The Real Housewives of New York City is an American reality television program on the Bravo cable TV network. A spin-off of the Bravo series The Real Housewives of Orange County, it is the second version of the The Real Housewives of... franchise. It was tentatively titled "Manhattan Moms" while in production for season 1.
The first season premiered March 4, 2008, with Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps, Alex McCord, Ramona Singer, and Jill Zarin. The women are not all actually housewives; the intent of the show[citation needed] is to reveal the lifestyles of relatively affluent, bourgeois women and their families living in New York. With the exception of de Lesseps, all the women have careers.
The series was renewed for a second season on April 15, 2008, and premiered February 17, 2009, with a sixth "housewife", Kelly Killoren Bensimon.
Two new women, Sonja Morgan and Jennifer Gilbert, have joined the show for Season 3, however, Jennifer Gilbert does not have an official introduction on the show as a housewife, and her appearances have been very limited.
Negotiations are underway to film a third season of the series in Summer 2010 with Frankel's future with the series being most in question. Comedienne Rosie O'Donnell is said to be in talks to join the cast.
Bethenny Frankel
(Season 1 to present)
Bethenny Frankel is a natural foods chef. She is daughter of the late thoroughbred race horse trainer and horse racing hall-of-famer Robert Frankel.
Frankel (born November 4, 1970), graduated from Pine Crest School and attended New York University and The Natural Gourmet Institute in New York. Before she appeared in the reality show, Frankel starred in the 1994 movie Hollywood Hills 90028 and acted in the 1995 movie Wish Me Luck. She was a contestant and the first runner-up on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. She was a regular contributor to NBC's coverage of the 2009 Kentucky Derby and 2009 Preakness Stakes, and Bravo's coverage of the 2009 Kentucky Oaks.
Bethenny created BethennyBakes, a company that offered a line of wheat, egg and dairy free baked goods that was carried in hundreds of retail outlets. This company ceased production in 2010 when Frankel launched the Skinnygirl brand. The flagship product is the Skinnygirl Margarita, a premixed drink lower in calories than a traditional margarita.
Frankel is the author of the Naturally Thin: Unleash Your Skinnygirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting (2009), a New York Times best-seller in the Paperback Advice List category. She has since authored The Skinnygirl Dish, The Skinnygirl Rules, and released an exercise DVD, Body by Bethenny. Frankel’s fourth book, A Place of Yes, is expected to be published in 2010.
In 2009, Frankel posed nude for animal rights group PETA's anti-fur campaign; her photo was featured on a billboard in Times Square.
On March 28, 2010, Frankel married Jason Hoppy at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City. She and Hoppy will star in Bravo TV's spinoff series, Bethenny Getting Married? which is scheduled to air June 10, 2010.
On May 8, 2010, Bethenny gave birth to a baby girl, Bryn.
LuAnn De Lesseps
(Season 1 to present)
LuAnn de Lesseps (born May 17, 1965) is a former Wilhelmina Models model and nurse, is of Algonquin and French descent.
She was the fourth wife of Count Alexandre de Lesseps, a descendant of Ferdinand de Lesseps of the Suez Canal family. They have two children, Victoria and Noel. de Lesseps and her husband were divorced in 2010 amid reports of infidelity by the Count.
De Lesseps is the author of a book released in 2009 entitled "Class With The Countess".
In 2010, de Lesseps appeared on an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, assisting a contestant.
Ramona Singer
(Season 1 to present)
Ramona Singer (born November 18, 1956) is the owner of RMS Fashions, a company that purchases excess goods from clothing manufacturers and resells them to discount stores. In the apparel industry, Ramona is known as a jobber. "When manufacturers sell their surplus fabric to middlemen called fabric jobbers. These jobbers are typically expected to make large purchases—often the manufacturer's entire fabric surplus. The jobber is willing to make this kind of purchase, even though it is likely to include some fabric that is not very desirable, because it is buying it for a fraction of the original wholesale fabric prices. When the jobbers sell to retailers, they put their markup on the below-wholesale price paid to the garment manufacturer. The retailer then puts a markup on the jobber’s price. Even with these two markups, the price to the consumer can still be near or even below the original wholesale fabric price paid by the garment manufacturer."
After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Singer began her career as a buyer for Macy's and then moved into the wholesale clothing business with French Connection and Calvin Klein. She developed and markets her own line of jewelry that is sold through the Home Shopping Network (HSN). She also developed and launched a skin care line, TruRenewal, in 2009.
In 2010, Singer appeared on an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire assisting a contestant.
Singer lives in Manhattan with her husband Mario and their teenage daughter, Avery.
Alex McCord
(Season 1 to present)
Alex McCord, (born October 1, 1973) is married to Simon van Kempen, general manager of Hotel Chandler in New York City. They have two boys together, Francois and Johan.
McCord and her husband have written a book together entitled, Little Kids, Big City, which was released in spring 2010.
McCord is a former actress and model. She was a graphic designer for over nine years. In March 2009, she was laid off from her job in visual merchandising for Limited Brands/Victoria’s Secret.
McCord was born in Washington, D.C., raised in Kansas, Texas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and has lived in New York City since 1996. She is a graduate of Northwestern University. As of 2010, she and van Kempen reside in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.
In 2010, McCord appeared on an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, assisting a contestant.
Jill Zarin
(Season 1 to present)
Jill Zarin, (born November 30, 1963), is married to Bobby Zarin. Bobby is owner of Zarin Fabric Warehouse and Home Furnishings, a home furnishing and fabric store on the lower east side which was started by Bobby's father.
Zarin does marketing for the store and also holds a real estate license. In 2009, she began a charitable foundation called Creaky Joints to raise awareness for arthritis, from which her teenage daughter, Allyson Shapiro, suffers.
She attended Simmons College. Zarin lives on the Upper East Side neighborhood with her family. The Zarins' summer home in the Hamptons, featured on the show, was sold in 2009.
In 2010, Zarin published the advice book Secrets of a Jewish Mother, which she co-authored with her sister and mother.
In 2010, Zarin appeared on an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
Kelly Killoren Bensimon
(Season 2 to present)
Kelly Killoren Bensimon, born on May 1, 1968, joined the series in Season 2. She is from Rockford, IL and was married to photographer Gilles Bensimon, with whom she had two daughters, Sea and Teddy.
She is a former model, equestrian, and magazine editor. She is the author of The Bikini Book (2005). She has developed a line of costume jewelry which is sold through the Home Shopping Network (HSN).
Sonja Morgan
(Season 3 to present)
Sonja Morgan, born November 25, 1963, is the ex-wife of John Morgan, one of five sons of Henry Sturgis Morgan, a great-grandson of J. Pierpont Morgan, the greatest American financier of the Gilded Age, and Catherine Adams, a great-great-granddaughter of John Adams, the second President of the United States. Prior to getting married, she was a hostess at a restaurant in New York City. She and Morgan had a daughter together.
Morgan is currently working on a screenplay she describes as "a Candace Bushnell society novel."
According to the New York Post, Sonja Morgan agreed to finance a motion picture in 2006 but backed out at the last minute because she had just been served with divorce papers. In September 2009, a federal jury in California awarded the production company $7.06 million in damages.
Credit: Wikipedia
