons | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Jessel Taank | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Brynn Whitfield | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Racquel Chevremont | Main | |||||||||||||||
| Friends of the Housewives | ||||||||||||||||
| Jennifer Gilbert | Friend | Guest | ||||||||||||||
| Barbara Kavovit | Guest | Guest | Friend | |||||||||||||
| Elyse Slaine | Guest | Friend | ||||||||||||||
| Bershan Shaw | Friend | |||||||||||||||
| Rebecca Minkoff | Friend | |||||||||||||||
| Season | Episodes | Originally released | Average Viewers | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | ||||
| 1 | 9 | March 4, 2008 (2008-03-04) | May 27, 2008 (2008-05-27) | 1.20 | |
| 2 | 15 | February 17, 2009 (2009-02-17) | May 28, 2009 (2009-05-28) | 1.69 | |
| 3 | 18 | March 4, 2010 (2010-03-04) | June 24, 2010 (2010-06-24) | 2.00 | |
| 4 | 18 | April 7, 2011 (2011-04-07) | August 1, 2011 (2011-08-01) | 2.04 | |
| 5 | 21 | June 4, 2012 (2012-06-04) | October 22, 2012 (2012-10-22) | 1.58 | |
| 6 | 23 | March 11, 2014 (2014-03-11) | August 12, 2014 (2014-08-12) | 1.29 | |
| 7 | 24 | April 7, 2015 (2015-04-07) | September 17, 2015 (2015-09-17) | 1.28 | |
| 8 | 23 | April 6, 2016 (2016-04-06) | September 14, 2016 (2016-09-14) | 1.53 | |
| 9 | 22 | April 5, 2017 (2017-04-05) | August 30, 2017 (2017-08-30) | 1.50 | |
| 10 | 22 | April 4, 2018 (2018-04-04) | September 5, 2018 (2018-09-05) | 1.37 | |
| 11 | 20 | March 6, 2019 (2019-03-06) | July 25, 2019 (2019-07-25) | 1.28 | |
| 12 | 25 | April 2, 2020 (2020-04-02) | October 1, 2020 (2020-10-01) | 1.11 | |
| 13 | 18 | May 4, 2021 (2021-05-04) | September 4, 2021 (2021-09-04) | 0.82 | |
| 14 | 16 | July 16, 2023 (2023-07-16) | October 29, 2023 (2023-10-29) | 0.51 | |
| 15 | 17 | October 1, 2024 (2024-10-01) | February 4, 2025 (2025-02-04) | 0.40 | |
Then-current cast member Frankel stated in 2017 that she would like to see the series "representNew York more."[61] Writing forThe New York Times in October 2019, author Tracie Egan Morrissey posed the question, "If less than half of the city is white, why is 100 percent of the cast ofThe Real Housewives of New York City white?"[62] Former cast member Heather Thomson also stated that during her time on the series she had pitched several women of color to the show's producers to diversify its cast members due to her concerns about the issue.[62] The women also received backlash for highlighting the class divide in America through the ignorance and mistreatment of staff featured on the show.[63]
The announcements of both the reboot and new cast of the show's fourteenth season have been criticized by some long-time viewers of the series, who argued that these were rash and poor decisions on Bravo's part.[64] The reboot's cast has been deemed unappealing by these viewers, many of whom appreciated the franchise's specific focus on established spheres of older, upper-class New York socialites, labeling the choice to fill the new cast with "influencers" as a deviation from the show's original subject matter.[65] The decision has been labeled as another move in Bravo's larger attempt to appeal the network to a younger and more social media-oriented audience.[66]
In 2022, theJewish Journal named Frankel and Zarin as two of "The Top 10 Jewish Reality TV Stars of All Time."[67]
The Real Housewives of New York City airs regularly onBravo in the United States;[68] most episodes are approximately forty-two minutes in length,[69] and are broadcast instandard definition andhigh definition.[70] Since its premiere, the series has alternated airing on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings and has been frequently shifted between the 8:00, 9:00, and 10:00 PM timeslots.[68]
In July 2012, Bravo released a social networking video game version ofThe Real Housewives of New York City titled asReal Housewives: The Game. Following weekly new episodes, a new game was available based on the story.[71][72]
In 2016,On Location Tours hosted an officialThe Real Housewives of New York-themed tour in New York City. The tour is centered around giving passengers an almost four-hour trip to visit numerous places where current and former housewives "have dined, shopped, dated or had a fight or two," and is described as the "ultimate, one-of-a-kindReal Housewives experience."[73]
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