The Real Housewives of New York City

The Real Housewives of New York City
Genre	Reality Show
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	10
Production
Production location	New York City The Hamptons Saint Barths
Running time	approx. 44 minutes (excluding commercials)
Original release
Network	Bravo network
Release	January 22 2008 – present

The Real Housewives of New York City is a reality television program on the Bravo network. It is the spin-off series from The Real Housewives of Orange County.

The show's first season premiered on March 4, 2008. The five housewives are Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps, Alex McCord, Ramona Singer, and Jill Zarin.

The series was renewed for a second season on April 15, 2008.

Cast

Bethenny Frankel

Frankel is a socialite in her 30's with a burgeoning career as a natural foods chef. She is a celebrity chef who owns her own company, Bethenny Bakes, has a health column in Hamptons Magazine, is a TV spokesperson for Health Magazine and for Pepperidge Farms new line of healthy foods, and was the runner-up on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. She starred in the movie Hollywood Hills 90028.

LuAnn de Lesseps

LuAnn de Lesseps is a trained nurse and a member of the Algonquin tribe of Connecticut[1]. She has two children, Victoria (13), and Noel (11) with her husband, Count deLesseps(descendant of Ferdinand de Lesseps) . She is the Count's fourth wife. Lesseps also teaches etiquette on morning television shows and has a local cable show on WVVH-TV in the Hamptons called "The Countess Report."

Alex McCord

McCord is an extremely busy woman with a career, two children (Francois & Johan), a husband (Simon van Kempen), and an enviable social calendar. Her children take music, art, swimming and French classes in their free time, and their Au pair speaks French to them, in hopes the kids will be bilingual. Francois attends a public school in Brooklyn. McCord works in visual merchandising for a high profile fashion company. McCord was born in Washington DC and has lived in Washington DC; St Thomas USVI; Dallas, TX; Fort Scott, KS; Chicago, IL; and Milan, Italy. She has lived in New York City since 1996 and currently resides in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. After the show went to air, nude of McCord were released on various internet sites. McCord explained some of the photos on her Bravo TV Blog as follows: "Having been back in the modeling world at the time, shooting photos is a very normal thing to do, and I wanted to celebrate getting back into shape and also document the changes in my body. I wanted to make sure I had photos of the slightly loose belly, the linea nigra, the lush hair and of course the extra up on top. I did several photo shoots with photographers I knew through modeling, and am pleased with all of them."

Ramona Singer

Singer is an entrepreneur. She owns her own business, R.M.S. Fashions, a jewelry line, truefaithjewelry.com, a clothing line "True Faith," and is developing a skin care line as well. She and her husband Mario, a third generation jeweler, and their 13-year-old daughter Avery, live in a four-bedroom condo in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. They also have a second home in Southampton directly on the water. Ramona is an avid tennis player who loves to entertain.

Jill Zarin

Jill Zarin is married to Bobby Zarin, a successful entrepreneur, and together they operate Zarin Fabrics and Home Furnishings. She is also involved in numerous charities. Zarin juggles her career with being a wife and a mother to her daughter Allyson and her stepchildren David, Jennifer and Jonathan.

New York City based interior designer, Rona Landman, is Rumored to be shooting scenes for at least one episode of the upcoming season.

External links

• Bravo Official Site

Housewives' official web sites

• Alex McCord & McCord/ van Kempen Family Site
• Bethenny Frankel
• Jill Zarin
• LuAnn de lesseps
• Ramona Singer