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Gizelle Bryant of The Real Housewives of Potomac needed to adjust for Season 9 with bestie Robyn Dixon out and drama with some of her co-stars from the last season.
Deadline talked to Bryant for the latest word on the street on her friendship with Karen Huger and her new dating reality series.
“It was tough,” Bryant said about filming RHOP Season 9 without Dixon, who had been in the Bravo reality series since the start in 2016. “I was always just naturally waiting for her to come into the scene, [to be] like the last person to come through, but yeah, she wasn’t there. Hopefully, she’ll be back in season 10.”
Dixon exited the show after eight seasons, making it no secret that she was “fired” and not invited back. However, with Bryant still on the show, Dixon could be invited to parties she throws that are filmed for the show.
“I asked her upfront. I was like, ‘Do you want to go to anything? Because of course, the ladies would love to see you. I want you there.’ And she told me she would let me know,” Bryant said. “I mean, Robyn’s been doing a lot. She just opened a day spa, all that. She was busy.”
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Bryant and Karen Huger have a love-hate relationship and that journey is going to seemingly continue this season.
“Well, Karen is Karen, we’re going to go up and down, and we’re going to have our journey of nonsense,” she said. “There was never any other people involved with like me and Karen. I do think that it was a lot going on with Wendy and just everyone else the past couple seasons. I felt like Wendy and I didn’t really just get a chance to figure out what’s going on with me and her.”
She continued, “I started the season thinking, I really want the ladies to be in a good space collectively. And for me to want that, I’ve gotta participate in that. I really wanted to sit down with Wendy and see if we could get to a better place. In [our sit-down lunch during the 2nd episode], we talked about a lot of stuff that they didn’t really show, but we were able, at the end of it, to get to a better place.”
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Bryant has supported her co-star Karen Huger following a DUI incident that has been a main topic during the first couple of episodes of the season. Although some think that Bryant is being messy for being so inquisitive of Huger, Bryant says she was “by any means being messy.”
“Hearing that Karen got into that accident, I was terrified for her. We had a relationship for 15 years, and I didn’t want anything to happen to her. I didn’t want anything to happen to anybody around her. I was very concerned,” Bryant clarified. “And it wasn’t like I was throwing digs at her. I was just talking like a sister would talk to another sister and really being honest and upfront with her [and saying] “You can’t do this. Like, what? What’s going on?” So no, I don’t think she took it in a way that I was being messy, by no means.”
Although things between Bryant and Huger were seemingly on the up, things turned sour when Huger invited the ladies to an event in her honor on the same day that Bryant hosted a charity event in honor of her late father.
“I think Karen was just being Karen and she’s being a mess,” Bryant explained. “It’s kind of like an unspoken rule, like, if somebody’s having an event, nobody else is going to try to have a counter event or a different event at the same time. So, I didn’t like it. I felt like she was being shady. She could have had her event and just not invited the rest of the ladies, but she did, and I felt like she was completely and utterly wrong. And that’s why I was like, ‘None of these girls need to come, because if you’re going to be late, just don’t come.'”
Bryant teased that her friendship with Huger experiences “a lot of ups and downs, highs and lows” throughout the season, adding, “We get past this, and then we have issues with other things, and then we’re fine, and then we have issues with other things. So yes, it’s a journey.”
When we noted that Bryant and Huger understand the assignment of being Real Housewives, which involves conflict, resolving it, and being able to mend things, Bryant laughed and said, “No, we understand the assignment of Karen is crazy, and I deal with it.”
RHOP Season 9 introduced various new ladies to the friend group, like Stacey Rusch and Keiarna Stewart.
“They did good,” Bryant said of the new ladies’ first season. “Stacey is different. Stacey’s a little quirky. She’s a little different from the rest of us, which is great. She wants to have fun. She wants to dive in. She has an opinion. I like all of that. And the same with [Keiarna] – I don’t feel like [she] was necessarily new, because we saw her last season. [Keiarna] is stepping up to the plate and let the ladies have it. So I love it.”
Another journey that RHOP viewers get to go in with Bryant is her business venture with co-star Ashley Darby. Last season, the fashion event the duo threw to promote their GNA brand turned into a big fight and in addition, the ladies threw a little shade at the fashion choices, something that Bryant is not bothered by.
“I don’t care about these girls being shady. I could careless – it’s easy to put together a leggings and a top and do the whole apparel,” she said, noting that they are refocusing GNA in another direction, adding, “But I really wanted to do something that I was just a bit more passionate about, and especially working with the National Brain Tumor Society, I was obviously way more passionate about that than apparel.”
Bryant teased that they would throw another event later in the season and hope to eventually throw more health and fitness events across the country to get closer to fans.
As far as how Bryant would like viewers to take away from this season, she said, “That Gizelle is more than just a messy girl. [Laughs] I’m kidding. I’m all the way messy. Since we started season one, you see me and my kids grow up, and you see me as a mom to them and raising them, and now you see me kind of letting them go. So the next space for me is, is kind of the unknown, but I’m here to figure it out.”
In addition to RHOP, Bryant recently wrapped filming a new dating reality series (tentatively titled Love Hotel) in which she co-stars with Shannon Beador, Ashley Darby, and Luann de Lesseps.
“Umm… that was a lot! I was in a love bubble,” she said of filming the dating show. “There was a lot of mens that were coming through, in and out, up and down. You all will enjoy it, for sure. I feel like from that, I learned a lot about myself. I learned what I want out of a relationship, and why I’ve been in certain relationships. You will see the journey.”
As for her experience with The Real Housewives of Orange County star, Shannon Beador, she said, “Shannon is an acquired taste. I love her. I’ve talked to Shannon a couple times since we left, and Shannon’s a lot of fun. Shannon was the one that was a bit more emotional than the rest of the ladies, and that was, uh… different for me. I’m not that emotional. Neither is Ashley. She was our emotional girl. We had to protect her to make sure she was okay.”
