A House Divided

Amid calls for a union, star-vs.-star showdowns, and lots and lots of drinking, some Real Housewives are facing their demons

THE HOUSEWIFE WOKE up in her own urine. She was still drunk from the night before, when she’d had three drinks at dinner, another three or four with her costars, then an indeterminate but debilitating amount of mescal after her castmates went to sleep. The house had been fully stocked when they arrived.

She was too hungover to care that she’d wet the bed and so sick that she couldn’t film, she told production. But people on set kept telling her she was fine, it was just the Mexican water screwing up her stomach—the same thing had happened to them in Cartagena, Colombia, the year before.

The van hired for the day trip pulled over so the Housewife could throw up. When the crew saw what was happening, they rushed over, she said—not to help, but to document it. Bravo didn’t wind up airing that footage. Production did bring in a doctor, who gave the Housewife a shot. She pulled down her pants on camera and took it while a castmate held her hand.

“If you go to the whorehouse, you’re gonna get fucked,” said another Real Housewife. She knows what you think—that if you sign up to be on a Bravo reality show, you deserve what you get— and she agrees. “If we do this, it’s at our own peril. We know that, and we don’t fucking care.”