Luann de Lesseps Reacts to ‘Persona Non Grata’ Bethenny Frankel Calling For OG RHONY Return

While sitting down with TooFab exclusively in Beverly Hills ahead of de Lesseps’ “All New Countess Cabaret”, Marry F Kill! tour, the Bravo star opened up about how she felt hearing Frankel “kind of” give her a compliment.

“Well, listen, she’s been bashing us for so long,” de Lesseps told TooFab exclusively. “And then going after the house we built, which was with Andy [Cohen], I think she’s persona non grata at this point. But I thought it was very nice of her to kind of promote the OGs. It’s interesting how she left herself out.”

Her comments come after Frankel threw some serious shade at the new version of the long-running franchise she used to be a part of in a since-deleted TikTok video.

As for whether there’s still bad blood between her and Bethenny — who clashed frequently on the reality show that ran for 15 seasons — Lu tells TooFab, “It’s all good I saw her at a party in the Hamptons recently. So we kind of made up. But it’s not like she’s the girl I’d call in a case of emergency.”

That honor, she added, goes to Dorinda Medley, Ramona Singer and Sonja Morgan.

While the 59-year-old reality star-turned-cabaret singer said the new RHONY cast is “fabulous” and “beautiful,” she also admitted they have “big shoes to fill.”

“On the Housewives of New York, we were so authentic. You can’t make that up. The camera doesn’t lie. I had one of the new Housewives asked me, ‘How do you guys do it? There was so much stuff that was going on,’ and I said, ‘We were just living our lives,'” she explained.

“The new Housewives, they’re great, they’re beautiful, they have careers,” she added. “But they’re not us and that’s the why people miss the OGs, because we were really friends authentically and we knew where all the skeletons were buried.”

The mother-of-two was one of the original cast members of the Bravo reality television series, appearing in the first 13 seasons.

“I feel like these women [the new cast] are hiding from the camera, like they’re not being their true self,” continued Luann.

“I think they’re nervous to show that side or scared that they’ll come off badly and we never gave a s–t about that,” she shared, before adding that people want to see the “real deal.”

“I’ve heard through the grapevine from some of the new Housewives that when the cameras go down, that’s when it all happens,” said de Lesseps.

Over the weekend, after seeing videos of people saying the reboot “is unwatchable,” Frankel demanded “justice” for her former co-stars Sonja, Dorinda, Luann and Ramona — “because they were ride or die.”

She continued, “That show was on their back and all of a sudden they all got replaced [with] shiny new toys.”

Calling the second season of the reboot a “piece of trash,” Frankel slammed the way she felt the network treated the former stars of the series, as Bravo assembled a new cast of ladies.

“I know a lot more money was spent on the new cast and the new show,” Frankel claimed, adding that the former stars were often treated “like the stepchildren.”

“They’ve always been discarded. I know the money they’ve gotten paid. I know the demotions. I know the budgets,” Frankel added. “I know the premiere budgets. They know. I know. We know. You know.”

Despite slamming the show, Frankel didn’t come after the new cast members — Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Lichy, Jenna Lyons, Jessel Taank, Brynn Whitfield and Racquel Chevremont — themselves, telling her followers: “The new girls — I’m sure they’re lovely. I haven’t seen the show, [but] I’m actually sure that they’re lovely.”

“But [the former cast], as they got older, just got dropped off at the side of the road,” she continued before claiming Bravo only has “200,000 people watching” its new iteration.

Her suggestion? For the network to “go get the old girls and dust them off, mix them in” because “humble pie is coming in hot.”

Catch de Lesseps’ on her tour of Marry F Kill! here.