Radar Told You First: Bethenny Frankel’s ‘RHONY’ Return Was In Talks For Months, Andy Cohen Says
Oct. 24 2014, Published 1:46 p.m. ET
Bethenny Frankel had been in negotiations to come back to Bravo — and eventually, the Real Housewives of New York City — since June, Bravo’s Andy Cohen said Wednesday, confirming a RadarOnline.com report more than two months before that.
As RadarOnline.com told you on March 26, Frankel was chatting up Cohen about a return to the network that launched her following the demise of her trainwreck talk show, hoping to be the focal point of her own program.
“They’ve been in deep negotiations and she is definitely ready to return to Bravo,” sources told us then.
Cohen Wednesday told Us Weekly that Bethenny remains “one of the most popular housewives we've ever had on any of the shows” and her return was “something he was working on since June."
Cohen said of the housewife homecoming: Frankel “said to me, 'You know, I'm coming off this really high-profile failure of my talk show, my marriage fell apart.'
“So she is really starting over. It's kind of an amazing unique moment for her to rejoin the show.”
And in yet another affirmation of our top-notch reporting, Cohen confirmed our Apr. 17 report that Frankel was hesitant at first, to come back.
“Bethenny didn’t even take time to think it over” before refusing the offer, the source said, adding that the Skinnygirl mogul felt she’d “moved on from that” genre.
But eventually, Cohen’s coaxing got the best of her, paving her return to the reality series.
“When I first started talking to her about it, it seemed kind of unbelievable. But the more we talked about it, it seemed totally right,” he said Wednesday. “It really makes sense in a weird way.”
Clearly, Cohen has a way with words, as the socialite’s return comes six months after she compared her first run on the series to “flashbacks from Vietnam.”
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After leaving the cast in 2010, Frankel’s career hit a high note with Bravo spin-offs Bethenny Getting Married and Bethenny Ever After, but the talk show debacle likely set the stage for the unlikely comeback.
