Luann de Lesseps threw some shade at her ex-friend and former Real Housewives of New York co-star Bethenny Frankel‘s new ‘wives focused podcast. “I remember at one point, she wouldn’t even say the word ‘Housewives,'” the Class with the Countess: How to Live with Elegance and Flair author, 57, said on the Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino podcast after Bethenny announced the ReWives rewatch show.
“Well, I think that she’s trying to grab the fame of Housewives to keep her storyline going,” she added, going as far to call her former cast mates project “a pretty desperate scenario” on the episode released Friday, Nov. 4. “It sounds like a desperate search for a storyline for herself, and she’s thrown Housewives under the bus a million times,” the Countess also said.
Notably, Luann and Bethenny were both original cast members on the series when it started back in 2008 — however, Bethenny initially departed after three seasons to film her spinoff Bethenny Ever After as well as focus on the growth of her highly successful Skinnygirl Margarita brand. She then returned to the series in season 7, and remained a main cast member through season 11. Back in 2016 (despite still being on the series), the BSTRONG charity founder stated she was “distancing” herself from the show which she said was “negative.” Since her final exit in 2019, the entrepreneur has very much focused on her own brands away from the Bravo franchise she got her start.
“So a disgruntled Housewife doing a Housewives podcast, I don’t think anybody wants to listen to,” Luann went on, saying Bethenny has “s— on the show” frequently. “That means she’s going to s— on us on her little podcast about the Housewives. It’s pretty sad and pathetic that she has to resort to Housewives because of all of her failed pivots since the Housewives…She’s tried everything other than Housewives and it doesn’t seem to work, and now she’s going back to Housewives.”
The concept of the podcast will feature Bethenny going back and re-watching the original seasons of Real Housewives of New York years later. Contrary to what Luann is saying about the show, Bethenny explicitly stated that “you can’t forget where you came from” to PEOPLE magazine. “We don’t delve into that territory. I wanted to do a rewatch podcast, but I didn’t want to do something derivative. I didn’t just want to rewatch a show, scene by scene,” she said of the project.
“So I thought ‘How could I do this in an interesting way?’ — not just having another Housewife talk about it to me like others do, but instead delving deeper,” she explained. “So it’s really about the real dynamics that are going on underneath, which I find to me more interesting anyway, and not the low-hanging fruit trash that others take away from it.”