Reporting Live from the Front Lines of Bethenny Frankel’s TikTok

“I don't really have much to lose. I hope she doesn't sue me for this.”

Evan’s TikTok. Photo: Screenshots.

I miss my life before I knew who Bethenny Frankel was. I hadn’t watched The Real Housewives of New York yet, a holy text,¹ and I vaguely knew of someone who made a lot of money taking artificial sweetener out of a margarita. As a housewife, Bethenny was intense and erratic, reliably ferocious, but never insincere. There was something about how regularly Bethenny hung out at the extremes: she had the worst divorce and the biggest business and the cruelest fueds and the closest friendships. She never did anything halfway. She’s off the Bravo but very on TikTok. The comedian Evan Lazarus, a friend of the letter and host of the Girls Rewatch Podcast, reports live from the front lines of her account.

What can be said about a personality so big she left reality TV only to return to it when she got bored just being rich without an audience? “Well, I’ll give it to her,” Evan told me on the phone one recent afternoon. “She’s fairly fascinating.” We talk about Bethenny’s TikTok, Evan’s observations, and how getting a compliment on the Influencer Snark reddit feels like an EGOT.

@elaziee#bethannyfrankel #bethennyfrankel #nycinfluencer

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Hunter Harris: What’s your context for Bethenny Frankel? Was it through RHONY?
Evan Lazarus: I knew of her from The Real Housewives of New York City, but honestly more because I’m from the New York area and she’s always kind of an omnipresent [figure] in the New York area. I’ve only watched a very small amount of RHONY, but the moment she started posting it on TikTok, I truly became obsessed with her. I remember spending 30 minutes in Uber six months ago going over every single video with my friends. At some point, they had to tell me to stop talking because I was verbatim quoting her videos because they’re all so uniquely funny, and she speaks in such a poignant way. She was talking about, what was it? It was some low-end hotel chain, and the way she just spoke about it with slight vitriol, but also appreciation about the brand, was just so captivating.² Honestly, I’m more of a TikTok fan of hers than I am a reality TV star fan of hers.

Tell me more about those first videos you saw that captivated you so.
I actually never got any of her really popular videos [on my For You Page]. Any of the videos where she’s talking about something really topical, like the drone videos, never ended up on my FYP. The drone videos never ended up on my FYP. I searched them out for myself. What I was always finding was her eating caviar on the most random substances you could ever think of or her Handbag University. I was very much into her series or anything she was reviewing. If a video had 5,000 likes, it would end up on my free page. If it had 100,000 likes, I would never see it at all. I’ve always known her for her smaller, more niche work.

[Laughs]
I don’t think there’s a specific video, but it’s just the way she talks. I truly just like her OOTDs or her Get Unread With Mes. I do like some influencers, but [many are] not as interesting as Bethenny Frankel. She’s so singularly herself.

I think hosting a show about watching HBO’s Girls, I’m always thinking about Lena Dunham and how she’s so specifically herself, and that’s where you find the beauty of her character. Bethenny Frankel is very similar. She’s so uniquely herself. I think it makes her really relatable to a lot of people, even though she’s so unrelatable, but she’s so much of herself that it’s like, “Yeah, I’m going to find a piece of who I am watching Bethenny Frankel.”

For better or for worse. She can be so candid but also so controlling. It is exhilarating to watch her misbehave, to get hot and cold. Even when she’s punching down — what’s the thing about her with the chicken salad?
Oh my god, that’s somewhat new. She reviews chicken salads. But the way she goes about it, it’s at these mom and pop chains that have been around for 80 years. She’ll go into the stores, be like, “Everyone knows who I am here,” like she’s the queen of chicken salad in any place in all of America.

@elazieeThis is how I am interpreting her text #bethennyfrankel

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They don’t need to know who she is. She’ll take personal offense to it because she’s a queen of the product of a recipe, apparently. She’ll go into these stores and she’s like, “I’ve been coming to The Rye.” There’s a place by my hometown I remember she went to. She’s like, “A little dry, a little dry. I've been coming here my whole life. I like it. It’s good. But a little bit more Mayo would go far.” She always thinks she knows what’s right for every single business.

So how did you start with your recaps?
Honestly, the day I started doing it, I just noticed I’m always just randomly making content. Whatever comes to my mind, I’ll make a video about it, for the most part. I just remember being on her page that day, and I hadn’t been on it honestly in a few months. I had seen some of the videos, but I hadn’t been on the page itself. I just remember, I was like, “This is an absurd amount of content.”

@elazieethis video is based off my reading of the sacred text of Bethany Frankil’s TikTok account #bethennyfrankel

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How many videos a day is Bethenny posting?
I’m a close watcher of many different TikTok accounts, and I’m always amazed when someone comes up with four videos in a day. Truly — four different unique thoughts?! But she’s posting: the first time was 14 videos and I was just blown away.