Hot labor summer is still going strong: Bethenny Frankel has made moves to turn her idea for a reality star union into, well, reality. “People and big business takes advantage and pushes until someone has the courage to push back,” she said in a statement on her social media. The businesswoman has hired some high-powered lawyers who have reportedly been feeling out other reality stars on the topic of organizing. So what are the genre’s other big names thinking about the situation?
“We’re not protected like everybody else is. Even all of our production team, they are union. They’re like, ‘No, you guys are real estate agents. This is reality. So that’s not your actual job, you’re not an actor,’” Selling Sunset’s Mary Bonnet told Variety on the subject of a reality union. “Reality wasn’t a thing. Now it’s a big thing. We have awards shows for it. It just makes sense, though, because reality has taken over.”
Reality has, indeed, taken over, not just in the cultural consciousness (though there’s certainly an argument for it) but also in the autumn television schedule. With production shut down on scripted television due to the Writers Guild of America strike (and, now, the SAG-AFTRA strike as well), networks have been bulking up their output with lots of reality offerings. Given how crucial the genre has become to the television economy—entire networks, like Bravo, are fueled almost entirely on reality—it only seems right that the people who make those shows enjoy some of the same protections as other television stars.
The Daily Beast checked in with several Real Housewives and one Survivor winner, Wendell Holland, who were largely receptive to the idea of forming a union. “I’ve heard rumblings in the Survivor community where people would see themselves on these large streaming sites and wonder why they aren’t receiving compensation for that,” Holland mentioned. But not everybody believed in the cause.
“I would love to have a union, but it’s never going to happen. Because if we do a picketing line, [the network’s] gonna be like, ‘Bye! We’ve got the next younger, brighter, hotter star than you.’ You can’t unionize reality, because it’s too easy to get other people,” Frankel’s former co-star Luann de Lesseps said to the outlet. “I believe people are irreplaceable. But I feel like in reality, yeah, it’s too easy to say, ‘Let people go.’ Because we don’t [currently] have a union. I mean, already SAG-AFTRA is protected, right? And the writers are protected. But we have no protection whatsoever.”
The Messenger also talked to a handful of Housewives, some of whom, like Braunwyn Windham-Burke, agreed with Frankel’s feelings while sharing de Lesseps’ doubts. “Because I don’t know if it can happen, it seems so far-fetched, but it can,” Windham-Burke mused. “That would be amazing, because people do work really hard on the show.”
However, most seem to be in agreement that their likenesses being used forever without any compensation doesn’t seem fair. “I think the audience for a long time felt like we got paid every time it aired, and we didn’t. We got paid when we created it. That’s the only time we ever got paid for it,” ex-Real Housewives Of Dallas star LeeAnn Locken told the outlet. “And then they, in perpetuity, can run it forever, anywhere in the world, over and over and over again. You are making money off my mistakes, off my one-liners, off my back.”
Lisa Rinna, an actor and former Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star, appears to align with Frankel in that now is the time to take action. “Every @Sag/aftra [member] who is on a Bravo show should boycott Bravocon,” she posted to her Instagram stories last week (via Page Six). “You want them to start to take you seriously and pay you the money you deserve? Then start a reality show union per Bethenny.”
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