Racism, Bots, and Rinna: The ‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Drama Is a Mess

Real Housewife of New York Bethenny Frankel once famously ordered a castmate to “mention it all!”

It’s something that Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Lisa Rinna has apparently taken to heart.

Somehow, racist death threats against Garcelle Beauvais’ young son didn’t end the RHOBH discord online. In fact, it seems to have inspired a new level of chaos, led by members of the cast. It leads an outsider to ask: What are we watching take place?

We’re going to do our darndest to explain it to you.

Why Is a Real Housewives Fan Army Sending Racist Death Threats to Garcelle Beauvais’ Son?

As previously reported, things escalated after a few rounds of online feuding between RHOBH cast members Beauvais and Diana Jenkins—which also roped in Lisa Rinna and Erika Jayne—during which Jenkins accused Beauvais of making fun of a recent pregnancy loss. (Beauvais said she was simply making light of Jenkins misspelling her name.)

Jenkins took to her Instagram to say, in essence, game on. And then, as Jenkins celebrated her birthday from her Hawaii vacation estate, Beauvais’ son’s then-public IG account was hit with what appeared to be a coordinated bot attack. (Jenkins and several other Housewives who were being accused of paying for these bots have publicly denied it.)

Loads of near-identical comments flooded in at once, attacking Jax about his mom’s role on the show, mocking Beauvais’ older son’s struggle with addiction, and echoing the cast’s own thinking about her actions on the show. Jayne had repeatedly criticized Beauvais for asking questions about her drunken misbehavior, accusing Beauvais of trying to seek revenge after Jayne crossed lines with Beauvais children, heavily flirting with Beauvais older son Oliver (suggesting he and his “baby mama” join her for a threesome), and yelling and swearing at Jax. Many of these comments followed suit, escalating thinking members of the cast had already shared. Jenkins’ name was even invoked in a death threat against Jax.

The accounts themselves appear to be bot-acquired fakes, featuring avatars of attractive young white women whose profiles showed no activity, and all of whom followed the same four outside accounts. Followers and fans quickly took note, as Garcelle herself did. After Beauvais posted on IG begging people to leave her family alone and Jax insisted he should not be used for online revenge, members of her cast quickly rallied in support. But not everyone.

Jayne and Jenkins specifically stayed quiet. They did not, as other cast members and celebrities from across the Bravo slate of programming did, address the attacks, or the fact that their names were mentioned in them. Jenkins deleted reams of comments asking her to speak out, while continuing to share birthday greetings. Jayne promoted an upcoming music release (like we haven’t been through enough).

Jenkins did finally acknowledge what occurred, sharing a 2010 Huffington Post blog (giving big “LinkedIn/LiveJournal” vibes) that detailed self-described advocacy work from a decade ago. She did not initially name Garcelle or Jax.

The network shared a statement on social: “We are shocked and appalled at the social comments directed at Garcelle’s son. We urge our viewers and social followers alike to refrain from targeting our cast and their families with harmful rhetoric.”

“Urging viewers and social followers alike.” But what about calls coming from inside the house?

The toxicity exemplified on social media had in large part begun with the cast. The Bravo fandom is known to be particularly, shall we say, acidic. (In the mood to see a riot take place? Look at online discourse about Bethenny v. Carole, LVP v. The Fox Force, Teresa v. Melissa, Monique v. Candiace (and Candiace herself), let alone comments on the social accounts of any Bravoleb.) Many include the use of hateful rhetoric (racist, sexist, gendered, body shaming/fatphobic; anything a gal could look for, they will find).

The entire cast shared the network’s response, acknowledging that something terrible had taken place. Jenkins, Rinna, and Jayne also posted on their IG stories, specifically disavowing themselves from any role in what transpired. Rinna was the first to specifically state this was a “bot” attack, which at least appeared to be one step forward.

And then Rinna took a step in a direction nobody could’ve predicted. Late on Saturday night, Rinna took to IG stories in a heavily filtered video to hypothesize that not only was this a targeted attack (progress!), but it may have been done by her own show’s producer (....what?) to deflect attention off another member of the cast.

Rinna said: “Don’t you find it interesting that the shit that’s going down online. Right now. Like it’s not evening happening on the show, it’s happening online. Don’t you find it interesting that it’s happening right before the Aspen stuff is gonna happen? Cause it’s gonna happen. But I find it so interesting, yeah. Is it a coinkidink that the producer of our show now was the producer of Vanderpump Rules, when all that shit went down over there, online, in the press, and such. I don’t know, I have a little detective inside of me that goes [off], when bullshit’s happening, and it’s being placed on people, and me. I go wait a second. Why? Why is that happening? So I’m just putting two, three, four, and five, together, and I’m going, ‘Oh. Very interesting.’ ”

To summarize: a cast member took to social media (an aftershow made in hell) to say that her show’s producer created a targeted bot campaign against a 14-year-old (which included racist death threats), to draw attention from whatever happens during an upcoming cast trip to Aspen, involving ‘friend-of’ castmate Kathy Hilton. (This trip to Aspen, which will unfold over the next several episodes of RHOBH, has long been rumored in the Bravo fan community to be dramatic and explosive.)

Drawing a parallel to Vanderpump Rules included some creative math on Rinna’s part. She was attempting to say that the firing of cast members Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute (along with Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni) was a conspiracy coordinated by their show producer, who now works on Beverly Hills. Because nothing says “let’s kick things up a notch” to help an already-popular show succeed than culling half its cast.

Those firings also came a week after former cast member Faith Stowers accused Schroeder and Doute of previously misreporting her to the police for a criminal act, one that had nothing to do with her, aside from involving someone who was also Black.

Rinna seemed to connect the dots back to protecting Kathy Hilton. If that was the case, methinks she wouldn’t have been booked on Watch What Happens Live. Hilton can create massive controversy involving race on her own (and on live tv, natch), thankyouverymuch.

Rinna was more explicit behind the scenes. I received a copy of messages Rinna exchanged with content creator @FaceReality16 on IG days prior to releasing her own video. @FaceReality16 suggested to Rinna that notorious Housewives “friend of” in his own mind, Patrick Somers, was behind the drama, and Rinna agreed—but then also suggested the possibility that Kathy Hilton and even former RHOBH Lisa Vanderpump were behind the attack, as a way to distract from whatever happens in Aspen.

(Why Lisa Vanderpump would feel motivated to do so, considering she is friendly with Beauvais and also employs her older son Oliver at Vanderpump Cocktail Garden in Las Vegas, remains to be seen.)

Rinna also archived the network response about Jax from her Instagram (which was, incidentally, a repost of husband Harry Hamlin’s account. Keeping it in the family, as it were. Apologies for talking about the husband!).

A sense of “All Lives Matter” has enveloped some of the cast (specifically Rinna, Jenkins, and Jayne) in talking about what happened to Jax, equating Bravo’s first-ever seeming bot attack aimed at a minor child to when viewers criticized Jayne’s adult son’s job as an cop in Los Angeles (on a picture she herself shared of him in uniform). Or when Rinna’s kids…continued to be related to Rinna. While it’s not appropriate to attack any cast member’s child, there is a massive difference between criticizing an adult’s choice of profession and threatening to murder a Black teenager.

Girardi herself responded in agreement on an IG comment that blamed the fury over the Jax attack on a “woke” mob: “I didn’t see Bravo making every post about leaving kids alone when the woke mob was coming after your son for being Law Enforcement in 2020.” “Exactly,” Jayne responded.

(The comment has since been deleted, but screenshots, unlike the opportunity to further defraud innocent victims, are forever.)

The reunion is scheduled to film next week. How production is going to address what’s taken place online—including the cast’s own je ne sais quois response— is, in the favored tool of Housewives storytelling, “to be continued.”

A show that, while still receiving record ratings, seems to be burning down online. While one can argue that the framework of Housewives is often focused around conflict resolution (the latter not always guaranteed, or even desired), this has become something else. Viewers are scrambling to keep up.

Many fans are left wondering: What has this show become?

Responding to a question I posted on social media asking, “Have thoughts/feels about the current state of RHOBH aka what the fuck is going on, slide into my DMs!,” Tana from Indonesia said: “I know it’s just a “tv show” as my friends kept reminding me when I go on a tangent about this, but the abuse that happened to Jax was real. It happened to him in real life, abuse that Garcelle as a Black mother prays for her kids never to experience and probably dreads almost every night. For these 3 ladies (debatable) to blatantly and vocally push it aside, especially the way Rinna is doing it by saying that it’s a conspiracy to cover up whatever crap that happened in Aspen, which, even if it was bad should be a completely different subject to what Jax had to suffer. It really, really triggers me, kind of like how Erika is often belittling how she talks about ‘the victims’.”

Hannah from Chicago said, “Remember how Rinna turned Garcelle’s questioning of Rinna’s naked dancing on insta as a time for Amelia to say ‘fuck off Garcelle’ on camera? Rinna pulls her kids into it and doesn’t allow any grace for boundaries of minors, but will act as if her own children are. That’s why, obviously, all of this matters and should matter to everyone, the Fox Force are essentially saying ‘we don’t care about a child’s safety or boundaries unless it’s our own or we can use it for plot.’ ”

According to Lexi from Philly, “This is the worst thing that has ever happened in the Bravo-verse. it’s on par with Brooks (Ayers’) cancer scandal. Housewives cannot be this serious. it cannot be taken seriously enough to have someone pay money to attack a child. Housewife or not. The harm and trauma of the racist nature of the attacks is by far the worst thing about any and all of this. It’s horrific. It makes me ill to think about it being debated at the reunion. What is there to debate?!”

And Sinéad from Ireland said the cast’s behavior has limited her interest in watching the show. “All of them have participated online and the tone and attitude from that franchise is now so toxic that it’s taking away from the RH core sell. Silly, fun, real. This is mean, nasty, and contrived at best. I’d take Adrienne washing a chicken over this any day.”

In the words of former Beverly Hills Housewife and current Orange County friend Taylor Armstrong: “Enough!”

Meanwhile, Salt Lake City Housewife Jen Shah, who herself is in a bit of hot water after pleading guilty in federal court to defrauding victims of millions, took to social media on Monday morning to accuse an unnamed castmate of racist attacks, including calling her son “the N-word.”

Also on Monday morning, Rinna posted a screenshot of messages she sent to a content creator, including that her adult children were now receiving threats (“our children are getting dealt [death] threats. All of our children.”) An update to this chaos that nobody anticipated, with no backing information provided, that focuses attention back on Rinna herself. She said that in order to protect her family—roughly a day after wondering if her producer created the Jax attack, a decision that further opened up Beauvais’ family to possible attack—she’s keeping her page “very edited,” “very positive, non-negative and fashion and fun.”

She had removed Bravo’s response to the Garcelle and Jax drama, saying, “The statement did nothing, so why keep it up?” Which she followed up with a throwback red carpet picture and the response: “I was Lisa Fucking Rinna before HW and I’ll be Lisa Fucking Rinna After.”

At least she’s owning it.

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