As Leah McSweeney’s lawsuit against Bravo continues making headlines, Meghan King has offered up a reaction to Leah’s legal offense. For those unfamiliar, Leah’s main point of contention is that Real Housewives of New York fostered an unsafe working environment, especially for a sober woman such as herself.
Leah argued that these issues extended to all Bravo productions, with higher-ups pressuring talent to drink for the sake of good TV. The suit contained other claims but that was the fulcrum. So, what did the former Real Housewives of Orange County star have to say about all this?
Meghan explains her contract with Bravo
In an interview with Us Weekly, Meghan shared, “I just know that when I signed my contract to be on the Real Housewives, and I think it’s a pretty standard contract amongst all the franchises, it said very explicitly, ‘We can take whatever footage you give us and we can manipulate it, and we can splice it and do whatever the hell we want to do with it.’”
She continued, “And you have to sign your life away or you don’t sign it at all. And does that make it a fair contract? That’s a different conversation.” Perhaps signing one’s life away is a problem that should be discussed a bit further.
Nevertheless, Meghan went on, saying, “It shouldn’t be about Andy Cohen. It shouldn’t be about Bravo. It shouldn’t be about the Real Housewives. It should just be about the ethics of reality TV and what does that do for our psyche long term or royalties or whatever.”
Did Meghan ever feel pressured to drink?
As for pressures to consume alcohol, Meghan described it as “typical societal and peer pressure” rather than explicit pressure from producers.
She explained it by saying, “If I’m going to go to a happy hour with girlfriends to celebrate a birthday, I’m going to feel like I should have a drink. Is anybody telling me to, does anybody care if I do? Absolutely not. But that’s what I’m doing. That’s how I’m showing up. So I think that’s a personal willpower type of thing.”
Meghan also defended Andy specifically, recalling a time he chastised production assistants for mixing up cocktails around Gina Kirschenheiter, another sober Bravoleb.
According to Meghan, Andy told the PAs, “‘This is really important. It’s not funny that this happened.’ So what I saw is Andy defending standing up for a sober person on one of his shows. It’s [the] complete opposite of what I read.”
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