Despite the name of The Real Housewives franchise, the Bravo television series is infamous for the many couples that split during or after the show. Harry Hamlin, 68, was worried that would be the fate for his and Lisa Rinna’s marriage, which he confessed in an interview with The Daily Beast (ironically, it was published on Dec. 16, just one day before news of Teresa and Joe Giudice’s split surfaced). When Lisa first approached Harry with the idea of joining the show, the L.A. Law star recalled himself telling Lisa, “I have my divorce lawyer on speed dial, and I do.” The interviewer even claimed Harry “proffered” his phone, as proof of this ready-to-go contact!
Luckily, Harry didn’t have to dial his divorce lawyer. Lisa has been successfully starring on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills since 2014, with her 22-year marriage still in tact. But before this all happened, Harry told Lisa, “You can’t do this. Everybody who does that show gets divorced. It’s a horrible, horrible thing, to do that show.”
Harry himself was adamant about not appearing on the Bravo show — however, “They were not going to hire Lisa if I didn’t do it, and the husbands have the same obligations as the wives do,” Harry revealed. He added, “They want you to show up and be involved. I said I wasn’t going to do that. So we concocted a way to get around it.” Their solution was the aloof Harry you see on Bravo, which the actor said is a “totally deliberate” move. The main reason he even agreed to camera time was because of The Real Housewives of New York City alum/Skinnygirl CEO Bethenny Frankel, who convinced him “from a branding point of view it would be a good thing to do.” From there on out, Harry said he was “open to doing it on my own terms.”
Despite all the drama that plays out on RHOBH, which Harry insisted is “unscripted,” he credited the success of his and Lisa’s marriage to strong listening skills. “We listen to each other. Really listen to each other. The thing about listening is that it’s not something that comes innately to human beings,” Harry mused. “Normally we have a tape playing in our heads all the time. It can be hard to allow what other people are saying actually in. That’s what Lisa and I do—we listen. And she’s smart, she’s the smartest person I have ever met. She’s smart as a whip. Our favorite thing is to hang out.” Harry and Lisa have also raised two daughters together, Delilah, 21, and Amelia, 18, whom Harry gushed about in his interview.