This year, as usual, Bravo had plenty of drama to go around. We saw shocking arrests, less shocking divorces, suspected fake divorces, fake-boyfriend allegations, secret-boyfriend allegations, catfish allegations, cheating allegations (with a “Haitian mortician!”), and, worst of all, farting allegations. But there was one genre of drama that took up even more space than ever before: the queer kind.
Featuring everything from OG cast members coming out, to the most-talked-about relationship drama between LGBTQ+ “Bravolebrities,” to even genuinely heartwarming educational moments, 2025 has been Bravo’s queerest year yet. And it’s not just the number of story lines that demonstrates this shift, but the range of experiences and types of relationships that we’ve seen onscreen. We’ve come a long way from salacious rumors about Real House-husbands maybe (probably) being caught on Grindr or bitchy sidekicks playing the gay best friend role. This year, queer Bravolebs were giving Main Character Energy.
LGBTQ+ talent and audiences have been central to Bravo’s story for decades. In 2002, when NBCUniversal bought the network, it moved away from arts programming and toward reality shows, spawning one of TV’s most important series: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It’s hard to describe how groundbreaking that show was at the time. The format — where the original Fab Five showed up to help straight men reinvent themselves — wasn’t just a fun gimmick; it was radical in a world where viewers weren’t used to seeing gay people in any type of leadership role. Next came Project Runway, which made household names out of Tim Gunn and contestant turned mentor Christian Siriano. And on The Rachel Zoe Project, bespectacled twink Brad Goreski provided witty commentary as the eponymous fashion mogul — and the newest Real Housewife of Beverly Hills — built her empire.
Since it debuted in 2006, the Real Housewives franchise has overwhelmingly centered on straight women. Even so, these shows have always had an undeniably queer sensibility about them — they’re basically a real-life Dynasty where women look each other dead in the eye and say things like, “He will never emotionally fulfill you!” This likely stems from the (many) gay executive producers behind the scenes, including the franchise’s reunion host, Andy Cohen. As the Real Housewives brand expanded to different cities, we saw no shortage of gay sidekicks, such as Lisa Vanderpump’s slightly sinister “houseguest” Cedric Martinez or Nene Leakes’s one-time bestie Dwight Eubanks. And while there were some queer story lines in the 2010s, they were typically short-lived and often framed as salacious, like the alleged affair between Brandi Glanville and Denise Richards or Ariana Madix and Lala Kent hooking up on RHOBH spin-off Vanderpump Rules. In general, before Orange County Housewife Braunwyn Windham-Burke came out as a lesbian in 2020, LGBTQ+ people were notably less prominent on Bravo.
But this year was different. At the start of 2025, in the second season of the embattled RHONY reboot, there were two lesbian Housewives on the same cast for the first time ever: fashion mogul Jenna Lyons and art collector Racquel Chevremont. Each brought distinct perspectives on navigating life as a queer woman, with Chevremont, for example, sharing that her Puerto Rican mother struggled to accept her sexuality, causing their relationship to become distant. These sorts of impactful moments make it easier to enjoy the more surreal twists, like in October, when RHOM gave us the year’s juiciest (and most memeable) moment at the season-seven reunion: Julia Lemigova (wife of Martina Navratilova) revealed that she and co-star Adriana de Moura had slept together. De Moura fired back by revealing that Lemigova had been “cheating on Martina with a Haitian mortician” — an instantly canon phrase that was made to be printed on merch. And as we close out the year with the current season of RHOBH, Kyle Richards, Bravo’s longest-serving OG Housewife, has seemingly come out as bisexual. After years of speculation about a potential relationship with country singer Morgan Wade, Richards finally confirms: “I could go Brad; I could go Angelina.”
Even on the Real Housewives shows with no out queer cast members, allyship has been front and center. On the latest season of RHOSLC, we saw Bronwyn Newport mailing Pride flags to people in protest of Utah banning them from government buildings. (At BravoCon, she also led her cast in a “Protect the Dolls” chant onstage and called on Bravolebrities to speak up for LGBTQ+ rights.) The Real Housewives of Potomac had their own float at WorldPride in D.C. And on RHOC, Tamra Judge called out Trump fangirl Gretchen Rossi for “accidentally” liking homophobic and transphobic posts and “accidentally” following hundreds of hate accounts.
Click here to preview your posts with PRO themes ››
Beyond Housewives, Bravo’s other franchises have also become notably more queer. Despite being situated in the gay haven of West Hollywood, the OG Vanderpump Rules, which ran between 2013 and 2024, starred an overwhelmingly heterosexual cast. LVP’s squad of horny underlings were constantly cheating on (and with) each other, falling out, making up, breaking up, and getting into public brawls — even when they were dressed as “sexy angels” on SUR’s Pride float. And while the original series did cast its first “friend-of” trans person, Billie Lee, queerness was usually brought up in the form of sniggering gossip or insinuations that came pretty close to outing people. Now, the totally rebooted show features more LGBTQ+ cast members, which feels more representative of West Hollywood. Venus Binkley, a long-haired gay SUR-ver from Texas, has the potential to either become the show’s Greek chorus, or its biggest villain — and remember, real equality is queer people getting to be just as awful as straight people.
Below Deck used to be similarly defined by the heterosexual chaos of its crew, to the point where it sometimes felt like a (very unsuccessful) dating show for yachties who all happen to look like models. But the franchise has been gradually adding more LGBTQ+ cast members in recent years, and season 12 of Below Deck gave us a full-blown queer love triangle, with Solène Favreau and Jess Theron at the center of it. Chief stew Fraser Olender and deckie Damo Yorg were also making out. This very messy (and very gay) version of Love Island at sea dispelled any myth that LGBTQ+ relationships aren’t entertaining to a wider audience. When the basic dynamics are relatable — “Will they, won’t they?” “Do they like me back?” “How could they do that?!” — it still cuts through, regardless of sexuality.
Relationship drama is fun, but really, Bravo’s most important shift has been giving LGBTQ+ reality stars the space to tell their stories in a meaningful way — and even educate their audience. Next Gen NYC, a new show that follows a bunch of 20-something nepo babies and Housewives offspring in Manhattan, became the network’s biggest debut in years. The show stars Brooks Marks (RHOSLC’s Resident Gay Son) and model Emira D’Spain, Bravo’s first full-time trans cast member. Refreshingly, D’Spain’s identity was treated as no big deal, with no fanfare around it.
And across the country on The Valley — the Vanderpump Rules spin-off featuring a group of (unhinged) L.A. couples — Jasmine Goode was on the receiving end of inappropriate drunken behavior by co-star Danny Booko. In a tearful sit-down with Booko, she explained that queer women can often be the target of unwanted advances by men who don’t take their relationships seriously and feel entitled to sexualize them. “Things that happen to us get pushed away like it’s not a big deal,” Goode said, forcing both Booko and the audience to consider that he probably would have behaved differently if she were in a relationship with a man. I would consider myself pretty clued up on LGBTQ+ issues but still found the conversation to be genuinely illuminating and moving.
If this year-in-Bravo has proved anything, it’s that queer relationship drama can be as juicy, ridiculous, and bewildering as what I call “straight-on-straight crime”; cast members just need the space to create it. And it’s been so refreshing to see the network’s vocal LGBTQ+ audience finally be represented onscreen in a meaningful way after so many years of shaping the Bravo fandom. With troublesome duo Jeff Lewis and Reza Farahan returning to Bravo with new shows in 2026, I have a feeling that the drama — and the shade — is just beginning.
