First Out Queer Housewife For The Real Housewives Of New York

The Real Housewives of New York has its first out queer housewife. The cast of its upcoming reboot of Real Housewives of New York was unveiled, including famed designer Jenna Lyons. Lyons, who served as president and executive creative director of J. Crew and who later starred in the HBO Max reality series Stylish With Jenna Lyons, is queer, making her only the second openly gay Housewife to be cast in franchise history, according to Them.

Famously, Lyons was outed when the New York Post published an article in 2011 reporting that she was dating a woman weeks after announcing her divorce from ex-husband Vincent Mazeau.

“The part that was the most harmful was not necessarily about me, but the people around me. I would have wanted to have a more elegant, certainly more private approach,” Lyons said in an interview in 2021. “I still don’t know: Am I gay, am I bi? I don’t know if it really matters.”

She’s making history as the first openly queer housewife in New York City, and the second overall since the franchise began in 2006. Last year, Real Housewives of Miami star Julia Lemigova and her wife, Russian tennis star Martina Navratilova, made history as the first same-sex couple to be featured on a Real Housewives show.

Having more LGBTQ+ representation in the Housewives franchise is an undeniable win. Although the franchise benefits from a largely queer audience, it has sometimes handled its queer storylines without much grace. Real Housewives of Orange County's Braunwyn Windham-Burke was subject to homophobic remarks from her castmates after she came out as lesbian in season 15.

In 2020, The Daily Beast’s Kyndall Cunningham argued that Real Housewives has a "gay panic problem," pointing to a sensationalized Real Housewives of Beverly Hills storyline in which ex-Housewife Brandi Glanville accused Denise Richards of having an affair with her.

According to Bravo, the newest installment of RHONY will follow “seven dynamic women who run in the same social circles, thriving in one of the most diverse and electric cities in the world.”

Lyons’ new cast members include Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Dana Lichy, Lizzy Savetsky, Jessel Taank, and Brynn Whitfield. The series is set to debut in 2023.

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