Problem drinking isn’t the only problem. That was immediately clear to Williams, a lawyer and TV host who, in 2021, became the first Black cast member on RHONY. (Many other cities had featured Black Housewives, though casts at that point were largely segregated by race; Beverly Hills, New York, Dallas, New Jersey, and Orange County were mostly white; Atlanta and Potomac mostly Black.) A virtual education session before filming season 13 covered topics including “Black Women” (“How Black women are treated in larger society and the Black community”), “Microaggressions” (“What are they? How do you recognize them?”), “Lexicon” (“Appropriate vs. Harmful/Offensive language”), and “Missteps” (“What to do when you say something offensive? How do you move forward in that relationship?”). Williams, McSweeney, Morgan, Singer, and de Lesseps were on the call, as well as an NBCUniversal communications executive, a Bravo publicist, and two representatives from a racial justice organization. Williams had never previously met Morgan or Singer. Before the one-hour session officially began, according to McSweeney and Williams, Morgan commented on the natural hair of the Black woman leading the session.
Williams, 40, interpreted the meeting as a “cover your ass” move—she says it mostly focused on the kinds of things cast members should avoid saying, like the racist trope that Black fathers are not present for their children. “What if they don’t have a father? Why can’t I say that?” Singer said during the meeting, according to Williams. “Most of them don’t.” The RHONY publicist, who is also Black, told Singer that she has a father, but Singer said she’d read a study that confirmed that most Black children do not. McSweeney corroborates Williams’s account. “The training included ‘open dialogue,’ ” Singer said to VF. “In that spirit, I asked a question about a statistic I had read about single-parent households, where children with single-parent households were statistically less likely to succeed than two-parent households.”
Later, while filming a scene that did air, de Lesseps and Singer expressed on camera their squeamishness around words such as dick, which they attributed to their backgrounds as “churchgoing” and “conservative.” Williams said that she had no discomfort with sexual language, noting she was the most educated person at the table, with a BA and a JD. De Lesseps, who is a high school graduate and licensed nurse, said, “I don’t like the way you talk.” When Singer also got upset, Williams said, “Your white fragility is killing me right now,” then had to explain the term.
De Lesseps called Williams an “angry woman,” which Williams understood implicitly: an angry Black woman. “I never referred to your color,” de Lesseps said. Williams left, Singer stayed behind. The scene that viewers saw ended there. But the emotional momentum continued. One of the people who remained told Vanity Fair, “Ramona slammed her hands on the table. She goes, ‘This is why we didn’t need Black people on the show…. This is gonna ruin our show.’ ” (Singer emailed VF this “absolutely” did not happen. “In fact, I supported adding diverse cast members well before before [sic] Eboni was added.”)
The hot sheet went out several days later to a group that included Cohen and other NBCU executives. It did not note, however, that Singer allegedly said the show didn’t need Black people. On October 24, 2020, Cohen responded via email, “These are incredible reads and will be amazing episodes. The fact that this particular journey through white fragility ends with Ramona DM’ing Bryan Cranston is next level.”
That season, Singer also allegedly told a Black woman staffer, “There’s so many of you guys here now, please don’t change your hair as I’m not gonna be able to remember anybody’s names.” Singer says this was the kind of thing she commonly did: “It was a [sic] strictly a commentary on my inability to remember names. […] As an example, just last week I saw a photo with me and Travis Kelce from 2016 on Watch What Happens Live and I thought he was Jax Taylor,” she emailed Vanity Fair, referring to a Vanderpump Rules cast member. According to two people familiar with production, Singer exclaimed, “There’s so many Black chicks!” (Singer denies saying this, though footage that aired in the season shows her using the phrase “Black chicks.”)
Darian Edmondson (Herrington before she married) was a senior producer on season 13, her first Bravo production. “No one ever said officially why I was hired, but Eboni was the first Black talent that was brought on for New York,” Edmondson told Vanity Fair. “I think that they were specifically looking for a Black female producer.”
A source involved with production says new producers are typically introduced to the cast, but that didn’t happen with the new Black hires on RHONY. “If the cast is not being told from the executives, ‘These people are here to do this X job,’ ” that person said, “the cast is gonna make up their minds who they talk to and who they don’t talk to.”
Edmondson says she wasn’t able to produce Morgan, de Lesseps, or Singer—they simply didn’t respond to her texts or calls. So it seemed unusual when Singer spoke to her after a scene filmed on November 6, 2020, in Singer’s home. Here is how the hot sheet described the conversation:
Ramona says she doesn’t want to talk about race, religion or creed…Ramona tries to change the subject again, asking about who Eboni is dating. She asks Eboni if the guy is black, white, or what? Eboni says she thought Ramona didn’t want to talk about color. Ramona says, “Now I have to watch what I’m saying to you! I feel like whatever I say is wrong!”
