The 'Real Housewives of Orange County' alum publicly declares that her fellow ex-Bravolebrity's accusation of Bravo forcing intoxication on its stars is different from what she experienced.
- Sep 28, 2023
AceShowbiz - Kelly Dodd has called out Bethenny Frankel over the latter's confusing allegation leveled at Bravo. After her fellow former Bravolebrity accused Bravo of forcing intoxication on their stars, the former cast member of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" revealed the truth about her experience working with the network and streamer.
The 48-year-old former reality TV star publicly declared that she disagreed with Bethenny's claim suggesting that Bravo forced its stars to consume alcohol. When making an appearance in the Monday, September 25 episode of "Miss Understood with Rachel Uchitel" podcast, she said, "I don't understand that thing that Bethenny is doing."
On the reason why, Kelly explained, "I can tell you right now, they never told me to say anything. They never told me to drink. They never told me what to do. We were already drinkers, to begin with, so they provided the alcohol for us, but they never said, 'Hey, get drunk. Start drinking.' I never experienced that in my life. I don't understand."
During the chat, Kelly, who was fired from "The Real Housewives of Orange County" back in 2021 after she expressed her conservative views during the filming of season 15 in 2020, stated that she "could be a total disgruntled employee" and could relate to Bethenny. However, she found the 52-year-old star's allegation to be confusing and contrastive to what she experienced.
Kelly came to Bravo's defense more than one month after it was reported that Bethenny, through her lawyers, accused the network of mistreating its stars by forcing intoxication among other "unlawful acts." On August 14, her attorneys, including Bryan Freedman, sent a letter to NBCUniversal's General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Comcast Corporation Kimberley Harris.
In the letter, which was obtained by TMZ, Bryan and his team of lawyers asked a number of companies, namely NBC, Bravo Media, E! and CNBC, to release their significant number of casts and crew members from a contract which keeps them silent on "unlawful acts in the workplace." The alleged "unlawful" conducts consisted of "racism, sexism, sexual violence, revenge porn, child labor violations, forced intoxication, and psychological, emotional and physical abuse."
Prior to the legal letter, Bethenny herself claimed that networks and streamers have been exploiting their reality stars. "Just because you can, as a streamer or a network, play the show as much as you want, doesn't mean you should. Meaning, yes, they're going to get as much milk out of the cows as they could because it's legal," she told Variety on July 19.
