Eboni K. Williams reveals she’s excited to bring a new perspective to The Real Housewives of New York City after being announced as the first black cast member to join the show. “I’m a huge fan of the entire ‘Housewives’ franchise,” Williams told Page Six.
“But it was so glaringly obvious to me and I think the rest of the country that you can’t have a show about New York and not have a black woman’s lens represented … So for 12 years, that had been the case. I do think people were making efforts around it. I’m not sure as to why it never happened until now.”
The attorney said “it’s been an adjustment” for her to share her personal life on camera, but Season 13 “is gonna be unlike anything ‘RHONY’ fans have ever seen.” As for being the first black cast member, Williams said: “I call it a gracious responsibility because I am new to ‘Housewives.’ I am new to Bravo. But I’m actually not new to being the first black woman in a space,” she told the publication.
“I’m not very rainbows and sunshine and kumbaya. That’s just not my style.” She also said that adding more diversity to the show is better for everyone’s “bottom line.” “So when we talk — I talk about diversity and increasing opportunities for black people in this country specifically, it’s really not about like, ‘Oh, it’s the right thing to do…’ I don’t really think that argument works because if that were the case, if people were gonna do what was the right thing to do, it would’ve been done a long time ago. So the argument that I really stick to is it’s good for business. It is good for business to make the pie bigger. It is good for everybody’s bottom line to have an offering of content,” she told Page Six.
“An offering of whatever it is, if it’s law, if it’s academia, if it’s finance and real estate, in this case, television, where more people get to see themselves and their experience is represented in a fuller way because it’s not displacing white people. It’s not like they kicked off all the white ‘Housewives’ to bring me on.”
Photo Credit: Eboni K. Williams Official Website
