Racquel Chevremont is joining the Real Housewives of New York City for season 15.
Bravo announced Chevremont will be joining the previously announced cast of Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Lichy, Jenna Lyons, Jessel Taank and Brynn Whitfield as a main cast member. Rebecca Minkoff, it has been previously reported, is also joining the cast in a friend role. RHONY, which is currently in production, doesn’t yet have a premiere date.
Chevermont, an art curator and model, is the franchise’s second openly queer housewife, following Lyons, who joined the show last season when RHONY went through a cast reboot.
“My entire adult life has been about representation and using whatever platform I have to get the voices of queer folks of the diaspora out there,” Chevremont told GLAAD when making the announcement on Thursday. “What better way to do so if not as a member of this iconic franchise.”
Chevremont began working as a model in the ’90s, doing ads for brands such as Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Fila, L’Oréal and Nivea. As an art curator, the newly appointed housewife has worked on collections for film and TV projects including Severance, Empire and And Just Like That.
As for what her joining the cast means for representation, she told GLAAD: “In the current world climate it’s important for not only our community to see themselves represented, but also for the world to get to know a queer family in a more intimate way and show that we all have more similarities than not. That queer women can be successful, beautiful and in loving relationships raising children too. That this world exists.”
Following a tumultuous 13th season that was marred by allegations of racism among the cast after the longstanding franchise introduced its first Black cast member Eboni Williams, Bravo replaced the legacy cast with a new main cast in 2022 ahead of season 14. It was previously announced the rookie cast would be sticking around for season 15.
In his recent cover story with The Hollywood Reporter, Watch What Happens Live host and Real Housewives executive producer Andy Cohen said of the work to diversify the franchise, “I’m proud of all the work that Bravo has put into making their shows more representative of the country’s demographics. George Floyd was an important cultural shift that forced us to look at all of our programming. Bravo made it a mandate to diversify its shows. I mean, they had a show, Summer House, that was like a bunch of white people in the Hamptons. Southern Charm was a bunch of white people tomcatting in Charleston. They thought, ‘Why are a lot of the shows so segregated?’ They decided that there needed to be more representation across the dial. And they did it.”