Who’s Afraid Of The Lesbian Housewives?

For most of its 15-season run, The Real Housewives of New York was an ode to creator Andy Cohen’s fantasy of New York womanhood—one in which straight, white women with extensive wardrobes, problematic drinking habits, and disengaged, generationally wealthy husbands reveled on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, eventually landing at each other’s throats. 

But the fantasy couldn’t last forever. By 2021, after 13 seasons, the novelty of the New York Housewife had worn off, and the reality—that The “Real” Housewives of New York hardly reflected even its viewers’ most aspirational fantasies of New York City—had set in. Despite its setting in one of the country’s most diverse cities, RHONY always struggled to find a cast that reflected such demographics. Or rather, the non-straight, non-white women of New York didn’t seem to fit into its vision. The series’ sole attempt to introduce a Black Housewife, attorney Eboni K. Williams, went beyond horribly. Veteran Housewives resorted to racist bullying so extreme that longtime Housewife Ramona Singer became the center of a network-wide HR investigation into her use of racial slurs. RHONY was at a crossroads.

So, in 2022, Cohen spun a new fantasy. That year, Bravo announced the series would undergo a total reboot, beginning with a new crop of Housewives. This time, RHONY would feature a younger, more diverse friend group, whose career accomplishments could be touted alongside their extensive wardrobes. The fantasy of New York womanhood was now something closer to the city’s actual makeup: the cast of Season 14, which premiered in 2023, was majority non-white and included a more diverse age range. And—for the first time in RHONY history—featured an out lesbian Housewife, former J. Crew creative director Jenna Lyons. The Real Housewives were starting to feel real—or at least real-er. 

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But two seasons in, the new fantasy is already crumbling. Even with its most diverse cast yet, the series struggles to find the drama in their interactions. Though RHONY has now introduced two lesbian cast members, their roles in the drama that once made the series iconic—in fact, their roles in the series at all—are borderline nonexistent. RHONY may be exploring the idea of a lesbian Housewife, but it hardly knows what to do with her.

Instead, the drama that drives seasons 14 and 15 of RHONY—largely Housewife Brynn Whitfield’s feuds with various castmates—tends to have little to do with Lyons or the series’ newest lesbian Housewife, model-turned-art curator Racquel Chevremont, and they seem uninterested in becoming involved. While other Housewives insert themselves into inter-cast arguments, the pair rarely comment outside the safety of their confessionals, instead opting either to play the role of peacemaker or avoid the drama altogether. 

But even when Lyons seems primed to become the center of potential drama, the producers of RHONY seem all too eager to cut it off at the root. Early in Season 15, Lyons’s castmates imply she’s been hiding financial difficulties from the cameras, and the claim seems supported when Lyons abruptly hosts a massive wardrobe sale, selling off most of her clothes to fund an upcoming dental procedure. But by the end of the episode, Lyons writes off the rumors with minimal explanation—“teeth are expensive”—and the producers seem to take her at her word. Rather than follow the rumor, the storyline is abandoned altogether, and Lyons returns to her usual place on the sidelines of her castmates’ drama. 

Aside from the shake-up in cast demographics, a more substantial change to the inner workings of RHONY might explain its shift in ability to foster drama: the Housewives are now afforded more control over their narratives. Where The Real Housewives franchise made its name on airing cast members’ dirty laundry—depicting Housewives’ divorces, infidelity, custody battles, mental and physical health struggles, and even abusive relationships, all without an eye for preserving dignity, much less privacy—the women of rebooted RHONY suddenly appear to have something their predecessors did not: a say over which elements of their life appear on screen. It seems like a healthier model for the cast, but it also means the interpersonal drama that drives each season is more limited. 

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But even for the more controlled version of RHONY, Lyons is exceedingly private compared to her co-stars. While other Housewives invite the cameras to follow their fertility struggles, attempts to find love, and even their crumbling marriages, Lyons is reluctant to discuss so much as a breakup on air. Housewives Erin Lichy and Jessel Taank may feel comfortable showing off nude photos of their husbands or filming tense sessions with their marriage counselors, but Lyons keeps her romantic relationships—and whatever drama may stem from them—decidedly off-screen. 

With the arrival of Chevremont, who joined the cast at the start of this season, the show’s lack of lesbian-centered plotlines became all the more apparent. Less private than her counterpart, Chevremont initially seemed more promising than Lyons when it came to her potential to stir drama. In her first few episodes, Chevremont makes numerous allusions to a cheating scandal that rocked her previous relationship, and to her semi-estranged relationship with her homophobic mother. This season’s annual group trip even appeared to be organized to facilitate Chevremont’s storyline, sending the cast to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where her estranged mother, Marian, now lives. But the story quickly falls flat—when Marian finally appears on screen, it’s for a brief, exceedingly polite lunch with the cast. Their anticipated confrontation never comes to pass, and Racquel quickly joins Lyons on the sidelines. 

As this season wraps up, Lyons and Chevremont’s general non-involvement with key plot lines—and their lack of independent storylines—reaches a head. The latest episode closes with every other combination of castmates in various screaming matches scattered across the group’s vacation villa, while Lyons and Chevremont, already tucked into bed, lament, “I thought we could go to sleep now.” As the fighting crescendos around them, they pull down their sleep masks. From a sociological standpoint, it’s an occasionally-fascinating look at the dynamics between queer and straight women in an all-female friend group. But it’s hardly Cohen’s great TV. 

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Eventually—as has already occurred with Lyons in her second season, and is quickly occurring with Chevremont in her first—this pattern means their presence in the series is hardly seen and rarely felt. A queer Housewife could have introduced an interesting, unique perspective to the series, but RHONY isn’t particularly interested in hearing it.

So why can’t Cohen, the mastermind of The Real Housewives, find the great TV in his queer cast members? For one, though the “housewife” title may seem like merely a label, Cohen’s entire fantasy of womanhood seems to rely on exactly what that label implies. Even after its diversification efforts, the series still seems primed for telling the stories of wealthy, nebulously employed women in heterosexual marriages to disappointing husbands whose sole socialization comes in the form of other wealthy, nebulously employed women in heterosexual marriages to disappointing husbands. Perhaps Cohen’s vision for the fantasy New York woman was always too narrow to include a queer voice beyond his own.

Or perhaps Lyons and Chevremont make bad TV because they have refused to entertain Cohen’s brand of exploitation in the first place. Perhaps the crux of The Real Housewives franchise has always been its ability to facilitate misogynistic reveling in its cast’s most vulnerable moments, as their Housewife facades disintegrate in front of a merciless, omnipresent camera, and Lyons and Chevremont have simply refused to engage. Then again, if after two seasons, RHONY still can’t find the entertainment value in the lesbian Housewife, perhaps rebooting the series couldn’t save it from the truth: the fantasy is already dead.