Fall TV Blog

The Real Housewives of Atlanta’s self-proclaimed “H.B.I.C.” (head b– in charge) says she’s not friends with any of the other women on the show. Instead, she calls Kim Zolciak, Sheree Whitfield, Lisa Wu Hartwell and Kandi Burruss “associates,” something she says they’re lucky to be. “Some people don’t even get to be my associate, so they’re in a very good position,” she said in Los Angeles at a recent signing of her book, Never Make the Same Mistake Twice: Lessons on Love and Life Learned the Hard Way. Leakes spoke with PEOPLE about her her goal to have a talk show, why all press is good press and what she thinks about the song “Tardy for the Party.” –Tiffany Matloob

What’s your relationship with Kim and Sheree like these days?
We’re just associates. I feel we have a business relationship. However, Sheree and I have known each other the longest and we’ve found a way to respect one another. And Kim and I just haven’t found that yet. And if Kim and I weren’t on the show together, we probably would never talk. But we’re on the show, so we have to talk and we have to be cordial, so we’re cordial. But I’m not friends with any of these girls. They’re my associates, and I don’t think that the word “associate” is a bad word. Some people don’t even get to be my associate, so they’re in a very good position. (more…)

Thursday night’s episode showcased each Atlanta Housewife pursuing her own business venture — with varying degrees of success. Kim commissioned a cross-dressing, apparently great-smelling weave stylist named Derek J to help launch her line of “volumptuous [sic] porno” wigs. “Derek J is not transsexual or trans-gender; He’s just trans-fantastic!” she explained of the man whose flair for hair would keep her 7-year-old daughter Arianna outfitted in Dior without the benefit of Big Papa’s credit line.

“I’m going to die in Juicy Couture; I don’t want to look like I came from the 1990s,” declared Kim’s daughter, while racking up a $3,075.06 shopping bill.

Nene’s maternal instincts were also on display, as she enlisted Dwight to groom her lay-about son Bryson. But the Leakes family feud was nothing compared to the brewing storm between Lisa and Sheree. Their beef was more vicious, in its way, than even Sheree and Kim’s street brawl — because it was combat conducted with smiles.

In the grand tradition of Atlanta’s catfight, let’s relive the best and boldest moments: (more…)

The much-anticipated alter-ego photo shoot dominated Thursday’s episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta — and Nene, in the self-appointed role of director, attempted to dominate everyone else before acknowledging her past by stripping down and doing a pole dance for the camera.

Here’s a look at all the priceless moments:

Kandi finally dropped her guard and revealed that relatives had been the victims of a drunk driving accident following a gathering at her house. Her story was abysmal enough to make cold-as-ice Sheree cry. And Kandi, to her credit, turned it into a “teaching moment” by channeling her pain for art at the photo shoot.

(more…)

The Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kim Zolciak is the latest celebrity to pose for the NOH8 Campaign, a photo project and silent protest against California’s Proposition 8, which passed on Election Day, amending the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

The “Tardy for the Party” singer, whose single was released Tuesday, tweeted, “the noh8 campaign shoot was hot. and I am topless!!! Just to cause a stir to make people pay attention!”

Pete and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, Lisa Ling, Meghan McCain, Isaiah Washington are just a few of the other celebrities who have posed for the campaign.

Adam Bouska/NOH8Campaign.com

For a show so full of fake hair, fake boobs and faux leopard, you’d think it would be fascinating to see Atlanta’s Housewives unmasked, dealing with such real-life drama as — in Lisa’s case — the death of beloved sibling. Thursday’s episode wobbled between setting up combustible situations for future catfights (Who will hate the “alter ego” Nene designs for her at next week’s photo shoot? When will Sheree explode at her new party planner?) and the raw emotion of a family visiting the grave of a loved one who died of unknown causes but allegedly mixed prescription pills and alcohol.

Heavy stuff. When the next frame cut to a wine-swilling Kim trashing the grieving Lisa — “She tries to portray this image of ‘I’m just so perfect.’ And the reality is, b—-, you’re not,” she told new BFF Kandi — it was nothing short of distasteful. But, you know what? Bad taste is what we came here for! And thankfully, there was still plenty of it — in a good way. (more…)

She’s taken criticism about her wig — and now Kim Zolciak is dishing it out. What does she think about other celebrities who wear fake hair? We asked the star of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, who is developing her own wig line, to sound off on wig-wearing celebs — everyone from Tyra Banks to Britney Spears — and rate them on their (fake) hairstyles. Find out which stars pass the Zolciak test!

Check out all of today’s PEOPLE TV lineup.

We weren’t tardy for Thursday night’s party. We tuned in faithfully to watch the director’s cut of The Real Housewives of Atlanta’s “Unbeweavable” episode, followed by what we assumed would be a touchy-feely exploration of Kandi’s family issues (certainly not helped by AJ’s incessant texting). Minutes into the recut special, Bravo hit viewers with a surreal cameo by none other than Michael Lohan. Yes, just when you thought Real Housewives had maxed out on crazy, Hollywood’s scandal-plagued stage dad seemed to teleport from a Hamptons polo match with Jon Gosselin to the streets of Atlanta — solely to insinuate himself into the most trashtastic reality showdown in recent memory.

“I don’t want you guys to fight,” Lohan said, as Sheree lunged for Kim’s wig for the second time.

“Hey, Mr. Lindsay Lohan’s daddy, you take you’re a– back to Malibu!” retorted Nene, her ire up over his inexplicable appearance at the restaurant.

What’s next? A bed for Lohan inside the Big Brother house? (more…)

No need for her castmates to do any digging! The outspoken Real Housewives of Atlanta star NeNe Leakes is coming right out with a revelation from her past: She was a stripper. And she’s not ashamed.

In her new memoir, Never Make the Same Mistake Twice, in stores now, the reality star opens up about her struggles with abusive relationships and the trials she endured. At one point, Leakes writes in a chapter called “What You Won’t Do, You’ll Do For Love,” she took a job as a stripper at an Atlanta club.

“Yes, I was a stripper, a woman who took her clothes off and danced for dollars,” she writes. “Let the judgment ensue. I mean, it’s easy enough to do, right?”

Leakes explains that she had just ended her relationship with the father of her eldest son, Brice, and she was living with her son and a roommate. “My son was in private school, his father wasn’t chipping in for pull-ups or food, I had no job and no money coming in, the rent was past due, and the super told me and my roommate that our condo owner was about to put us out,” she writes. “So I did what I had to do.”

After answering an ad in the newspaper, Leakes nabbed the job at “the most glamorous upscale gentlemen’s club in Georgia” on the spot – though she didn’t have any experience taking off her clothes or dancing in public.

Following a learning curve — and some very lurid details about her costumes and fellow dancers — the Atlanta Housewives star, who performed under the name “Silk,” writes that she came to feel comfortable and powerful on stage. “I felt powerful in front of those men,” she writes. “They were obviously there to see what I had, and I quickly realized that those men weren’t there to make me feel bad about myself.”

“Quite the contrary,” she continues. “They were there to make me feel good.”

Still, Leakes reveals that career as a dancer took a darker turn for a time. She quit the high-profile club after her family heard about her dancing and worked at a seedier establishment. “Men can do some really filthy things in the club,” she writes. “I can tell you this much.”

After quitting her job there, Leakes says she returned to another upscale establishment but eventually met her now-husband, Gregg, who persuaded her to stop dancing. “He was good to me,” she writes.

So, does Leakes regret her dancing past? Not at all. She calls the experience “the ultimate power trip,” explaining that it built up her self-esteem. “With every piece of clothing I took off, the more I got my life back,” she writes. “I worked this body like a well-oiled machine, and every movement got me closer to my goal of financial independence for me and my child.”
– Brian Orloff

Sara Jaye Weiss/Startraks

The most heavily hyped moment of the season — Sheree’s yanking of Kim’s golden hairpiece — was disappointingly anticlimactic. Luckily Thursday night’s episode was full of surprises, including Sheree’s priceless attempt to downplay wig-gate: “I did not try to pull it off, I did not want to pull it off. I just wanted to shift it a little bit.”

Here are the top moments:

1. Tania bares her fangs. Though we strongly suspect she was egged on by producers, Sheree’s willowy BFF dug into Nene and Lisa the moment they arrived at Sheree’s housewarming party — managing to be both conceited and cutting. “I’m very very tiny,” she told Nene. “I’ve got room to grow to be your size one day.” Of Lisa’s hair, she snarked, “You gotta do something with all this stuff.” Meanwhile, Sheree stood by scarfing down a cupcake.

2. Dwight’s a boob man. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Somebody get this man his own show. The delightfully camp party planner who wanted “hot dramar [sic] all night long,” for his birthday bash instructed his hired circus performers: “I want to see breastesses, melons!” But was Kandi right to be offended when he grabbed hold of hers?

3. Sheree’s housewarming hair. Discuss!

4. T-Boz! Over a sushi lunch, “No Scrubs” writer Kandi served up this season’s first bona fide celebrity cameo. The T in TLC was so amusingly shocked at the number of AJ’s baby mamas (one is her max, after all, because “I can’t deal with too many heifers”), we couldn’t help but wonder why she wasn’t tapped as the fifth housewife.

5. Kim’s one-liners. The unemployed divorcee’s declarations that, “Instead of going to the gym, I just go to the surgeon,” before having her thighs blasted with hot lasers, and “I don’t know what I paid, I just give them my card,” were designed to appall. But they also felt formulaic and fake, like Kim was phoning her role as Atlanta’s resident hot mess just to get more screen time. Still, love her or loathe her, it’s working.
– Suzanne Zuckerman

Tell us: What did you think of the wig pull? Did Nene and Lisa handle Tania the right way

Rick Diamond/Getty

The drama continues with the Real Housewives of Atlanta, both on camera and off. Despite reports that Lisa Wu Hartwell and husband, Ed, were evicted from their Atlanta home, the housewife tells PEOPLE.com, “We chose to move, we were not evicted.”

Adds Hartwell, 38, “It was decision that we made and not one that was made for us. But we were not put out.” As for the TMZ report that the couple defaulted on their bank loan, she re-affirms that an attempt to restructure the loan “didn’t work out,” but her family was “not evicted, it was a short-sell. It was not a foreclosure.”

Admitting she has felt the pressure of the recession, she says the couple and their children have moved into a new “downsized” home in a neighboring community. Scrutiny and blog buzz “make me laugh,” adds Hartwell, but it’s nothing compared to the catfights on the show.

“I’m watching like, ‘this is crazy,’ ” she says of the first two episodes. And Thursday’s follow up to the fight between Kim Zolciak, Sheree Whitfield and NeNe Leaks promises to be hair-raising. “You haven’t seen nothing yet!”

– Amy Elisa Keith

Annette Brown/Getty