The “Reality Reckoning” might be on pause, but Bethenny Frankel isn’t done exposing the behind-the-scenes secrets of The Real Housewives of New York. The reality star and full-time TikTok queen just revisited her favorite story about how she changed the game in terms of salary negotiations for Housewives. But did you know it all started in Jill Zarin’s closet?
Bethenny Frankel helped change Real Housewives “fee structure
For those of us who have followed Bethenny for years, you know she loves to take credit for redefining how Housewives are paid. During a recent appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, she went into more detail about how her first salary negotiations happened.
According to Bethenny, she and the rest of the RHONY OGs began filming without a contract in place. Their eventual contract took a favored nations approach. That meant every Housewife received the same amount of money.
Bethenny didn’t like that. She felt like every Housewife deserved a different payday, in line with the performance they brought to the show. She and Jill pulled away from the rest of the group and started plotting for a different contract.
“I remember being in her Hamptons closet negotiating, and she just left it to me. She was like, ‘Bethenny, whatever you do, do it for me too. I’m with her,’” Bethenny recalled.
Bethenny continued, “It got scary because people play, they bluff, and they say, ‘Everyone else is doing this, and you’re not going to be on the show,’ and I was like, ‘Stop. This train ain’t leaving without us, Jill.’”
She was right. The train didn’t leave without them. They got the contracts they wanted, and Bethenny takes credit for single-handedly changing the pay structure for the Real Housewives.
“I was the one who broke favored nations on the Housewives,” Bethenny claimed. “I never told that to anyone before because we got a different amount. And then everybody was on their own, and that’s how all the fee structure changed.”
The Real Housewives of New York is streaming on Peacock in the US, and Hayu in Canada, the UK and Ireland.
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