What in the Lisa Rinna M&M?

Not all the news, but all the news you actually care about.

WHEN STARS COLLIDE: We all know that there are plenty of famous Housewives fans out there. (Rihanna, I hope you’re reading.) But this was a big couple of weeks for some of the franchise’s most well-known enthusiasts to sound off about their shows, particularly how Erika Jayne is handling her $750,000 earrings.

First at bat is Bravoholic Jennifer Lawrence, who hasn’t been as lethal since the first Hunger Games movie. While at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote her movie Causeway, an interviewer from Variety asked her and her co-star, fellow fan Bryan Tyree Henry, what they think of the most recent season of RHOBH. “My biggest problem with this season is that it has been boring,� she said. “I think that Erika is evil. I would go as far as to say she needs a publicist ASAP.� JLaw put a lot of extra stank on that evil, which I think she’s wrong about, but she is right about the publicist.

Erika got a chance to respond on WWHL and said, “Anytime she would like to come down and mix it up with us, I’m sure we could unmask the ugly parts of her personality as well.� Can we make this happen, please?

Next to weigh in on the Pretty Mess were Jon Hamm and Howard Stern. Stern asked Hamm if Erika should return the contested pair of $750,000 earrings. “Yes! She should!� he answered immediately. “You just wanna shake her and go, ‘Honey, they were never yours! Give them back.’� You can watch the full clip here. I can’t wait to hear how Erika challenges Mr. Hamm, but considering his, ahem, finer attributes, I think it will be a lot more amorous than her rebuke to Mx. Lawrence.

Erika wasn’t the only one facing the wrath — fan favorite Garcelle Beauvais became a target too. On her radio show Tea Party, RHOP reunion host Nicki Minaj went on a tirade against Garcelle because she and her co-hosts on The Real (RIP) interviewed Jennifer Hough, the woman who accused Nicki’s husband Kenneth Petty of rape. Nicki was taking issue with Garcelle mentioning the bot attacks against her son and Nicki thought Garcelle was being hypocritical. “Do you care about my motherfucking son, bitch?� she said. “I can see why that white man left you, bitch. Disgusting!� I know we all have various opinions on the Housewives, but that seems like taking it a little too far.

THE $2 MILLION WOMAN: We’ll get to see the RHOBH reunion in just a few short weeks, but now that it’s over, contracts for next season are getting ready to go out. Digital fish-and-chips-holder RadarOnline has a crazy report that Lisa Rinna of M&M fame is holding out for a $2 million contract. The article claims that would make her the highest-paid Housewife ever, saying Kandi Burruss makes just under that amount. According to my research, both Kandi and Nene Leakes were making just around $2 million, if not slightly more.

This seems like a ploy to me. She’s never going to get that number since Bravo is trying to keep salaries down as ratings wane. But it does seem like, if she is dismissed after this season as many fans are hoping, she can say she wasn’t fired, she’s “on pause� because she wanted too much money. But this might explain why she’s skipping BravoCon for “scheduling conflicts.�

Speaking of the reunion, we know Diana Jenkins and her very moist lips only Zoomed in because she was sick with COVID. Andy Cohen reportedly believed she was sick so this is not counted as a no-show, something that will get you immediately fired from the show. But her COVID diagnosis still doesn’t explain why her fiancé Asher Monroe is out there on the internet liking mean tweets about her.

THE WORD ON THE STREET: Do you want to rush to the bottom of the barrel with me? Of course you do. That’s why I love our relationship. We all know that there are plenty of very tentative Housewives rumors out there, so take all of these with a grain of salt bigger than Chanel Ayan’s wig collection.

The first is from the DeuxMoi for Housewives, Bravo and Cocktails, and it says that the RHONY reboot is doomed. Apparently test shooting with the finalized cast was a dud and they lost three of the women who signed up. Another source confirmed, saying they were going to announce the new cast at BravoCon but now it has been scrapped. This second tidbit says Andy watched Sonja Morgan and Luann de Lesseps’s new show and wants RHONY back the way it was, no “Legacy� attached.

These other two rumors come from the print edition of reality TV’s News of the World, Life & Style, as aggregated by the blog All About the Real Housewives. Apparently Kyle Richards is trying to get Melanie Griffith, an old friend, to join the show. Totally doubtful, but I would love it if only so we could get cameos from her daughter Dakota the Ellen Slayer and her best friend Goldie Hawn.

The second rumor is much more believable, especially since Teresa Giudice loves to leak to L&S. According to the magazine, Teresa told Bravo that if they don’t fire her sister-in-law Melissa Gorga before the next season, she’s not coming back. Screw them both, honestly, and let’s get a show centered on the real stars: the Aydins.

HOUSEWIVES INSTITUTE SOCIAL PAGES

• This week in mind changes: David Beador filed for divorce from his new wife and then unfiled a few days later. Nothing says romance like that.
• Of course Teresa Giudice flipped a table during her (very tentative) first tango on Dancing With the Stars.
• It is with much sadness that the Institute reports that Valter Nassi, the owner of iconic RHOSLC eatery Valter’s, has passed away.
• Oh snap, the girls are already reading Gizelle Bryant for her season-seven confessional looks.
• For some reason, Meghan King Edmonds, PI, always manages to keep herself in the news, this time for getting a restraining order against her ex-husband. I have way more sympathy for this than another of Braunwyn Windham Burke’s new girlfriends.
• Remember Mary M. Cosby? Remember when she had weird charges filed against her for endangering a child? Remember when those charges were dropped? Remember when she married her granddad? Remember when she smelled hospital? I miss Mary.
• Larsa Pippen has a new $3 million Miami penthouse where she can sleep with Michael Jordan’s son all she wants.
• The last season of Real Housewives of Melbourne, the only international edition worth your time, was so bad that producers are now looking to Sydney and other towns in Oz to rehab the franchise. Just a thought, but Alex McCord lives down under these days.

Parts 1 & 2 of the Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion showed the ladies in fine form.

Reunions are like everything else Real Housewives: As the years have gone on, they’ve gotten bigger and badder but not necessarily better. The first ever walk-off was when Ramona Singer didn’t want to discuss Alex McCord’s nude photos on television; this is a woman that we have now seen poop herself multiple times, so her indignation is quaint in hindsight. Since then we’ve gotten all sorts of people storming off, Teresa Giudice tossing Andy Cohen like a gay, sockless ragdoll, Kim Richards returning a bunny, Lisa Rinna crying a single tear, and at least one bird attack. And the receipts! And the outfits! And the sets! It’s all just huge, crazy, and ornate.

Most times, I’ve found that to the detriment of the action that is happening onstage. What we want from a reunion is for story lines to get wrapped up, the women to confront questions from viewers and each other, and for some semblance of closure to the 20(ish) episodes of drama we just witnessed. What we so often get instead is binders being pulled out of couches, text messages that have no bearing on any argument, and enough sleeve feathers to make a million Big Birds.

The first two parts of the most recent Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion seem a little bit of an antidote to that. At one point, I thought, Wow, it actually seems like these ladies are enjoying themselves. Everyone giggled at the alacrity with which Kandi Burruss dropped her “Bitch, I’m worldwide� merch. Shereé’s hot new boyfriend FaceTimed in the middle of the proceedings and you’d have thought it was 1998 and a boy just sent an AIM to a slumber party. They teased Andy for being so shady as to ask if Kenya wants Sanya to come over and beat her ass for hanging up on her. For the first time in a long time, I was enjoying myself.

What I was not enjoying, however, were some of these outfits. Now, I love Sanya and I think she’s a great addition to this show. However, she is wearing what might be not only the ugliest dress I have ever seen at a reunion but possibly the ugliest dress of all time. Everyone is in a peachy-coral color (appropriate), but Sanya looks like she had on a pair of Adidas joggers (spring, summer) and got eaten by the cheapest prom dress that Jovani makes. One side is stripes and a bra cup, and the other side is like a bedazzled tablecloth you’d see at a grouping of color-blind Radical Faeries. It’s all just jutting and bending and threatening to fall apart, and it commits the biggest sin of all: looking awful while sitting down.

Next to her is Drew Sidora, who I think has dethroned Candiace Dillard as my least favorite Housewife. She’s wearing gloves. Ugh. But they work with her phone so they are like new gloves that can control technology. Make it stop. She also has a bird of paradise exploding out of one boob, and it makes her impossible to ignore, which is what I want to do. Marlo doesn’t look bad, but I just can’t figure out what her dress, a collection of sparkle and tulle doing an unsuccessful paso doble, is trying to accomplish.

On the other couch, Shereé made a huge mistake by not wearing her signature line, but her boobs look magnificent in their perfect peekaboo window. I’m not in love with Kenya Moore’s sequined boob foldover, but I have never seen her hair and makeup look as good, so I’m too focused on her head to even notice. Poor Kandi, hanging onto the edge of the couch in a velvet dress that looks just as slouchy as she does. We hate to see it.

Also, we hate to see Kenya in the middle of the couch. All of the fireworks during the show were between the perpetually beefing Marlo and Kenya, and I think the inventor of Kenya Moore Hair Care needed to be a little bit closer to our dark lord Andrew Cohen. And speaking of Andy, I was impressed by how much accountability he made all the women take. First, it was Shereé being accused of not paying her bills and that being why her business ventures don’t work. Well, that was more Kenya than Andy, but I think she finally heard the message.

I especially loved the segments where Marlo talked more in-depth about her experiences in the foster-care system, something we don’t hear nearly enough about. All of the ladies gave her a chance to speak and listened quietly while she detailed the indignities of what her life was like and how that affected her. However, at the end of that, Andy and the rest of the ladies really let her have it for saying she “kicked out� her nephews. Everyone was very respectful in the way they spoke to her, a change for these reunions — until the very end when Kenya said, “It’s called damage control,� and Marlo whispered back, “It’s called evil bitch.� It was devastating on both accounts and necessitated no shouting or theatrics.

Some things actually got resolved, too. Sanya apologized to Kenya for being mean about her not taking a date to Jamaica. Sanya also talked about her husband Ross standing up for her and all the ladies agreed that his protectiveness was okay. I’m still not sure what happened with Shereé and Kenya missing the bus to Sanya’s photo shoot, but I’m with Andy: If there was a boat to luxuriate on, why did they even consider going?

Things really started to heat up, however, when Kenya told everyone that Marlo is “disingenuine,� a Teresa Giudice–esque mangling that I sort of appreciate. I also appreciate Kenya’s point, that Marlo often says she is one way and wants the ladies to believe that but then behaves in an opposite way. The example she gave is saying people are mean to her for calling her a prostitute but then saying Kandi can’t keep a man because she has a “bad pussy.� (I’m not sure she exactly said “bad pussy,� but the implication was there.)

We then heard all about Marlo’s real name of Latoya Hutchinson, with the editors treating us to a copy of Marlo’s actual birth certificate with her name on it. I mean, post-production receipts FTW, baby. There was a lot of back-and-forth between them, but in the end, Marlo explained herself and her arrests quite well, coming off a lot rosier than Kenya would like.

Finally, just as things started to get sedated, Drew (ugh) and Shereé got into it over Anthony the assistant, whether or not he was Shereé’s assistant, and if she owes him money. Shereé, in a feat never before witnessed on Housewives, got out her phone, FaceTimed this poor child, and he picked up on the second ring. Was he just sitting by the phone like this is Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and he’s the “phone a friend�? In a rehearsed statement, Anthony informed us that Shereé does not owe him money, he was not her assistant, and he does not believe that Ralph is gay but he does believe that Drew needed a story line for this season. Clearly perturbed he lost his position as master of ceremonies to our once and future champion Shereé Whitfield, Andy hung up on him faster than he would a twink who wants to leave a toothbrush at his Hamptons house.

It was a stunt for the ages, but I’m glad that’s all we got. We don’t need to drag out Anthony and Fatoum and the cookie lady and the drummer from the Kenya Moore Hair Care band and every other random person who tries to get attention by being on the show. We don’t need to give further attention or airtime. This reunion proved that what we really need is a great cast of women sitting down, listening to each other, and enjoying their “platform.� Oh, and maybe a moat. That shit is pretty fierce.

Fashion Forward

There is nothing worse than a Housewife throwing a Roaring ’20s party, but at least Crystal Kung Minkoff and her brother Jeff gave us a whole new spin on the theme.

Recap Highlights

Southern Charm, Season 8, Episode 13: Seriously, Naomie. Do like Wilson Philips and hold on for one more day. Wait until Craig is calm and sober to have this conversation.

Southern Charm, Season 8, Episode 14: We see Craig doing the Titanic on the boat with Austen behind him as Craig shouts, “We’re on top of the world.� He says that he got his distrust of women from this movie, but he didn’t bother to learn the one quote that everyone knows from it.

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Season 12, Episode 18: Erika hightailed it to Liplickia, the hotel room that Diana Jenkins presides over that she has turned into a sovereign nation and will accept anyone who can’t handle their original sleeping arrangements.

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Season 12, Episode 19: Who knew that this Kathy Hilton Aspen meltdown that has been hyped for months would be kicked off because no one wanted to conga like they were on GHB at a Miami Sound Machine concert?

Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 7, Episode 10: In his confessional, Jason says that what Storm is doing is dangerous and that he could even lose an arm, but I checked Instagram, and Storm still has all his limbs.

Below Deck Mediterranean, Season 7, Episode 11: My kingdom for a Natalya-level Luddite. She had to Google Dolly Parton! Absolutely no thoughts in that pretty little head of hers, just vibes.

Dean’s List for Best Comment of the Week

Highlighting the best insight from our lovely Institute members. This one is from a recent RHOBH recap.

Philapa: I thought the Aspen sounds were from boots crunching the snow. Nope, that is the sound of the FFF alliance cracking.

I Said What I Said

“I heard from a friend of a friend that D is a 10 out of 10 too.� — Kenya Moore