Bethenny Frankel Has Met Her Match With Eboni K. Williams

By Emma Chance | TV | November 1, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | TV | November 1, 2023 |

Eboni K. Williams was Bravo’s big swing at diversity on the now infamous season 13 of Real Housewives of New York City. A lawyer and television and radio host, she was brought on as the token Black woman in a group of old, problematic white socialites. She detailed her experience and the experience of Black crew members while filming the show in Monday’s Vanity Fair Housewives exposé, which included blatant racism from Ramona Singer, whom Williams lamented is still employed at Bravo (though it just broke that she was pulled from BravoCon, and she’s been suspiciously quiet on Instagram, so maybe there’s still hope?), and little to no intervention from producers of the show.

I was disappointed that she spoke on the record for this piece because it was essentially a takedown of Andy Cohen by Bethenny Frankel. Apart from the tragic details of Leah McSweeney’s experience in addition to Williams’s, the article is a Frankel puff piece written by an admitted fan. I worry that their very real stories are getting lost behind Frankel’s narcissism. I want Eboni to have her own article, where her photo and story aren’t buried at the bottom of the page.

However, Williams might be savvy enough to pull a trojan horse and take Bethenny down once and for all from within. When asked if she would join Frankel in her “organizing,”—which I winced at because there’s no earnest collective action happening unless that action is to cause Frankel’s social media engagement numbers to soar—she answered:

“Fuck Bethenny Frankel. You think I’m going to let some white girl speak for me with my experience with a multibillion-dollar corporation?”

To further prove how Williams is lost in the piece, that delicious insult was given parenthetically to end a larger paragraph in which Frankel was quoted saying she was “part of the machine” and that this “mission” she’s on is her “penance.”

Frankle responded to Williams by posting a screenshot of a message Williams sent to her in 2020 thanking her for using her platform to create change.

Okay? As if that proves anything? I think situations have changed since 2020, babe!

Williams clapped back by posting a similar screenshot but scrolled down to reveal that Frankel messaged her earlier in the week, before the article came out, asking to talk. She’d probably gotten word that Williams hadn’t kissed the ring and wanted to invite her on her podcast to talk about it or something.

It’s unfortunate that Eboni had to lend her name to Bethenny’s headline, but the ends justify the means if the message is “Fuck Bethenny Frankel.” If more people tell her to fuck off, maybe she finally will.