Here are the headlines and highlights from BravoCon 2023

New shows were announced, villains were booed, and shoes were lost. All in a day's work for the controversial network.

By Emma Keates | November 6, 2023 | 8:48pm

Aux News Bethenny Frankel

Here are the headlines and highlights from BravoCon 2023

BravoCon Photo: Nicole Weingart/Bravo

Things have gotten very real for Bravo recently, and not in the, let’s say generous way the network usually employs that term. Earlier this summer, Real Housewives star Bethenny Frankel reportedly retained the services of a couple attorneys to advance her proposed reality star union and help current cast members get out of “draconian” NDAs which the lawyers say contain “ruinous penalties for breach.” As if that wasn’t enough, last week Vanity Fair published a detailed investigation exposing even more of the network’s gross and exploitative practices, including plying cast members with tons of alcohol and tolerating racist microaggressions behind the scenes.

Still, despite possibly parting ways with Ramona Singer, one of the main cast members accused of perpetrating of the alleged racism, the network itself is embodying the ethos of many of its stars; that the show much go on despite the haters or any Bethenny Frankel-induced fights. And by “the show,” we mean BravoCon 2023, a 3-day event in New York where housewives and otherwise gather, do panels, cry, and presumably meet up to lock in Survivor-style, cross-city alliances should the franchises ever merge.

Returning shows were announced

Bravo’s 2024 season will include new seasons of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Below Deck Mediterranean, Below Deck Down Under, Below Deck Sailing Yacht, Summer House, and The Real Housewives of Dubai, which will feature a new cast member named Taleen Marie.

Tom Sandoval got booed… a lot

After #Scandoval and all its widespread fallout, Bravo knows its fans are hungry for more Vanderpump Rules. They’ll get their wish this January, per a panel announcing the series’ eleventh season premiere, during which Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval were reportedly seated as far away from each other as possible (per Variety). As a gift for fans, the network also debuted a first look clip of the show which opens with the words “what a difference one scandal makes” and contains a lot of screaming, a lot of crying, and one allegation of attempted dog murder? It seems pretty wild. What was also wild was how much the fans hated Tom Sandoval’s entire presence at the event. He was apparently booed every single time he opened his mouth, despite intervention from moderator Karamo Brown.

Kyle Richards got emotional about her split from husband Mauricio Umansky

Longtime Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills cast member Kyle Richards broke down in tears when talking about her estrangement from husband Mauricio Umansky during a panel. “A lot of people think, ‘What are you doing? Just pull it together. Fix everything,’” Richards said when asked about the split (per USA Today). “Obviously, that’s what I would want. This is not my idea of my fairytale, clearly.”

“It was sort of new for me what we were going through,” she continued. “We were starting the show—and even today, we still live under the same roof—and I just didn’t know how to manage that. And I also am somebody who can’t pretend. I don’t have a very good poker face. So, when a lot of those things with my husband (happened), you can see I’m clearly not that thrilled or happy.”

Brynn Whitfield got her red bottoms stuck in an escalator

A Bravo-focused event would be nothing without a little hard-to-wrap-your-mind-around absurdity. Enter Real Housewives of New York star Brynn Whitfield and her escalator-breaking Louboutins, which the members of the panel she was supposed to attend rightfully said looked like The Wicked Witch of the West. (Well, they actually meant the Wicked Witch of the East, but that’s a really easy mistake to make in the whirlwind of watching someone’s shoes get caught in an escalator. At least, we would assume.)

The backstory begets more questions than it answers. Why did the members of this panel have to make a long and presumably very awkward live escalator descent to get to the stage? Why did Brynn step out of her shoes in the first place? Is this her first time on an escalator? Hopefully, Bravo takes this moment as conclusive evidence that they don’t need to get their casts drunk at all to make good TV. Because this? This is gold.