Luann de Lesseps‘ arrest in Palm Beach, Florida, and subsequent trip to a 21-day alcohol rehab center left herReal Housewives of New York Citycostars offering their support to the former Countess — and having a few laughs at her expense.
On Wednesday’s all-new episode, the cameras picked up a few days into the New Year as the New York City Housewives returned to the Big Apple, where they reacted to the news.
As fans saw on the show a week prior, de Lesseps was arrested on Christmas Eve and charged with disorderly intoxication, battery on an officer, resisting arrest with violence and threatening a public servant (she’s sinceplead not guiltyandrejected a plea dealin February).
AP/REX/Shutterstock
Learning about her arrest, de Lesseps’ costars all said they had reached out and offered their support.
“I was scared for her because that’s not a good place to be,” saidCarole Radziwill, 54.
“I texted her right away and said, ‘Oh God,’ ” recalledSonja Morgan, 54. “I know that Luann is strong and she is a proud woman and she will get through this. I just wanted her to know that I was there, and I’m not sticking my nose in it.”
WorriedDorinda Medley, 53, said: “I’m not going to say that I saw it coming, but I never believed that all is well. … Sometimes, God stops what you’re not recognizing you need to stop.”
Bravo
Tinsley Mortimer, 42, happened to be not far from de Lesseps at the time of the incident. Having been arrested in Palm Beach before herself, Mortimer knew what de Lesseps was going through.
Ramona Singer, 61, was also in Palm Beach and in fact ran into de Lesseps’ ex-husband Tom D’Agostino, Jr. — he married de Lesseps in the Florida town last New Year’s Eve before their divorce seven months later — during the holidays.
“I saw him,” she told pal Medley. “Actually, I kept running into him! I ran into him three or four times.”
Chance Yeh/FilmMagic
If Singer was uncomfortable seeing D’Agostino, one could only imagine how tough it must have been for de Lesseps.
She elaborated about the topic later in the episode, confessing that she had wound up at restaurants and bars that she and D’Agostino had frequented together when they were wed. “I thought I could handle it but let me tell you, all these emotions came back, all these memories,” she said. “I’m not blaming it on that, but all of it together was too much for me to handle.”
Her fellow Housewives were compassionate towards that.
“Luann wanted to go to say that she is okay and I get it,” Mortimer said. “Palm Beach is small. Where she was, was literally in the prime spot of everything. There are only a very few restaurants to go to and hotels to stay in. She knew her chances of bumping into Tom in Palm Beach were pretty much a given. She risked it and it didn’t work out that well for her.”
AddedBethenny Frankel, 47: “She’s had a s— year. You don’t plan a wedding, have a wedding, and the cheating and the cheating and the cheating, and then have it crash and burn and not be affected. So now I think the pressure cooker just exploded.”
Heidi Gutman/Bravo
Still, this being the Housewives, the women couldn’t help but be a little playful with the whole thing.
“My favorite part is getting out of the handcuffs!” Radziwill laughed to Frankel at one part. “Of course in my mind it’s like she escaped and she’s running across the front lawn of the hotel screaming, ‘I’m going to kill you all.’ ”
“Having been in Palm Beach handcuffs before, I don’t know how you can escape them,” Mortimer joked in another scene, later teasing how the two of them both had “mugshots from Palm Beach” and that they even had spent the night in the same Palm Beach County Main Detention Center on Gun Club Road. “She got out of handcuffs! Lu’s a big girl, how did she get out of handcuffs?”
Frankel and Medley then compared her to famed escape artist Harry Houdini.
Allison Michael Orenstein
Regardless of their jokes, de Lesseps was grateful to have her friends.
“I really appreciate you girls understanding me and understanding what happened,” she told Medley in a phone call from rehab. “You’ve known me long enough to know the s— I’ve been through. I needed to come to a full stop and boy this is a hard way to do it.”
“I’m not proud of what happened,” she said. “But I’m learning a lot about myself. I found the right place to be to take care of myself. I’m finally dealing with what I was trying to drink myself out of — which is dealing with my emotions from the marriage to Tom. I knew that I needed help to get that under control, but I didn’t ask for it. And you know what? I hit a wall. I just wish it wouldn’t have been a brick wall.”
The Real Housewives of New York Cityairs Wednesdays (9 p.m. ET) on Bravo.
source: people.com
