Whether you love them, hate them or live under a rock and don’t know even know who they are, Bravo’s series of “Housewives” reality shows are turning into a multi-state franchise with a host of personality plus women who bring their no-shrinking-violet tendencies to the forefront of the pop culture scene.
We had the chance to speak with one of the more well known housewives from New York City – Bethenny Frankel – while she was in town promoting her New York Times bestseller “Naturally Thin: Unleash Your Skinnygirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting”.
The self-proclaimed “health foodie” has taken the long route to find her niche in the world. She attended the National Gourmet Institute for Health & Culinary Arts in New York after a half-dozen careers that spanned everything from having a large scale event company in charge of the Grammys and Emmys and importing pashminas to working for film and television producer Jerry Bruckheimer and being a nanny to Paris Hilton.
But Bethenny’s passion for cooking has always been hovering somewhere in the background. Learning to cook from her mother starting at the age of four or five, she was already making breakfast dishes like scrambled eggs and French toast.
“I have always loved to cook, I was watching cooking shows instead of cartoon shows when I was kid. I was always frustrated because I could never catch all the directions or ingredients,” she recalled.
Describing herself as “kinda obsessed with food my whole life”, Bethenny finally decided at an unhappy point in her life after many vocations to attend culinary school. “We plan and God laughs. Nothing is a happy accident,” she explained of her journey with food. You just have to be able to look at the signs. You don’t know where your destiny is, you just have to know you are going forward and create big opportunities out of nothing.”
She credits her culinary school experience with more than just learning how to make a soufflé, it instilled confidence. “Cooking is about confidence. You learned confidence in cooking school because a lot of the time it’s about taking risks,” Bethenny explained. “Twelve people do the recipe and it comes out 12 different ways. It (culinary school) also gives you the courage to see how to fix something. It taught me that I have the ability to be a “fixologist” and make low calorie drinks and take mac and cheese and make it low fat and low calories.”
Evidentially it also gives you the confidence and courage to turn your hobby into a full-blown branding bonanza that includes your own line of baked goods, diet book, spokesperson for Pepperidge Farm, and a new cookbook of Skinnygirl recipes due out in January 2010.
“It was such a hobby move,” Bethenny explained of shifting her love of cooking from a part-time passion into her full-time profession. “It’s a great idea to make money off something that you love, like a hobby.”
But it wasn’t just her love of cooking that allowed brand Bethenny to evolve, she also keenly found the right opportunities to move herself forward. “The shift was in knowing there was a niche. The whole celebrity chef thing was one that just came in the last 10 years. Health became a shift and I saw that as a future,” she explained. “Everyone thinks that health has to be expensive but I wanted to democratize it and make it more accessible.”
She dubbed herself a Natural Foods Chef and created bethennybakes, a line of low fat, wheat, egg and dairy free baked goods. But it wasn’t an easy path to entrepreneurialism.
Bethany Frankel poses with cast mates from hit reality tv series “The Real Housewives of New York City”
It was a hobby in school and became a career right away. It was never easy. I made so many expensive errors and learned so much by way of trial by error,” she revealed. “I didn’t even have a business plan. I have so much information from past mistakes that I don’t make expensive mistakes now.”
As for her New York Times bestseller “Naturally Thin”, she explains, “The book was a result of a lifetime of obsessive dieting. I was like, wow, I have the key and the answer for everyone to become thin. It was this thing I had to do, I had to get it out of me.”
In her book, Bethenny admits she “spent 20 years suffering though diet hell before I finally figured out that being naturally thin has nothing to do with having a fast metabolism or certain genetics or anything else you can’t control.”
She also revealed that “today, I’m a thirty-something woman living in New York City, and I no longer diet. I eat pretty much whatever I want to eat. And for the first time in my life, my weight is completely and surprisingly consistent.”
Her book is filled with common sense advice that is easy to follow and even easier to feel good about implementing. Definitely not an advocate of diets, she elaborates on the 10 rules she has created for becoming naturally thin. With chapters like “Your Diet is a Bank Account” and “Cancel Your Membership in the Clean Plate Club” she teaches you how to splurge during some meals and save during others without ever depriving yourself.
All of this sweet success and as of just two years ago, the 38-year-old didn’t even have money to pay her rent. “I couldn’t even pay for a taxi to go to dinner,” she recalled. But then opportunity came knocking in the form of “The Real Housewives of NYC” and surprisingly she quickly dismissed it.
“When asked to do this show, I immediately turned down the opportunity. I was terrified it would ruin my life. I had done a reality show before and so thought it would mess up everything I had going,” she offered.
In 2005 Bethenny was the runner-up on “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart”. “It (the show) was a complete failure, I was able to take it like a dry sponge and squeeze the littlest bit out it and make the most of it” by parlaying her time on the show into providing content for the “Today” show.
Because of her squeamishness about being a part of an unknown reality show and the fact that she had just signed on as a spokesperson for Pepperidge Farm, she had big reservations about doing the “Real Housewives” show. “Pepperidge Farm Baked Naturals was the biggest deal of my life. I had a real brand to protect and we didn’t know if this show was going to be a train wreck,” she explained. “Two months later, I was sitting in the airport and decided since it was Bravo doing it, and they do quality stuff, I should do it. I just had a gut instinct. It was such a gamble. All of it turned out to be really incredible.”
Doing the “Real Housewives” has not only made Bethenny a brand in the world of healthy food, it has also allowed her to be herself. “I love that it shows everyone exactly who I am. I have been able to handle it better this year. I was single and so it was a lot of easier.”
But she doesn’t always enjoy all the drama of the show. “It’s like being in high school, constant drama. I have no interest in going back to high school,” she explained in her signature deadpan way.
As for her instant success with a big helping of stardom, a lot of hard work and a pinch of luck, she does not take any of it for granted. “It’s so surreal. Every time you walk out the door you forget everybody knows who you are. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be grateful, but it has been great.”
