This post was originally published on artnews.com
The second season of a rebooted Real Housewives of New York kicked off earlier this week, and by most accounts, the art world is well represented by Racquel Chevremont, a curator, model, collector, art adviser, and former partner to artist Mickalene Thomas.
Whether Chevremont will come to be a breakout star on the show is yet to be seen. She was introduced in scene that saw head housewife Jenna Lyons rummaging through her closet while her girlfriend’s mother—whom she has just met for the first time–looks on. (Lyons famously refuses to make her relationship part of the show’s drama, but it seems that relationship-adjacent folks and immediate family didn’t make the contract negotiations.)
RHONY fans didn’t get the chance to become too familiar with Chevremont on the season opener. According to the Daily Beast, she “is very much in line with the artsy, aspirational angle Bravo has sought after with the reboot.” However, she may be “a bit too self-aware” to deliver the drama that viewers mainline the show for.
Chevremont’s queerness struck a chord with some observers. “What I love about Racquel is that she is not just queer, she is a lesssssssssssssbian with 13 s’s,” reads a review of the first episode in Vulture. While the previous LGBTQ women on the show were “pretty, femme lesbians who wear gowns,” the review said, Chevremont “is in braids, wearing leather, and on the back of a motorcycle with her even butchier girlfriend.”
While some of the other women, like Brynn Whitfield and Erin Lichy, are caught up in familiar feuds and misunderstandings, Chevremont’s story offers a unique perspective, with the added bonus of perhaps drawing Lyons out of her shell a bit thanks to the pairs real life off screen friendship.
According to the New York Post, Bravo has a lot riding of this Housewives reboot, but it’s far too early to tell how much fans will go to love, or hate, Chevremont. But as long as it’s one of the other, the ratings should be great.