Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (30 page)

The advice I give the ladies most frequently and emphatically is “Just be real.” Be who you are and own it. I certainly have tried to live my life exactly this way, and though I didn’t grow up to be a Housewife, it has otherwise worked for me.

My biggest problems with Housewives occur when they try to alter their personas and control how they appear. It’s like they’re trying to produce themselves, and it never works. The camera catches it all. What it caught in Washington, DC, was—literally—one for the history books.

When we decided to extend the
Real Housewives
franchise to Washington, DC, the country had just elected its first African American president, and we were interested in exploring the nexus of society and race among women in a place where proximity to political power, as well as money and an amazing shoe closet, dictates one’s status. My fantasy was that this group of Housewives would disagree—okay, maybe even fight—about affairs of state rather than affairs of the heart.

As we started filming, it seemed like our wish had come true; the women were indeed talking about race and politics and Washington insiders. But then the latter discussion became all too loud during the Thanksgiving weekend of 2009, when Michaele Salahi, a cast member, and her husband, Tareq, attended President Obama’s first state dinner in the White House, allegedly without an invitation.

What the Salahis were and what they wanted to be had been a topic of much debate and discussion among the other cast members long before the White House debacle. Michaele was a real character, kind of a bubbly space cadet who was a former makeup counter salesgirl longing to be one of the society ladies whose faces she painted. She was zany, untrustworthy, likable, and fragile all at once. Her husband, Tareq, reminded me of an incredibly litigious used-car salesman whose suits needed a good dry cleaning. We always suspected he was taping phone conversations with Bravo and the show’s producers, constantly collecting “evidence” and picking enemies.

When the Salahis told our producers that they were invited to the White House for the state dinner honoring India, no one had reason to question them. One of the first scenes we’d shot with the Salahis was a polo match featuring the ambassador from India and a friend of theirs from the State Department. I’ve always thought that the unexpected is the single greatest advantage a docuseries holds over any scripted drama or comedy. The axiom “truth is stranger than fiction” reigns supreme at Bravo. But therein lies the rub: You can’t predict or prepare for the unknown. We had been filming the DC cast members for months by the time our crews followed a giddy Michaele and Tareq through their preparations for this gala evening. And we shot plenty that day: Michaele trying to figure out how to pin herself into her elegant red sari, Michaele looking for the invitation that may or may not have existed (was she acting?), then the two of them climbing into the limo and heading toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Since the production crew didn’t have credentials for the dinner, they left after filming the Salahis’ arrival at the White House gate. We only learned the following day—along with everyone else in America—of the alleged “gate crashing” incident. I was on vacation in Indonesia, perusing the
New York Post
online, when I noticed a blonde on the cover and idly thought, “Huh, she looks just like that woman we cast in DC.” Then I checked my e-mail, which was filled with frantic messages from Bravo:
Call if you get this!

Speculation that the Salahis had used the state dinner as a stunt to be cast on the show was rampant—and ridiculous. The series wasn’t being cast at the time the Salahis’ “invitation” “arrived,” it was being
wrapped
. The dinner happened in the final two episodes of a nine-episode series. But this was much more than a tabloid media firestorm. It was a federal case. Not figuratively, but again literally. It ignited a huge debate over national security, the competence of the Secret Service, and, to my great frustration, the ethics of reality TV. I eventually came to believe the Salahis’ situation could be likened to being told you might be on the list for a club, then showing up and winging it with the doorman to see if you’ll be let in. In this case the club was the White House and the doorman was the Social Office, who must’ve been enchanted by Michaele’s beautiful red sari. Whatever the reason for the slipup, they got in.

The press went after Bravo as hard as the couple; we were excoriated for “rewarding” the Salahis’ behavior by putting them on the show and making them more famous. During the months between the state dinner incident and the series debut in August 2010, I told anyone who would listen that being on this show isn’t always a reward—and that the verdict on that is up to the individuals who choose to be on and those who choose to watch. I found myself having to defend my position in private as well as in public. I just wanted everyone to wait and give it the chance it deserved. Anderson Cooper, who is a friend and a fan of the Housewives, told me that he considered the Salahis repugnant whores for attention, and he wasn’t giving them any of his. He wasn’t alone. My mom was utterly repulsed by the Salahis. “You have to cut them out, Andy, they’re HORRIBLE! Vile people!” she scolded. “The show is good, though!” I protested. This was the first time the public would have any significantly preformed opinion on any Housewives cast members before the show even premiered. And those preformed opinions were ugly.

We had set out to do a show about, among other things, what people in Washington will do to get closer to power, and in the Salahis we had an extreme example. We aired the show, and the other women forever resented the Salahis for turning it into their own private circus. When I heard reports, more than a year later, that Tareq had reported Michaele missing, my heart lurched. I worried that something terrible had happened between these two seemingly desperate souls. I had to laugh when it turned out she had merely run off into the “Open Arms” of the guitarist from everybody’s favorite eighties rock band, Journey. Now
that
would have made a great episode.

After the DC finale, we premiered
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
, a location I initially objected to because it seemed almost redundant—hadn’t we already done it with Orange County? Wrong again. It was a huge hit, and people loved seeing a show about really rich people who were really, really rich! Of course wealthy people had been on all our other series, but since the show is a reflection of reality, many did not stay wealthy. Overextension, downsizing, liens, loans—it all happened, in almost every city. The Beverly Hills women, though, lived in football-field-sized mansions. We had succeeded with our casting, too—the women all had real connections to one another, and did I mention that they were really, really rich? The world of the Beverly Hills Housewives was so fun and frothy and pink and fantasy-like that I thought we had a real-life
Dynasty
at last. That this show, of all the franchises, would turn so tragically dark surprised no one more than me. The ladies, as it turned out, were hiding a terrible secret.

When our producers at Evolution Media in Burbank started trying to cast various women in Beverly Hills, no one was interested at first. Finally, one woman wanted in, and she was our tipping point, giving us the biggest competition we’d ever seen to get on a Housewives show. Soon we had a line of Bentleys outside the production company and a lobby full of fur-wearers with similar faces (I’d later learn they all shared the same surgeons), as five hundred women tried to become Beverly Hills Housewives. For the first time, I started hearing from publicists and agents and potential Housewives themselves. We had established actresses wanting to get on, and even Sumner Redstone’s girlfriend at the time applied. The company put 122 women on tape, submitted 22 to Bravo, and then we all narrowed it down to 5.

When we told Lisa Vanderpump she was in the running, she gave us a taste of her shtick: “Hold on a minute. I’m having sex with my husband but I’m going to push him off so I can talk to you.” I saw in her the potential for a narrator, someone Joan Collinsesque to lay down the rules of Beverly Hills. (Indeed, her intro would later declare that she “made the rules in Beverly Hills.”) Lisa’s neighbor, Adrienne Maloof, couldn’t decide whether to do the show and asked executive producer Alex Baskin, “If you were me, would you do the show?” He replied, “No, and I’d be making a huge mistake.” Adrienne was in. Through Adrienne, we found Taylor Armstrong, whose daughter went to Adrienne’s kids’ school. The two used to meet for coffee after dropping off the kids. We put an offer out to the Richards sisters, Kim and Kyle, who had a competing offer from another channel to star in a docuseries with their sister Kathy Hilton. Over Thanksgiving break 2009, while we were dealing with the Salahi mess, Kim and Kyle were wrestling over whether to be Beverly Hills Housewives or 3 Sisters.

Just before production began, Kyle was looking through her address book to see if there was anyone else she knew who’d be perfect for the cast. She came across Camille Grammer’s name, not realizing she was helping to cast her eventual arch nemesis. Grammer seemed indifferent and nervous about the prospect, but she came in the next day and shot an interview with Evolution. The production company thought her husband would never let her do the show in a million years. Imagine their shock when Kelsey Grammer himself called the casting director, expressing his full support of his wife’s participation and saying that he would do whatever he could to make it happen. His wife was still on the fence when producers Douglas Ross and Baskin visited their Malibu compound.

“These guys seem like nice guys—they seem like we can trust them,” said Kelsey, briskly dismissing her concerns. In the meantime, Kelsey had enlisted Adrienne and Paul to get Camille to do the show. (In hindsight, it appears that Grammer may have been trying to keep his wife busy with the show while he moved to New York to have an affair.) His campaign worked, and we had six Housewives.

During that first season, the Armstrongs’ marriage seemed tense and very business-oriented. Taylor bragged about her husband’s wealth, saying, “He’s richer than Texas,” and threw a $60,000 birthday party for their five-year-old daughter. I should mention that if someone says they’re going to throw a $60,000 birthday party for their five-year-old, as Taylor did, we’re going to be there, for sure. But we never suggest that people go on shopping sprees, or spend money they may or may not have, or pretend to own a mansion that’s not theirs.

On the show, Russell appeared cold and distant to his wife, and he told producers that though he didn’t love how it was edited, he loved the show. His biggest complaint that season concerned a dinner that had been shot in Lisa’s wine cellar in which her friend Mohamed accused Russell of stealing $15 million from him. He was upset about this potentially airing, and to his delight the scene never made it into the show (not because of his complaints, mind you.) He boasted at the end of the season that his business was up “900 percent” since the show started airing, and he told producers at Evolution that he was interested in buying their company.

What I didn’t know was that by the end of Season 1, Taylor had already confided in her castmates about alleged physical abuse by Russell. It became kind of an open secret, and though I only found out after we’d wrapped, I can’t say that I was surprised. The whispers in the cast were that Taylor was on her way out of the marriage and would be before we shot more. By the time we rolled on Season 2, the women were having frank and difficult conversations with Taylor about her life with Russell, but they were mainly happening off-camera. Meanwhile, Russell sent Camille and the producers a letter threatening to sue anyone who said anything defamatory about him on the show. But at no time during production of that season did Russell ask to be taken off the show.

We’d planned to wrap that season with a party we’d shot at Lisa’s restaurant, Sur, where all of the friends were seeing Taylor for the first time since she’d left her husband. Days after that party, Lisa and Kyle were awakened at 6 a.m. by a phone call from TMZ chief Harvey Levin with the news that Russell Armstrong had been found dead, an apparent suicide. At that moment, I was on vacation (I always seem to be on vacation when bad things happen), but nonetheless on the phone with Bravo exec Christian Barcellos discussing a crisis with the Jersey Housewives when an e-mail popped up on my BlackBerry with the
TMZ.com
report that Russell Armstrong had hanged himself. I was stunned. Speechless. I could barely say the words to Christian, and immediately thought of Taylor, and especially of their daughter Kennedy. Next came thoughts about the position we were in. What should Bravo do? The suicide raised many questions that nobody ever even dreamed would come up. We had to figure out what we should do with a show in which Taylor and Russell’s story played a big, dark, and real part.

I spent the next several weeks pacing around with a phone to my ear, rewatching the first eleven episodes of the series, which was due to premiere in a month. The conversations—with Evolution, the women, our lawyers, our PR people—were exhaustive and deliberate. We had serious decisions to make that would affect a family already going through the most difficult time imaginable, and we were weighing matters of taste and protocol. Should we delay the show, or should it air at all? Should we keep Russell in? What do we do about this domestic abuse story line, which ran throughout the season? The producers fought to stay the course and keep the show on the air. They’d felt no one involved with the show had done anything wrong, and not to air it would imply otherwise. The producers were asking for the chance not only to tell a story they felt was important, but also to combat the many lies that they felt were going out unchallenged.

The media were—no surprise—having a field day, and they grabbed on to what I consider to be the easiest hook they could: that reality TV had killed Russell Armstrong. The man was in serious financial trouble, and his business associate killed himself within twenty-four hours of Armstrong’s passing, but according to HLN, I had blood on my hands. As we at Bravo internally debated about how to proceed, we said very little to the press other than the truth: that we were discussing all options relating to the show. I guess that was too boring to believe, because there was a massive amount of misinformation being reported and re-reported: that I was doing an hour-long interview with Taylor about the suicide, that we were filming a special suicide episode of the show, that we were or were not airing specific scenes involving Armstrong. Armstrong’s family spoke out, pinning the blame on Bravo, then saying he’d been murdered, and then indirectly implicating Lisa Vanderpump.