Cheese Boards and Party Puke: Meet the New York Housewives (Now With Images!)

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New This Week

We got the scoop on the new RHONY, from the Housewives themselves.

My Night With the Housewives

The greatest endorsement I can give the new reboot of The Real Housewives of New York City is that the entire premiere revolves around a fight over whether or not one cast member made a rude comment about a cheese board at a party.

What was actually said about the cheese board? Why would someone insult something as innocuous and, most would say, normal as presenting a cheese board at a gathering? Who is the person who spread the gossip that someone was maligning the cheese board? Then, in the classic Housewives evolution from ludicrous to existential: Is everyone overreacting about the cheese board, or does the cheese board discourse represent something deeper about relationship dynamics?

If you are a scholar of what we in the field like to refer to as RHONY, this should be thrilling information, like music to the ears. (A Countess Luann original, perhaps.)

On Sunday night, an entirely new cast makes its debut on RHONY, the first time Bravo has ever rebooted a Housewives franchise entirely. Fans are equal parts bereft and excited: How could RHONY possibly exist without the batty charms of Ramona Singer or Sonja Morgan? But also, how could that iteration have possibly continued, with the late-run episodes cannonballing into problematic, uncomfortably dark waters? Moving on is hard, but is it worth it?

The cheese board incident says yes. It’s a classically inconsequential, legitimately funny tiff that would have been right at home in the original RHONY. The fact that it’s so ridiculous entertains us. And if we were all to stand in front of a mirror and tell our reflection the harshest, meanest truth about ourselves, it would be that escalating such petty nonsense is all too relatable. That’s the magic of Housewives: We judge the cheese board incident, and we’ve experienced the cheese board incident.

What else does the new RHONY cast have to offer us beyond cheese squabbles? More, what does it feel like to be in the crosshairs of the unforgiving Bravo fan spotlight? We chatted with the new RHONY cast and Grand Poobah of all things Housewives, Andy Cohen, at the RHONY premiere at the famed Rainbow Room to find out.

“I know! Right?!” Cohen excitedly reacted when I met up with him and, as anyone who had just seen the show’s first episode will be compelled to do, gushed about the cheese fight.

But there were more serious things to discuss, like what Cohen thinks fans of the O.G. Housewives should know going into the reboot. “It’s a totally different show,” he said. “We all love the original RHONY so much. I think you have to really do a trust fall and understand this is different. This is a different group of women.”

Just how different is the anxiety-inducing concern that has Bravoholics reaching for the pinot greege with more gusto than they typically would. “I’m nervous. I don’t like change. I MISS MY PROBLEMATIC, SLIGHTLY GERIATRIC, LADIES OF NYC,” a follower messaged me, after I posted about being at the premiere—an example of the audience’s hesitance to embrace the new cast.

“I’m really glad that Crappie Lake is airing right now, because you get a great taste of classic RHONY from that show and all the comedy,” Cohen said, referencing the new series Sonja and Luann: Welcome to Crappie Lake, a hilarious chronicling of the RHONY vets’ life in rural Illinois. “Then you get to meet our new women in this show. They’re formidable, and they’re interesting, and they’re fashionable, and viable, and funny, and outspoken, and everything we love about New York.”

This is a decidedly younger, more diverse group of women than before, most with families and jobs. (The most New-York-at-this-moment aspect of the show is that maybe two-thirds of the cast could fairly be described as influencers—which, if you can believe it, is celebrated, not shamed.)

“Look, we haven’t seen husbands in New York in a long time,” Cohen told me, about the benefit of a more youthful cast. “We haven’t seen children in New York in a long time. I think they’re in a different phase of their lives, which presents different stories.”

“A Housewife of New York City [today] is not a housewife, obviously,” new cast member Sai De Silva, a content creator, told me. “Girlie has a job.”

That’s the biggest difference between the old guard and the new guard, fellow new Housewife Erin Dana Lichy, a real estate agent and interior designer, told me. “A lot of the time, Housewives were literally housewives, right?” she said. “Not many of them worked. I think a lot of them created their identities through the show. Whereas we have our own identities already, so we’re going into the show with them.”

It’s an interesting, fresh dynamic for the series. Based on what it used to mean to be a Real Housewife of New York City, few members of the cast ever thought they would be considered the kind of a woman who would make sense for the show.

That’s certainly the case with Jenna Lyons, the former lead designer for J. Crew, whose enigmatic vibe is an entirely new and unexplored dynamic for the franchise. “Never in a million years,” she said, when I asked if she ever thought that she’d be a Housewife. “Everything that’s happened to me in the last five years feels like I’m in a foreign entity, like I’m an alien dropped down on this planet. Like, what am I doing?”

“People keep comparing us to the one that’s already been,” Lyons continued. “We’re not replacing them. They created something in this city that was a place and time… We’re a tooootally different group.”

Even as the cast sets out to redefine it, there’s no denying that the label “Real Housewife” carries baggage. “Even with the plastic surgery aspect, or fillers, or all that stuff that ends up happening to a lot of them,” Lichey said. “Not all of them! But a lot of them really go H.A.M. with it. That gave me pause, because that’s just not me. That was hard for me, to be categorized as like the Barbie doll wife.”

While undeniably more obsessed with fashion and turning out “looks” than their RHONY predecessors ever were (at least beyond the confines of the Jovani flagship store), the new cast appears to have avoided the plastic surgery trap. According to Cohen, they also avoided another landmine that might have been the downfall of the previous RHONY. While the cast is candid about their backgrounds, hardships, and what they’ve experienced because of their race, pasts, and sexualities—and there is certainly drama—things never get that serious.

“I’ve seen a lot of chatter about [wanting] more light drama, that people like light drama,” Cohen said. “So that it’s not so bloody, so to speak. I think this delivers on that front, too. It’s not as intense to start. It ratchets up, as everything does. But I think there’s something to be said for that.”

It’s tempting to say, especially after meeting them, that there’s a certain polish to these women that sets them apart from the previous RHONY iteration. But don’t confuse that for a lack of fun. If possible, the new RHONY has more sex talk than the previous. (You won’t forget when you first hear about the time one of the cast members put a popsicle up her vagina.)

The goofy unpredictability that’s very much a trademark of RHONY remains too. To wit, while I was talking with a friend at the premiere about the merits of the reboot, new cast member Jessel Taank scurried by in her gold peekaboo column gown with her hand over her mouth. Just as she passed us, she threw up, in the Rainbow Room, at a Real Housewives premiere party. It’s now a Page Six headline. (A Housewife’s rite of passage!)

Brynn Whitfield, another new cast member, told me her biggest concern about the show was that “it better be funny!”

“I have high standards for this,” she continued. “I love Real Housewives.”

Earlier this week, Whitfield starred in her first viral moment, when the cast’s first taglines were released. Hers—“I love to laugh, but make me mad and I’ll date your dad”—received the internet version of a standing ovation for its cheekiness. After seeing the reaction, “I posted the Erika Jayne speech, ‘I’m going to give the gays everything they want,’” Whiftfield said. “And then 500 gays were like, ‘We love you!’

Truly, everyone at the premiere was buzzing about Whitfield’s scene-stealing hilarity, whispering her name as she passed by, as if it were some sort of flash-mob performance of “Roxie” from Chicago. Of course, it’s dangerous to be a fan favorite in the Bravo universe. As quickly as people fall in love with you, they’ll turn on you too. Once you’re on a pedestal, people come for that pedestal with flipped tables, prosthetic legs, and a restaurant supply store’s worth of wine glasses, hoping you’ll come tumbling down.

Whitfield laughs at that thought. “Some people will hate me. Some people will like me. I could really give two shits about it. My head is so far up my own ass that way. I don’t really care if you like me. I’m just obsessed with if I like myself today.”

Tom Cruise Did the Thang

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One rules. It rules so hard that I stifle my internal scream over having to write out that godforsaken title with its ludicrous punctuation out of respect.

It has something that is so rare for a tentpole action film these days: a plot that makes sense and you can actually follow. It’s also audaciously current. The Big Bad of the film is artificial intelligence that could destroy the world, if enabled by greedy politicians and billionaires. It’s a fascinating adversary for a blockbuster like this, given how much AI is on our minds. But it’s also not a guaranteed smash for audiences, who are conditioned to expect cartoonishly evil villains as the dastardly entertainment in films like these, not sentient lines of code.

Because the narrative of the film is so stellar—and the performances from Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, and newcomer Hayley Atwell so spectacularly winning—the action sequences (the real reason for purchasing a ticket) come off even better. They’re not there to dazzle and distract. They’re there to dazzle and be important.

What I love about the movie is that the major stunt sequences do seem integral, but they are also so much damn fun. (Remember when movies were fun?!) The fight sequences, the chase scenes, the major stunts: They’re largely completed with practical effects, meaning the cars were really driving and Tom Cruise was really Tom Cruising. You forget how thrilling it is to watch sequences like these done without overreliance on CGI until you see one. You also forget how funny they can be. The audience at my theater switched between laughter and applause (legitimately, they would clap) as these scenes unfolded.

The movie also perfectly built itself up, action sequence-by-action sequence, to the biggest stunt, the one that’s gotten the most advanced press and has already been the subject of jaw-dropping making-of videos. At the film’s climax, Cruise rides a motorbike off a cliff, releases a parachute, and skydives down a ravine, eventually crash-landing into a moving train.

Tom Cruise really did this. We know that because of all that advanced hype—and because it’s his whole thing to really do these stunts. But watching it on screen, there’s no doubt. His cheeks flap in the wind as he falls through the sky, delivering his lines. Yes, while skydiving on film, Cruise also delivers lines of dialogue.

The minute the motorbike began heading for the cliff, my theater started whistling and applauding. When the parachute released, they started cheering. When Cruise started speaking, they laughed hysterically.

It was so good and so fun. I hope they make these movies forever.

Euphoria Joins the AARP

Variety reported this week that Season 3 of Euphoria is delayed to 2025 because of the WGA (and now SAG) strike—devastating news for fans of the show and a gift of mental health and sanity for me. Still, assuming Sam Levinson’s seedy fever dream about tortured high schoolers does come to fruition, these people are going to be so laughably old when it airs.

Of course, it’s nothing new for actors playing teenagers on TV to be old enough to have high-school aged children themselves. And Euphoria, whose stars Zendaya and Jacob Elordi would be 28, wouldn’t even be the most egregious examples. (Co-star Alexa Demie would be 34.) Nonetheless, the news is an occasion for the internet’s favorite pastime: making fun of something.

Here’s how I’d imagine Elordi’s character, Nate, will greet his friends on the first day of school:

I hear a major plot point in the season is going to be the girls gossiping in the bathroom that Stockard Channing has a bun in the oven. Gabrielle Carteris is arriving as a new transfer student. Henry Winkler is the new gang leader, who mystifies instead of intimidates everyone when he keeps putting two thumbs up and saying, “Heyyyy.”

Reports are that Levinson is considering renaming the series The Best Exotic Euphoria Hotel to account for the delay. The network is also considering scrapping the season and repackaging it as a Golden Girls reboot. (Existing IP is very in!)

Don’t worry. These jokes are all harmless, and I get to make them because I am old, bitter, and jealous of this cast’s youth.

This Is How You Get People to Watch Your Show

At this chaotic time in the media and entertainment industry, few agree on what is the best way to promote a new season of a TV show. Trot out an actor for morning shows and late-night interviews? Humiliate them by making them film TikToks? Advertise the traditional way, with commercials and billboards? Force them to participate in multiple web series that inexplicably involve eating chicken wings?

This week, we all bore witness to what may be the greatest PR push there’s even been for a TV series. Perfect. Infallible. No notes. I will be watching.

It turns out that all you need to do to drum up interest in the new season of your TV series is release the premiere’s two-minute fight scene in which Hollywood’s Favorite Handsome Tall Boy, Lee Pace, is completely naked. (Watch it here.)

Foundation Season 2, baby! Now streaming and, suffice it to say, must-see television.

Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa Can’t Hurt You

This week gave us the first look of Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa in the prequel film Wonka, which is certainly a series of words.

Even more jarring than reading that sentence is seeing that first look. Behold, my sleep paralysis demon—I mean Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa.

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

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When will they just let me choose the Emmy nominations already?
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