Binge: The Real Housewives viewers can’t get enough of
To be a real Real Housewife, you need to balance your attitude and sass with a sense of humour. When it works, you’re reality-TV gold. Here are the stars who have made the franchise a phenomenon.
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Here are eight Real Housewife faves whose work is ready for you to Binge.
NENE LEAKES
Nene had a minor acting career before being cast in The Real Housewives of Atlanta in 2008. Since then, she’s become one of the global franchise’s most successful exports – acting roles from Glee to stage work in Chicago, reality work from Dancing with the Stars to Celebrity Apprentice and her own fashion line on the Home Shopping Network.
She left Real Housewives in 2015, but returned for the latest series, instantly stirring up drama. Fans love Leakes as she is the queen of shade – a Housewife necessity. Like when she visited fellow housemate Kenya in the “ghetto” – an apartment she was staying at. Leakes was mortified at something she saw in Kenya’s kitchen – a white refrigerator. “Girl get your shoes and let’s go find you a home,” Leakes told her.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “I am the glue for my wig and my family.”
LISA VANDERPUMP
Too rich to care about petty squabbles, too British to have a classic scrag fight, but not above dropping strategic word bombs on camera, LVP made her money in the restaurant business in her native Britain with her husband. They relocated to the US and she joined the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast in 2010 before leaving last year. LVP used her reality-TV popularity to launch spin-off shows set in her own bar Pump (Vanderpump Rules) and even a dog grooming business and pooch product line. Vanderpump said she left the 90210 franchise as what had been “fun and snarky” had become “vicious”. Plus, she doesn’t need the money.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “I’m passionate about dogs, just not crazy about bitches.”
RAMONA SINGER
What better side-hustle for a real Housewife than an anti-ageing serum. Real Housewife of New York Ramona Singer, who has a background working in fashion, now even has her own booze line – Ramona Pinot Grigio. She came into the show as the “sexy mum” hiring shirtless tennis coaches and embarrassing her teenage daughter. Along the way, she’s dumped her husband Mario after she found out he was cheating – he also seemed slightly emasculated about how much money she was making, compared with him. How much money? Enough to have a fight at an upstate mansion, storm out and get a helicopter home.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “I’m an acquired taste. If you don’t like me, acquire some taste!”
BETHANNY FRANKEL
With a CV that included being a nanny to Paris Hilton and production assistant on Saved by the Bell, businesswoman
Bethanny Frankel started her life on reality-TV with Martha Stewart before joining The Real Housewives of New York in 2008. She was a high-impact housewife and jumped ship by the fourth season, creating a line of diet alcoholic drinks she sold for $200 million in the meantime. Frankel had a super-messy divorce and custody battle that played out when she returned to RHONY for four more years, leaving for a second time last year.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “I’m not a housewife, but I
am real.”
GAMBLE BREAUX
The beauty of Gamble Breaux, aside from the obvious, is she knows just how ridiculous the show is and the women on it are. And she gives excellent one-liners. Many of them we can’t print here. Like the one quoting a Rihanna lyric about dryness or threatening to sue someone to the end of the effing earth. Gamble likes a good grudge, such as former Housemate Pettifleur, who tried to give her a wedding invitation that Gamble ripped up in her face and dropped a well-timed F-bomb in the process. There’s also a sweet
later-in-life love story, meeting eye surgeon Rick Wolff online and getting married – on TV. She’s also continued her music career, recently releasing a new single called Classy.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “When you finally fall on your
feet, people will still try to bring you down.”
LISA RINNA
Actually famous as an actor (Melrose Place, Days of Our Lives) before she joined the cast of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in 2014, Lisa Rinna wasted no time in fitting right in. She sees her role on the reality show as a character – who she refers to as “Rinna” – and indeed acts like she’s back on Melrose Place at times, caught in a scandal about whether a castmate was faking her Lyme disease. She brings husband Harry Hamlin on screen, helped pal Denise Richards join the cast and is the first to poke fun at her famous lips, which were pillow-sized before that was a thing. She is open about joining the franchise as a business move – launching a successful fashion line and monetising her boosted social media profile.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “I don’t have to buy it, ’cause I already own it.”
TERESA GUIDICE
The divisive Housewife Teresa Giudice made her mark in The Real Housewives of New Jersey by flipping a table in season one. That’s a good first impression. Not so good – Teresa wound up spending almost a year in jail when she and her husband Joe were done for a series of crimes, including conspiracy to commit bank fraud. She’s still on the show, pushing redemption, and has split from Joe, who has been deported after getting out of prison.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “I used to flip tables, now I’m turning them.”
GINA LIANO
A homegrown hero, Gina Liano juggles being a real life barrister with some of the crimes against polite behaviour witnessed on Real Housewives of Melbourne.
She’s no stranger to stirring stuff up, telling someone they were an “insignificant ass hair”, playing tennis in high heels, and claiming she “deals in fact not friction” before creating immense drama.
A lover of a well-placed top-shelf swear word, Gina’s side-eyes
have been meme’d to buggery
and at the peak of RHOM fame drag queens would imitate her,
but still probably didn’t wear as much make-up and hairspray as the real thing.
Naturally, she’s back for the upcoming new series of Real Housewives of Melbourne.
Best Real Housewives tagline: “Persistence is king and I’m the queen of it.”
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