Harry Hamlin threatened to divorce Lisa Rinna if she joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills . On September 17, Entertainment Tonight shared a sneak peek at Saturday’s new episode of Oprah’s Where Are They Now? , which featured Rinna speaking of her decision to do the show, as well as Harry Hamlin’s response to the possibility.
“Before season five started of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills , I had a meeting with the producers to do maybe another show. What came out of the meeting was, maybe I should do The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills .”
After years of rumors regarding Harry Hamlin’s wife being cast on the show, Bravo contacted the former soap star ahead of Season 4, following the exits of Carlton Gebbia and Joyce Giraud. Gebbia and Giraud were brought to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for Season 4, but after failing to gain the expected response from fans, the network chose to let them go in lieu of two new wives, Rinna and fellow soap star Eileen Davidson.
Although Rinna was leaning towards joining the reality cast, she was concerned about how her husband of 18 years, Harry Hamlin, would feel.
“I thought ‘Oh god, Harry’s never gonna go for this.’ He never will.”
And at first, he didn’t. As Rinna recalled, Harry Hamlin was extremely opposed to the idea of his ex-wife joining the drama-filled reality show and even threatened to divorce her if she signed her contract.
Harry Hamlin reportedly said, “Nope. I’ll divorce you. If you do it, I’ll divorce you.”
At that point, Harry Hamlin’s wife sided with her husband and chose not to pursue the idea anymore.
“I said, ‘Ok, done.’ No more conversations, done. Walked out of the room, that was that. I was fine with it.”
Then, Harry Hamlin changed his mind.
“He comes back to me in like two days, and he said, ‘You know, I’ve thought about it, I’ve done some research.’ Harry, being a really, really smart businessman himself, said ‘It’s a good thing, it’ll work for you, you should do it.’ So I did it.”
Now, months later, Harry Hamlin’s wife is filming the sixth season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills , along with her co-stars, including Kyle Richards and Lisa Vanderpump, whom she’s been friends with for years, Yolanda Foster, Eileen Davidson, and new housewives Kathryn Eickstaedt Edwards and Erika Jayne.
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