After the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills panel nearly tore last year’s BravoCon apart, with audience members bum-rushing the lines as soon as the panel opened and leaving the room so packed that people were left sitting on the floor, it was going to be interesting to see if the 2023 RHOBH panel could spark the same fervor. After all, the departure of uber-divisive cast member Lisa Rinna meant that there likely wouldn’t be anyone for the audience to boo. But with what looks to be an exciting season ahead of them, the cast of Bravo’s glitziest franchise had no shortage of things to discuss, especially when it came to old Housewives and long marriages.
What can only be described as a deluge of Bravo fans poured into the Gold Stage room at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas on Sunday, ready to see what might unfold when the cast members of RHOBH took the stage. And then they kept waiting…and waited a little bit longer. The “Livin’ in Beverly Hills” panel was one of the few at BravoCon 2023—if not the only one—to start late. Leave it to the women of the 90210 to make sure every last thread is in place before they let their adoring public see them.
When they did finally emerge 10 minutes after the panel’s scheduled start, moderator Zuri Hall wasted no more time getting into the topics that fans were waiting to hear all about, namely O.G. Housewife Kyle Richards’ rocky marriage to husband Mauricio Umansky and the return of former RHOBH Housewife Denise Richards, who makes a handful of cameos in the currently airing Season 13.
Hall kicked off the panel by asking each Housewife how they’d describe Season 13 in one word. Cast member Erika Jayne picked “better,” referring to her tumultuous Season 12, prompting Richards to add her own descriptor: “worse.”
“Kyle, you’ve been here for 13 seasons at this point,” Hall said after Richards’ comment. “Compared to the last 12 seasons, how much more difficult was this one, and why specifically? Is it that you’re being more vulnerable, or that you’ve had to make a conscious decision to share it?”
“It’s that it was sort of new for me what [me and my husband] were going through,” Richards began. “We were starting the show and we still live under the same roof. I just didn’t know how to manage that. And I also am someone who can’t pretend, I don’t have a very good poker face. So in a lot of those scenes with my husband, you can see I’m not thrilled, or happy, or upset about something. I wasn’t there to throw anybody under the bus or stir up trouble. That was difficult, I told the [cast] in the beginning that we were having a hard time, and I was just trying to figure it out myself.
Hall took this opportunity to inquire one degree further.
“You and Mauricio have been such a beloved couple of the Bravoverse for so many years now. Just to check in, so much as you’re comfortable sharing, how do you all stand right now? How is the energy?”
“Well, you know, we love each other very much,” Richards said. “We have a very strong family unit. My three girls still live at home, so it’s still like, ‘Who’s going to be home for dinner tonight?’ on the family chat. He was busy filming Dancing with the Stars, so he wasn’t around as much. But we’re just trying to figure it out. We know that we love each other, and, um—”
Richards then began to cry, being comforted by Jayne and their fellow costar Dorit Kemsley. But the panel wasn’t all doom and gloom. There were some tidbits of additional details about the other Richards—Denise Richards—and her return to the series.
“What plot twists didn’t you see coming when these ladies came back on the scene,” Hall asked, referring to Richards and RHOA alum Cynthia Bailey popping up later in Season 13.
“Denise showed up and she had some unfinished business, apparently,” Garcelle Beauvais began. “With the wrong person!” Jayne added.
“She couldn’t figure out what the unfinished business was for a while,” Kemsley offered, prompting Kyle Richards to say that Denise was not “her most articulate.”
“Kyle had a THC-infused dinner party, and Denise came and very clearly tried to pick a fight with me,” Jayne continued. “She kept saying things like, ‘Go watch the show, you know what you did.’”
“At one point she said, “Roll back the tape!’” Richards said, laughing. “I was like, ‘We can’t watch the show right now…’”
Jayne then added that Denise popped up again at a Taco Tuesday dinner held by cast member Crystal Kung Minkoff, where Jayne decided to “give it to her.” That scene from a future episode is one of the most anticipated in Season 13, with fans online shocked by Denise looking Jayne square in the eye and saying, “You are one evil woman.”
Apparently, not even the ever-clearheaded Cynthia Bailey could remedy the situation. “Cynthia was like, ‘Is there an example you could give?’” Jayne said, wrapping up the conversation while the audience giggled along.
Given that every last seat in the Gold Stage room was filled, audiences are here for the tears as much as they are for the fights. I guess that they know the same thing that I do: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is Bravo’s darkest franchise. And maybe that’s why it keeps so many people coming back to fill their BravoCon panel year after year.
