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Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin nearly divorced over her Bravolebrity status.
It has been a hot minute since Rinna was part of the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
No matter the circumstances of her RHOBH exit, she was a key component in some of the series’ most memorable moments.
It almost didn’t happen at all. She almost wasn’t a Housewife. Or, alternatively, she almost wasn’t a wife.
During a recent appearance on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast, Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin spoke of her erstwhile career on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
It turns out that, early on, Hamlin didn’t think much of the nascent Bravo franchise. He actually threatened to divorce Rinna if she took the gig.
However, Rinna detailed how she saw the potential in reality television. Even when she signed up, reality stars were able to monetize their fame by promoting their businesses and careers. She wanted to do the same.
“I knew that reality was really the place that was starting to happen,” Lisa Rinna recalled. “I was like, hmm this is interesting.”
She continued: “And then I started to see what the girls were doing on Housewives and how they were benefiting from it with their brands. And I thought, oh maybe this is a good idea.”
Instead of bringing it up directly, Rinna let producers come to her. “So I kind of floated the idea. They picked it up. They came to me and said, ‘Do you want to do the show?’”
Harry Hamlin threatened to divorce Lisa Rinna if she joined ‘RHOBH’
“I went to Harry and said, ‘I think this might be a good idea. What do you think?’” Lisa Rinna narrated “He goes, ‘Absolutely not. I will divorce you if you do that show.’”
Harry Hamlin didn’t deny it. “I did say that. I said I have my divorce lawyer on speed dial, which I do.” However, he soon changed his tune.
When Lisa Rinna brought up Bethenny Frankel’s brand success at the time, he began to warm to the idea.
“All I said was, ‘Okay, all I want you to do is just check out this person [Bethenny] and see what her business is like … [Harry and I] had a QVC business at the time,” Rinna clarified.
“Three days later, he comes back in the room and says, ‘Well I’ve been thinking…’” she described triumphantly.
Hamlin then chimed in: “I said, ‘If Bethenny Frankel can build a business like that, we can too. Maybe this is the way to do it.’”
However, ‘RHOBH’ didn’t end up testing their marriage
Speaking to The Daily Mail, Harry Hamlin spoke more about his relationship with Lisa Rinna.
“We’ve always had a great relationship, it wasn’t even tested during the Housewives thing,” he confirmed.
Notably, some Bravo fans blame the “Housewives curse” for the end of marriages. While sometimes, the film schedules or simply seeing their marriage from an external POV can hasten a union’s end, sometimes it’s just a coincidence.
Like RHOBH viewers in the past, Hamlin joked about Rinna’s ever-shifting style, quipping that he “gets a new wife every day” between her wigs and outfits.
“I recently did a show on Andy Cohen’s WWHL, and I did it with Kyle Richards, and I asked Kyle, I said, ‘So how many of the Housewives are still housewives?’” he recalled.
According to Harry Hamlin, Kyle had to think on it before realizing that very few of the current cast are traditional housewives.
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