These ‘RHONY Legacy’ Besties Know They’ve Made Iconic TV
Four score and seven years ago (otherwise known as March 2022), Bravo execs announced that they would be ending the original Real Housewives of New York as viewers knew it. Instead, they split the franchise into two different shows: RHONY proper and a RHONY Legacy show, incorporating members of the former cast, whose show Bravo retooled. Somewhere along the way, negotiations stalled on Legacy, and the network conveniently folded the side project into a season of Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip. (Full title: Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy—what a mouthful.)
Shelving the original spinoff show was a blow to fans excited for a double dose of what I would call the most consistently watchable Real Housewives franchise. But luckily, the RHONY cast’s trips are the stuff of legends. Hundreds of memes have been born from the New York Housewives boozing it up abroad, bringing Buster Keaton-level physical comedy everywhere from Miami to Morocco. Even a seven-day micro series could have a wealth of potential, if the women of RHONY were at the helm.
No two RHONY Legacy cast members know that quite as well as Luann de Lesseps and Kelly Killoren Bensimon. Both together and apart, Bensimon and de Lesseps were the (often inadvertent) architects of some of the franchise’s most mythic moments. Anyone who witnessed Bensimon becoming frenzied under Bethenny Frankel’s magnifying glass during RHONY Season 3’s “Scary Island” trip to St. John, or watched de Lesseps’ dodge accusations that she had cheated on her boyfriend in Season 5’s journey to St. Barths—where the RHONY Legacy cast reunites this season—can’t help but completely enamored by their antics.