Not so fast! Bethenny Frankel just clapped back against reports she pitched a new reality show to Bravo right before her “reality reckoning.”
In case you’ve been under a rock, the former Real Housewives of New York star recently launched an all-out war against the reality TV giants, but some have called her a hypocrite, considering she was trying to get back on TV a few months ago. Now, she claims there’s more to the story. Isn’t there always?
Bethenny vs. Bravo, again
The former talk show host opened up about her failed pitch to Bravo during a recent episode of Just B with Bethenny Frankel. She explained that although she’s going to war against Bravo, the stories about her recently pitching a show aren’t entirely accurate.
“Over about two years ago, I was in Nantucket, and I pitched a project to a production company called Pop. Matt Anderson, he produced Miami, Real Housewives of Atlanta, and Married to Medicine,” Bethenny explained. “And I pitched him on Bethenny, the Next Chapter being in Connecticut, and the people around me.”
According to Bethenny, she proceeded to pitch the show to Andy Cohen during a stroll on the beach. He allegedly loved the idea and wanted to see it move forward with Bravo. Bethenny said that Bravo was interested too and wanted to see it move forward to development. However, the former host of the Big Shot with Bethenny spun a tale about how her new show idea quickly devolved from “Bethenny, the Next Chapter” to The Real Housewives of Connecticut.
“So they started sending me women to be around me. And only 100 times I say to them, I don’t want this to be a Housewives,” Bethenny ranted. “But lo and behold, they were casting all these different women. We kept fleshing it out. I was producing it. It was my concept. It also involves this podcast, narrating it. And it was this whole concept that started between 18 months, two years ago,” she continued.
Then, Mariah Huq, from Married to Medicine, got involved in the story. You didn’t see that coming, did you? Bethenny explained that she heard about Mariah’s legal fight over the show she created. That started to scare her into thinking that proceeding with the Connecticut-based show wasn’t a good idea.
“Someone reached out to me from the Bravosphere and said to me that the production company Pop and Matt Anderson, my partners, had produced Married to Medicine and that they had allegedly stolen the show, Married to Medicine, from a cast member,” Bethenny explained.
The former Money Court host continued, “I don’t know the story, but they stole the show, allegedly, and things that had been going on in the interaction and in the deal negotiating between myself and this production company were making me feel worried that they were going to try to do this Connecticut ensemble show without me, which was a concept that I pitched to Andy, that I pitched to them.”
Bethenny said that once she learned about the Married to Medicine controversy, she felt spooked about moving forward with the Pop production company. And thus, the deal fizzled out.
She said, “So I called my lawyer at Grubman and said, I don’t want to do it, called the club on the show. I just don’t want to do it. So that was in like April or May.”
Even with this explanation about the show that never was, it’s still curious timing that her war against reality TV kicked off just a few months later. Surely, that’s just a coincidence.
TELL US – DO YOU BELIEVE BETHENNY’S SIDE OF THIS STORY? DO YOU THINK THE “REALITY RECKNONIG” SOUNDS MORE LIKE A DISGRUNTLED FORMER EMPLOYEE?
