Each installment of the franchise documents the personal and professional lives of a group of affluent women residing in a certain city or geopolitical region.
The show was inspired by scripted soap operas including Desperate Housewives and Peyton Place, and would document the lives of five to eight upper-class women who "lead glamorous lives in a picturesque Southern California gated community where the average home has a $1.6 million price tag and residents include CEOs and retired professional athletes.
[2] The original cast consisted of Kimberly Bryant, Jo De La Rosa, Vicki Gunvalson, Jeana Keough and Lauri Waring.
[5] The original cast consisted of Bethenny Frankel, Luann de Lesseps, Alex McCord, Ramona Singer and Jill Zarin.
[7] The original cast consisted of NeNe Leakes, DeShawn Snow, Shereé Whitfield, Lisa Wu and Kim Zolciak.
[11] The cast consisted of Mary Amons, Lynda Erkiletian, Cat Ommanney, Michaele Salahi and Stacie Scott Turner.
[16] The original cast consisted of Lea Black, Adriana de Moura, Alexia Echevarria, Marysol Patton, Larsa Pippen and Cristy Rice.
The rebooted cast consisted of Guerdy Abraira, Lisa Hochstein, Julia Lemigova, Nicole Martin, Alexia Nepola née Echevarria and Larsa Pippen.
[19] The original cast consisted of Gizelle Bryant, Ashley Darby, Robyn Dixon, Karen Huger, Charrisse Jackson-Jordan and Katie Rost.
[21] The original cast consisted of Cary Deuber, Tiffany Hendra, Stephanie Hollman, LeeAnne Locken and Brandi Redmond.
[24] The original cast consisted of Lisa Barlow, Mary Cosby, Heather Gay, Meredith Marks, Whitney Rose and Jen Shah.
When Adrienne Maloof failed to show up for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season three reunion in 2013, a precedent was set where, with the exception of certain circumstances such as attending an alcohol rehabilitation facility, the Housewife's employment as a cast member on the program is terminated if she is a no-show.
[80] Housewives to skip the reunion and not return to the series in the next season include Maloof, Mary Cosby (Salt Lake City), and Lisa Vanderpump (Beverly Hills).
In addition to answering questions, the Housewives are given the chance to look back on video clips of events from the season, with their reactions shown to the audience via picture-in-picture.
The first show to debut such a segment was The Real Housewives of Orange County in 2010, and many production companies now consider spouse participation to be standard fare on reunion day.
[90] A notable provision of housewives' contracts is the so-called "Bethenny clause", which states that Bravo receives 10% of the sale price of any business a cast member starts while on the show, provided that it sells for more than 1 million dollars.
[90] Like many reality television shows, the Real Housewives franchise makes use of confessional interviews, in which scenes are interspersed with "talking head" commentary from the cast members.
[93] Each cast member typically has three different confessional looks for a season, with some franchises adopting up to seven, which may need to be reproduced in multiple interview sessions for the sake of continuity.
[94] Later in December 2016, during an interview with Harry Connick Jr., Cohen stated that they look for cities with strong personalities, and agreed that New Orleans fits that criterion.
[95][96] Cities where Cohen and other producers began the casting process but ultimately decided not to create a series include Chicago, Greenwich, Houston and San Francisco.
[97] Feminist leader Gloria Steinem has vociferously criticized the Real Housewives franchise for "presenting women as rich, pampered, dependent and hateful towards each other.
[100] The franchise is often analyzed through a lens of feminist political economy, and how the show "creates rich women as objects of cultural derision, well-heeled jesters in a populist court.
"[101] In October 2019, The New York Times ran an article criticizing how the casts of the different Real Housewives installments appear "segregated" by skin color.
[102] Author Tracie Egan Morrissey pointed to Potomac and Atlanta for their almost entirely African American casts, while the other iterations, such as Beverly Hills, Orange County, Dallas, New York, and New Jersey, are overwhelmingly white and have featured few women of color.
Beverly Hills, with the exception of season four’s Joyce Giraud, featured "a racially homogeneous cast throughout its run", until the addition of Garcelle Beauvais in 2019[102] and Crystal Kung-Minkoff in 2021.
The groups asked the producers to reveal the financial role of the UAE in the series' production, run a disclaimer, and publicly cite past human rights abuses committed by the emirate.
[104][105] In January 2024, former The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Caroline Manzo filed a lawsuit against Bravo which alleged that the network and its affiliated companies—Forest Productions, Warner Bros. Entertainment, NBCUniversal Media, Shed Media and Peacock TV— would "regularly ply the Real Housewives cast with alcohol, cause them to become severely intoxicated, and then direct, encourage and/or allow them to sexually harass other cast members because that is good for ratings.
"[106][107][108] The lawsuit was filed a year after it was reported Brandi Glanville gave Manzo "unwanted kisses" while they participated in season 5 of The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip.
[109][107] The lawsuit also accused Bravo of knowing that Glanville, who was also previously a cast member of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, had a history of sexual misconduct, but hired her anyway for good ratings.
[107][108] The first four installments entered weekday broadcast syndication in the majority of United States markets on September 13, 2010, with episodes of The Real Housewives of Orange County.