Kelly Bensimon’s meltdown: she was rocking & saying “Bethenny wants to kill me”
Us Weekly is running a mix of Kelly Bensimon-related articles both online and in this week’s print edition. This story is a mixture of both – it includes both an interview with Kelly about why she was so f-cking crazy on that trip to St. John, and they also have some interesting details about what went down behind the scenes. Like, after the cameras were turned off, Kelly went to her room and sat on her bed, rocking and telling producers that Bethenny wanted to kill her. C to the Razy. Oh, and she maybe was drunk but she definitely wasn’t on pills. So we’re left with “drunk and/or crazy” then.
On Thursday’s The Real Housewives of New York City, Kelly Bensimon attempts to explain her infamous May 20 show meltdown — but only leaves her pals even more confused.
Sitting with Jill Zarin, LuAnn de Lesseps and Jennifer Gilbert, Bensimon, 42, says she lashed out at costars Ramona Singer, Alex McCord, Sonja Morgan and foe Bethenny Frankel during a trip to the Virgin Islands because they were gossiping too much.
“From the minute we were together, it was everything that I hate – talking badly about people,” she begins.
(Oddly, she then starts gossiping about Frankel, 39: “She’s, like, a cook and everything like that, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘I mean, not one person that I know has ever hired her as a cook.'”)
“There were moments when we didn’t know what planet we were on,” says Alex McCord.
Kelly’s outbursts had viewers wondering whether she was delusional or just plain drunk. “She does seem to be a little paranoid in general,” says McCord, whom Kelly accused of “channeling a vampire.”
A source close to Kelly insists she was not intoxicated, but was lashing out after being bullied. Regardless, says a show source, “something in her snapped.”
Bensimon says she was “so over tired” and “feeling sick” when she snapped (among her quips: She called Frankel a “ho bag”). “I was drinking this wine – I never drink wine – and I was sitting in this room with these women. I just wanted to get out of there,” she says. “… It was an out-of-body experience.”
In the end, the ladies still had no clarity about what actually went down.
Says de Lesseps, 45: “By the end of Kelly’s story about the trip, I was so confused. I mean, I just didn’t get it. I had to hear the other side of the story. Kelly has a hard time defending herself… but she was so very aggressive.”
Behind-the-scenes, in conversations that were not televised, Sonja tells Us Weekly that she asked Kelly, “Do you think this is normal?” Sonja also says, “I tried to calm her.” But it didn’t work.
Continuing their fight off-camera, Bethenny and Kelly, their voices echoing through the mansion, in indulged in name-calling until Kelly fled to her room at 11:30 p.m. “Producers had to calm Kelly. She was on her bed, rocking back and forth,” says the show source. “She kept saying she thought Bethenny was going to kill her. It went on for hours!”
Deciding Kelly wasn’t in the mind-set to film, producers booked her an 8 a.m. flight home to New York – “No one thought she was stable,” says one source. One insider even suggests her outbursts were the result of mixing Valium with alcohol, but another source insists, “She’s not on drugs.”
Kelly insists the other women were “bullying” her, while Alex says “no one went after her.” Another source says: “Kelly picked the fights.”
In the end, a source says, “Kelly is hurt by how the show portrayed her. But she realizes what the show needs. They have to push it past flipping tables.”
[From Us Weekly, print and online editions]
At this point, I was going to show the new video for LuAnn’s “Money Can’t Buy You Class” single, but that sh-t got taken down off YouTube because it’s too precious, I suppose. Now I just have to talk about Kelly and how crazy she is. Personally, I think it’s a mixture of crazy, prescription medication, alcohol and delusional famewhorishness. Just my take!
UPADTE: Oooohhh, Michael K found the video! Here’s LuAnn’s “Money Can’t Buy You Class”. Epic!
