Bethenny Frankel spent a long stretch on The Real Housewives of New York, sharing her life as she built the Skinnygirl brand and a marriage to Jason Hoppy.
Viewers saw cracks forming on camera, but the real trouble grew off-screen. Their breakup dragged on for years, and the weight of it followed Bethenny well after she left the show.
Now, she’s talking about that period again and explaining why it still hits so deeply.
Bethenny Frankel thought she “would never survive” her divorce
On yesterday’s Call Her Daddy episode, Bethenny told Alex Cooper that revisiting her divorce brought a rush of buried emotions. She said none of the chaos she lived through as a kid came close to what she faced during the split. “Nothing compares to what my divorce was for 10 years. Nothing,” she said.
She said her mother’s struggles and dysfunction felt like “child’s play” next to the “trauma of someone wanting to torture you and telling you that they’re going to do it” and that the public often saw her as “the powerhouse tyrant” while Jason appeared to be “the victim.”
She said the stress took a physical toll. “It was so traumatic. It was 10 years of my life. I lost hair.” She admitted, “I thought I would never survive it. I didn’t want to.” Her daughter, Bryn Hoppy, pushed her forward. “I literally thought, ‘I’ll never be happy again.’”
Bethenny and Jason married in 2010 and separated in 2012. The divorce wasn’t finalized until 2021. “I treated it like a marathon, and I went one mile at a time.” She added that the conflict involved “fraud,” “stealing,” “hacking,” “harassment,” and “Googling me 60 times a day.”
In 2017, Jason was arrested on harassment and stalking charges after he allegedly sent abusive emails and confronted her at Bryn’s school. He denied the accusations.
Bethenny said she spent “millions of dollars” and heard from “every single lawyer” that they had “never seen anything like it.” She added that “therapy is a big thing in [their] house” and that she focused on “letting her know a lot about what [her own] childhood was like” so Bryn, now 15, understands that “everybody has something” that makes them stronger.
She also reminded parents, “You should never, ever say a bad thing about the other parent, ever, because it is the worst thing you could do.”
The Real Housewives of New York streams on Peacock.
TELL US – WERE YOU SURPRISED BY HOW MUCH PAIN BETHENNY SAYS SHE CARRIED DURING THE DIVORCE?
