Never say that the Real Housewives series has no educational value.
Following the last episode of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, scores of people were inspired to expand their vocabulary. A Google search query for the phrase “slam pig” spiked immediately after the episode aired and the several days that followed. (Seriously, I looked it up.) Searches for “slam pig meaning” were up 80 percent. Bravo fans, always willing to expand their minds.
The scholarship mission was inspired by an insult hurled by cast member Rosie Woods DiMare at adversary Kelsey Swanson during what ranks as the most explosive fight of the season so far. (That’s tough competition, too, though it’s notable that either Rosie or Kelsey has figured heavily in the other two major dust-ups.)
Now, if you’re faint of heart, I don’t necessarily encourage googling this particular term, and implore you not to search it on X. Suffice it to say, it’s an unsavory way of describing a promiscuous woman, and one that Rosie had locked and loaded to fire off at Kelsey when tensions spiked.
It’s another notch in the belt for “Nosy Rosie,” the breakout star and reigning chaos agent of the buzzy newest entry in the Real Housewives franchise. So, as an unrepentant Bravoholic and RHORI obsessive, it was a treat to get to talk to her for Obsessed: The Podcast.
“It’s very clear that she just doesn’t want to like me, and she doesn’t want to give me a chance,” Rosie told me. “So it’s like, OK, so you’ve now attacked me a bunch of times, accused me of a bunch of stuff. You don’t listen to anything that I say about anything, and I’m still inviting you over my house.”
I’d like to attempt to give anyone who hasn’t been watching a quick field guide to RHORI and Rosie and Kelsey’s beef, but I’m going to sound insane. So be warned.
Almost immediately on the show, we learn how interconnected these women are, including who grew up together, who’s had sex with the same people, whose husbands may currently be having affairs, who’s open to threesomes but not the swinging she’s been accused of, and who has a boyfriend that funds her life but who also spends six months a year his other girlfriend but it’s OK because she has another boyfriend too. (Phew.)
Rosie and Kelsey are among the youngest of the cast, and get along like oil and water. Kelsey hates that Rosie brought up rumors that she was polyamorous, an incident that earned her the nickname “Nosy Rosie.” Of course, Kelsey soon came clean about all of it on her own; she just hates that Rosie was the one to bring it to the group.
And Kelsey has pestered Rosie for everything from allegedly keeping a Notes app of dirt on each of the cast members to exaggerating the square footage of her house renovation and not tagging Kelsey on Instagram after she cut Rosie’s hair. Huge stuff.
“This whole Notes app thing, it’s her new spin. I think she’s grasping at straws with that,” she said. “You need a new reason to dislike me. Nothing’s really landed.”
And Rosie, a former journalist, is at the ready to list what all those false accusations are: “I mean, she was saying that my husband was gay. She was saying, just admit you’re in a lavender marriage. She was saying my infertility issues were a lie. Like, were you there when we were trying to make a baby? I don’t think so. She was saying that I was mentally ill, which probably, like, don’t scream at somebody and yell at them about that. So by the time the haircut thing happened, I was like, you’re just looking for stuff to have a problem with me for something.”
We dig into so much in our conversation.
Again, I’ve watched so much Real Housewives. I both hesitate to think how many hours of my life have been spent watching those shows, but also so glad to have devoted so much of my life to something so worthwhile. So I’ve been extremely fascinated by how quickly these women just offered up the most salacious information about their lives, whereas in other franchises it would take two seasons to surface, and then the Housewife would probably storm off set and refuse to film once it’s revealed.
What makes the women of RHORI so different?
“I think that if you have a lot to hide, you’re going to do two things: You’re either going to project on other people or attack somebody else to prevent them from attacking you, or you’re going to be super upfront about it so you can spin your narrative,” Rosie said. “As a former journalist, I love to watch it unfold and, you know, I am a little messy, and I am Nosy Rosie. So I enjoy it. I’m always going to have follow-up questions. I think they also hate that.”
Watch our full conversation here, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
