It was about this time last year when Bravo shocked The Real Housewives of New York City viewers by getting rid of half of their cast in an attempt to put a new spin on the franchise. Last night, the most vocal of the fired wives, Jill Zarin, returned to Watch What Happens Live for an honest (if somewhat delusional) chat with Andy Cohen.
Jill started things by outright asking Andy why she was fired. Although he asserted that this was a topic that they have been over many times, Andy willingly obliged. He said that they were looking to shake the show up after a toxic season, and if they brought everyone back, the relationships were unlikely to change at that point.
“For me, it felt like a death,” Jill told Andy about how it felt when she first learned she was fired. “It felt like my funeral. I was heartbroken. I felt like you were my parents and that I felt like when it was Bethenny/Jill, I feel like you picked favorites; I always did. It’s true, I am sensitive, I am human.”
Not only does Jill seem to still be holding a grudge for being let go, but she faults Bravo for the downfall in her friendship with Bethenny Frankel, and her failure in relation to Bethenny’s success.
“You picked sides. You gave her her own show,” Jill told Andy. “I really thought Bethenny and I would make up. I thought Bethenny and I were really like sisters and I really miscalculated our friendship. Because we weren’t like sisters. It was a business relationship for her. Real friends have fights, they fight and they make up. Bethenny didn’t want to [make up] because she didn’t want me to be on her show.”
Jill claimed to Andy in one breath that she doesn’t keep track of the new season of the show, and in the next she seemed to know an awful lot about the new housewives and how they weren’t measuring up to her.
“I feel like if you’re going to bring these characters into my home and you want me to like them and root for them, who the hell are they? I feel that as a viewer, you knew who I was, you knew my mom, you knew my husband, you knew my daughter,” Jill said, before going on a tangent diatribe about how new housewife Heather Thomson isn’t even Jewish. “You can’t replace me. You could try to replace me, but you know you can’t replace me.”
When Andy asked why Jill just couldn’t move on with her life and stop trying to milk every second out of her five minutes, Jill claimed that leaving the show has made her even more popular.
“I left the show, but the show didn’t leave me. The show’s all over the world. It’s just getting started. I get 50 to 100 e-mails a day. I have over a million people following me on social media, more than all of the other Real Housewives of New York City combined.”
Although it seems that Bravo has already begun to deliberate on casting decisions for season 6, a source at the network told Wetpaint that it is unlikely that Jill will be considered for a return. As for the rest of the cast, who is returning for another season and who will be fired is still a mystery.
(Image and videos courtesy of Bravo)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
