Adding politics to the wine guzzling, fights and one-liners of its top franchise, Bravo elected The Real Housewives of D.C. on Aug. 5, 2010 — and infamously, it became the only installment to get just one season. The short stint can be placed at the feet of the cast’s Michaele Salahi and then-husband Tareq, who crashed a White House state dinner in 2009 and made headlines before a single episode had aired. “There was no way [the show] could go forward with Michaele, because she was such a liability, or without her, because how do you replace that?” costar Mary Amons tells Us. “It left us in the ditch.”
Who Was Involved
Bravo had recruited an elevated group of power players for Housewives’ fifth round. In addition to Salahi and philanthropist Amons, the cast included model agency president Lynda Erkiletian, D.C. Realtor Stacie Scott Turner and Cat Ommanney, British wife to a White House photographer. “When you’re doing a first season, they spend so much time developing your characters,” Erkiletian, 67, explains to Us. “And then it’s the second season that generally pull their families, their jobs, what they’re involved in in the community. That part of who we are was cut short.”
Why We Remember It
Not that we didn’t love vineyards and polo parties, but crashing a presidential event is the kind of bombshell that upstages everything. “We were the first [Housewives] to break the fourth wall,” Amons, 58, tells Us. “There’s a scene where our producers are on camera, asking the Salahis if they have an invitation and to present it. That was covering [the production] from being culpable.”
“No one would film with them [after] and everyone on the production team was begging me,” Ommanney shares with Us. “They said, Cat, without you, we can’t have closure. We can’t finish. …And I said, ‘Right. Okay.’ So on the way to that final episode, oh my God! It was really, really, really hard to [get] up the courage.”
Key Details
With Ommanney’s party hijinks (she dressed up as Sarah Palin for a Republican gathering!) and Turner’s search for her bio-dad, there was potential for years of intrigue. Heck, we’re still thinking about Amons’ biometric closet lock to keep her kids out. “Now it’s the reverse,” she says, laughing. “I like to borrow my daughter’s clothes because they’re cooler!”
The Aftermath
Amons and Erkiletian agree that they plus Ommanney would have returned for more, but it just wasn’t meant to be. “It’s one thing if you get three seasons and then you get canceled because you don’t have great reviews,” Erkiletian says. “But we had a million viewers a week, a great [response], so I was in shock. I was disappointed.” On a 2018 Watch What Happens Live, Andy Cohen said, “I really wanted to bring D.C. back for season 2,” then added, “When the FBI is asking for raw tapes of your show, good thing to maybe not move forward?”
A New Perspective
Today, Erkiletian says that White House to-do wouldn’t have been so controversial. “When you look at all Housewives shows, it’s minor. I don’t think they would’ve canceled the show. I don’t think the FBI and the CIA would’ve been collecting footage. It would’ve been treated entirely differently.”
Amons explains that at the time in D.C., you didn’t talk about politics socially. “Now we’re so polarized that I can’t even imagine what our show would look like if we were on today. I can’t imagine it. It would be epic and riveting.”
Where Are They Now?
The ladies’ lives have all gone through a reboot since the show (available on Peacock). Cat and Charles Ommanney divorced; she also revealed an alleged long- ago fling with Prince Harry! Amons, Erkiletian and Scott also saw their relationships come to an end. And Michaele? After Tareq reported her missing in 2011, turns out she was with Journey’s Neal Schon. Their 2013 pay-per-view wedding would have made an amazing episode!
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