Williams, the first Black cast member of “The Real Housewives of New York,” caught up with us in the aftermath of the recent Vanity Fair piece.
Eboni K. Williams is reflecting on her “Real Housewives” experience. The journalist, lawyer and host of “TheGrio with Eboni K. Williams” caught up with us in the wake of Vanity Fair’s recent article on Bravo’s “Real Housewives” franchise, breaking down her feelings days after its publication, why this piece is different than others and what she really thinks about Bethenny Frankel’s Instagram post about her.
When asked what the first word that comes to her mind in the aftermath of the Vanity Fair piece, Williams was crystal clear in her response: “Vindicated,” she declared. “Not that I needed it, but it’s nice. It’s unfortunate that as a Black woman in America, it takes all of this to cut through the noise, to cut to the anti-Blackness, to cut through the blind eyes for the sake of white comfort under the guise of entertainment.”
“Yet,” Williams added, “here we are.”
In case you missed it, Vanity Fair’s exploration last month focused heavily on Season 13 of “The Real Housewives of New York,” which saw the addition of Williams, the first full-time Black “Housewife” in the city’s 13-year run. The season received mixed reception from fans and poor ratings, leading to a reboot of the franchise altogether, which just premiered this summer on Bravo with a completely new group of women.
The VF article is broken into three sections, one focusing on Frankel’s viewpoint as one of the founding members of “RHONY” and her current public gripes with Bravo, Williams’ Season 13 castmate Leah McSweeney and her struggles with sobriety while working in a toxic environment, and Williams’ portion, which details various instances of micro and macro-aggressive racism.
“I found revisiting all of it for the Vanity Fair piece to be extremely re-traumatizing and more re-traumatizing than I anticipated,” she told us.
Williams details her interactions with cast members Luann de Lesseps — who referred to her as an “angry woman” — and Ramona Singer, noted for allegedly saying while shooting Season 13: “This is why we didn’t need Black people on the show. … this is gonna ruin our show.” Singer also used the n-word with a Black producer, Darian Edmondson.
As theGrio previously reported, Singer found herself in even more hot water in the aftermath of the piece after Page Six published a text exchange between her and one of their reporters in which she used the racial slur again. This happened days before Bravo’s major fan event, BravoCon, which she was subsequently cut from.
While the information in VF’s “RHONY” article is certainly powerful, none of the accounts were new information. Williams broke down Singer’s role in Season 13 on an episode of her podcast, “Holding Court with Eboni K. Williams,” over a year ago, as well as in other outlets.
“Everything that I said had been said before,” she explained to theGrio. “What is different, however, is corroboration, specifically from the Black producer who Singer used the n-word with.
“What was new for the first time was I was very publicly corroborated by a very courageous, brave, Black woman named Darian, who, for the first time, went on public record to speak her truth,” said Williams. “I felt deep pain for Darian to do that work; she shouldn’t have to do that work … but I think her doing so was the only reason for my vindication, honestly. It would have been way too easy to continue to gaslight and dismiss my words because that is what has happened to this point.”
Williams’ experience — and the amount of times she had to tell her story in order to finally be heard — is a universal one, specifically for people of color and women of color.
“It’s the pinnacle of ‘whitesplaining,’” Williams expressed. “It took the amplification of Vanity Fair, a mainstream white publication, to have it heard. I’m not necessarily assessing that, as much as I’m just offering that for examination.”
She also briefly, in VF, touched on Frankel, who has become the face of this new examination of reality TV practices (Frankel coined the term “Reality Reckoning.”) While the former “RHONY” star’s message has resonated with many in the midst of the various strikes in Hollywood surrounding workplace conditions in the entertainment industry, many have questioned Frankel’s involvement and motives in becoming the main figure in the movement.
When asked if Williams would join Frankel’s “movement” — which currently involves interviewing estranged Bravo stars, like “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes and Raquel Leviss of “Vanderpump Rules,” who both sat down with Frankel for her podcast — theGrio show host said: “F–k Bethenny Frankel. You think I’m going to let some white girl speak for me, with my experience with a multibillion-dollar corporation?”
After the Vanity Fair piece was published (and Williams’ comments regarding Frankel took off on social media), Frankel posted an Instagram story to call out Williams, sharing a screenshot of their Instagram messages together. In the screenshot of a message from 2020, Williams praised Frankel for her philanthropic work, to which she responded in the thread two years later, writing, “Thanks. I’m sorry I’m so late.” Frankel wrote above the screenshot, “In response to @ebonikwilliams telling me to F**K off…”
Williams took no time to clap back, resharing Frankel’s post on her story, writing: “Pulling out a receipt from 3 years ago? Back when you focused on philanthropy instead of thirst trapping on other people’s hardships.” She shared in the post the full exchange between the two former Housewives, as Frankel’s post left out a message she had sent Williams just days before the Vanity Fair article was published asking to speak.
“All I care about is impact,” Williams told theGrio. “The center of my point is that as a completely competent, credible and consistent Black woman who is a professional not in one but in two ways of telling my story as both a litigator and a journalist, the very last thing I need in this entire world is a white woman looking to hijack and ‘whitesplain’ my experience and narrative. Period.”
As for Frankel’s Instagram callout, Williams called it a “poor, laughable attempt.”
“You edit the entirety of the communication exchange and you wanna show an exchange of two messages from three years ago but leave out the part where you were in my DMs just 3 days ago … left on read, mind you,” she said. “It’s telling!”
“When I say she is not credible, this is what I am talking about,” Williams added. “I am talking about a woman that would misrepresent the nature of a conversation that I just had with you. If one of your most famous taglines from the show was ‘mention it all,’ mention it all! Don’t copy and paste!”
“When you used your platform for global philanthropy, I supported that, and I still support that work today,” she concluded. “What I do not support and will not participate in or play a sidekick to is you attempting to hijack the trauma, the hardship and the heartache of Black women in this moment.”
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