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There was something poetic about the way we were traveling.
On episodes of Real Housewives, some of the biggest drama happens in sprinter vans, with the cast being shuttled to and from events together, trapped in a powder keg of tension, gossip, and secrets ready to explode.
So to be in a sprinter van with a coterie of journalists and content creators on the way from Manhattan to the Hamptons for the Season 16 premiere of The Real Housewives of New York City was fitting.
Bravo was hoping—perhaps also anxious, based on the vibes I got from the publicists, network executives, cast members, and even Andy Cohen—that the episode would have enough drama to satisfy the scrutinizing crowd. The stakes are high for this reboot of a reboot, an attempt to reinvigorate the once fan-favorite RHONY franchise after backlash to Season 14 and 15’s new cast forced a hiatus and retooling.
There are worse ways to curry favor than to host a luncheon at a vineyard and ply critics with wine and casual mingling with cast members. I sat next to new Housewife Daisy Toye, a hilarious addition to the show who is Martha Stewart’s makeup artist (and, it turns out, my former neighbor), and gossiped with Cohen about Leah Remini’s bombshell casting on Beverly Hills and all the other Housewives franchises currently in production. (Potomac, apparently, is better than ever.)
But let’s not underestimate the borderline vicious fickleness of Bravo fans. Heavy pours of rosé mean nothing if the episode isn’t good.
When Bravo takes a long time between seasons to bring back a Housewives franchise, it means the network is delaying in order to “get it right,” Cohen said before the screening, admitting, “This one took a minute.” Still, he promised, this remix of the previous reboot cast and new Housewives is “funny and fun and quintessentially New York.”
From an immediate, quite humorous Martha Stewart appearance to Carole Radziwill talking openly about Jeffrey Epstein and the introduction of the most endearingly wacky RHONY cast member since Sonja Morgan, the episode delivers on Cohen’s promise.
It was surreal to watch among a crowd of Bravo enthusiasts in the Hamptons with the show’s cast around. But watching it again, the episode, which premieres Tuesday and streams Wednesday on Peacock, lands just as satisfyingly while eating a bowl of cereal on one’s lumpy couch in their pajamas.
Dare I say it…The Real Housewives of New York City is back.
My new BFF Daisy opens the episode, facilitating the Martha Stewart cameo.
The icon of perfectly curated homemaking and, lately, New York luxury, arrives at Daisy’s crowded, popcorn-ceiling-adorned Battery Park City apartment, a dichotomy of wealth that both are endearingly self-deprecating about. “I really want beautiful makeup,” Martha says, toddling into the entryway. I want to be prettier than all the other girls at the lunch today.”
Daisy has been Martha’s makeup artist for over 17 years, and clearly they have a loyal, playful dynamic. “One week I’m doing Martha’s makeup. The next week, I’m riding a camel with her in Dubai, or having a tea party with a sheik in Abu Dhabi. I’m like what the f--- am I doing here? I’m wearing Zara,” Daisy says.
The crown-jewel moment of the scene is when Martha makes casual small talk about John F. Kennedy Jr. being in the news again because of Ryan Murphy’s Love Story series.
It reminded her that she was with “John-John” on the “Monday before the Friday that he died.” He sought her advice on his George magazine troubles, and, at the end of the dinner, he mentioned that he was flying his wife and her sister to a wedding in Martha’s Vineyard.
“Do you have a co-pilot?” Martha remembers asking him. It haunts her to this day. Yes, the premiere of RHONY insinuates that Martha Stewart could have saved JFK Jr. I nominate this scene for a Peabody Award.
(Gloriously, Cohen assured that Martha enthusiastically shows up far more in the season than anyone at Bravo expected.)
What’s most encouraging about this opening sequence is how it recaptures what made RHONY so captivating to begin with: wacky glamour, a peek into the gilded cage of New York’s high society, and the revelation that the birds flapping around in it are largely, amusingly off their rockers. You get to be envious, smug, and amused simultaneously, which turns out to be an intoxicating cocktail.
To that end, reality-TV lovers are going to swoon over fellow new cast member Hailey Glassman.
Hailey is introduced rollerblading through the streets of New York, wearing a fur coat and vaping, on her way to her definition-straining “pied-à-terre,” her second New York City apartment, which she keeps to have space from the one she shares with the mystery businessman she is in a lavender marriage with. She gets to sleep with women, but not men, including the lover who broke her nose with her swinging double-D breast while they were having sex with a dildo.
Oh, also, she used to date Jon Gosselin, the star of Jon & Kate Plus 8—as in, she was the woman on tabloids branded the “homewrecker” who broke up the marriage.
Yes, this is how we meet Hailey. Later, she’ll attempt to relay all the gossip she learned from returning cast member Erin Lichey, but she can’t remember any of it because she was too tired and stoned to pay attention to the details. The internet’s meme generator is already melting down over her.
The third new cast member, Erika Hammond, joked to me after the screening that she only makes a “cameo” in the premiere. (It’s true.) But she makes a fast impression. It’s immediately obvious that she’s, like, rich rich. As in, she and her husband own their own private island, which will apparently be the setting for some of the season’s biggest drama.
As for returning cast members Erin, Jessel Taank, and Sai De Silva, it feels abrupt to be thrown right back into their years-long interpersonal issues when it’s been, well, years since we’ve seen them or cared about why they do or don’t get along. But they do seem to be bringing seasoned Housewives feuding rather than desperate Housewives feuding, the pitfall of so many younger cast members trying to make an impression on the franchise. So there’s a lot of potential there.
And then there’s Carole Radziwill.
Carole, the former Housewife who left the show with every bridge burning behind her, is now returning eight years later with Radziwill, fortuitously for Bravo, now setting fire to the zeitgeist instead.
She was married to JFK Jr.’s best friend and cousin, Anthony Radziwill, and her book about that relationship was back on the bestseller list when the show started filming. Then her name was mentioned in the Epstein files, calling into question her relationship with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who she’s been photographed with.
Any concerns that Radziwill would steer clear of discussing the latter topic were assuaged by the season’s trailer, which shows Radziwill being accosted by a stranger on the street about being in the files while eating pizza with Erin. Then there was what Radziwill said at the premiere.
“Me and many, many, many, many more people found their names in these files,” she said. “It’s not something I shy away from because I think really it’s important to talk about it. It’s important to be transparent.”
“Obviously I didn’t know anything, as no one, you know, 20 years ago would have known anything,” she continued. “It’s hard to think that someone you knew that long ago, and even called a friend at some point, was a horrible, horrible person doing horrible things. And that it all aired, at first I was really nervous. But I just think it’s an opportunity to talk about it.”
Taking a cue from one-time RHONY pal-turned-enemy Bethenny Frankel, she’s going to “mention it all.”
Radziwill doesn’t appear in the first episode, as cameras were already up when she signed her contract to return. She does, however, narrate the opening, Carrie Bradshaw-style, holds the prestigious center apple, and anchors the beginning of Episode 2 the only way she can: holding court in her car while waiting for the street sweeper to pass on an alternate-side street parking day. (To wit, the New York crowd had more questions about her strategy for that than follow-ups about her Epstein connection.)
“I think the audience is happy to see an OG back,” Radziwill said. “I think they’ll come for me, but they’ll stay for the cast. They’re really dynamic. They’re really funny. I feel like we brought the funny back.”
Having seen the first two episodes now—and being most curious about the big Radz return—I can say that she’s absolutely right.
