They were besties until everything went pear-shaped. Bethenny Frankel and Jill Zarin were close friends on and off screen while filming the early season of The Real Housewives of New York, but then — they had a massive falling out.
More than ten years later, they have (mostly) settled their dispute and found peace. On a recent episode of Frankel’s podcast ReWives, the two former friends hashed out their grievances against one another and even put some of them to rest.
The podcast chat between Frankel and Zarin was the very first time in 13 years that the two women were alone together in the same space. Frankel credits her fiancé, Paul Bernon, with the reunion, saying he suggested that the two women watch the RHONY reboot together and chat about it.
Initially hesitant to agree to the podcast reunion, Zarin said her daughter convinced her to do it. She explained, “Maybe be cause I’m medicated now, and I wasn’t 13 years ago – in a good way. I have anxiety.”
Referencing her meme-worthy saying that she uttered on one particularly fraught RHONY episode, the 52-year-old Frankel stated on her podcast, “We’re mentioning it all.”
The long-overdue conversation
In the first few years of RHONY being filmed, Frankel and Zarin, 59, were tighter than a new jar of skin cream. But in season three, they argued bitterly after Frankel claimed that Zarin was behaving jealously over her success. Frankel’s success included growing her food & drink lifestyle brand Skinnygirl and landing her spin-off show, Bethenny Ever After.
Zarin fought back by stating that Frankel was not supportive when her husband, Bobby Zarin, struggled to fight cancer. He later lost his battle and died in January 2018.
Zarin addressed the jealousy accusations by insisting that she was not jealous of Frankel’s success, but she did want to feel included in that success. She told Frankel on the podcast, “[I did not] resent your success; what I resented was that you didn’t want to share anything with me. I was happy for you,” Zarin went on. “[I had] FOMO for sure. I could write a book about FOMO.”
Frankel took her to task on that statement and stated that Frankel talked to Bravo executives about her spin-off show “in a way that was problematic.”
Zarin countered by bringing up a Today Show appearance on which Frankel said that she became a massive success on Real Housewives of New York after a producer discovered her. At the same time, Zarin asserted that she was the one that brought Frankel on the show by arranging for her to meet network executives.
Accusations surround a heartbreaking death
Another point of contention was whether Zarin knew about Bravo cameras being present at her husband’s funeral to record Frankel showing up to pay her respects. Zarin revealed that she felt taken advantage of and only found out that Bravo cameras were there when the episode aired.
Frankel insisted that she thought Zarin knew about the cameras:
“What you’re saying is I [blanking] ambushed a funeral for reality television,” Bethenny said. “That’s disgusting.”
Being on a reality series together made their friendship more complicated. This was evident when Zarin stated that it wasn’t true that Bravo executive Andy Cohen told her to fix her friendship with Frankel. “I don’t remember him ever saying to me until it was too late,” Zarin claimed, “Anyway, the point is that I definitely made mistakes. And I wanted to be there for you when you got pregnant and all that stuff, and you just wouldn’t let me in. Why didn’t you want to let me back in?”
Frankel responded that she worried that any genuine act of friendship between the two had become tainted by the show and was forced into becoming a storyline. Frankel complained, “Every time I did something, it became public. I sent a freaking gift basket for Bobby, it became public. Everything that happened, you then would later leak if you didn’t get the result you wanted, like, if the next week we weren’t friends.”
While the two former co-stars did not agree on every point of their conflict, they did appear to put the painful emotions about their failed friendship to rest.
Frankel is busy with her business and podcast, and Zarin has been asked about joining the Housewives reboot. She declined and recently said, “The Housewives for me has come and passed. I loved it when I did it. I’m aged out, and now there’s a new crop.”