‘Queer Eye’s Bobby Berk Claims A ‘RHONY’ Star ‘Literally Stole’ From & Threatened Him
Interior designer Bobby Berk said he’s now hesitant about working with celebrities after a not-so-pleasant run-in with a star from Bravo’s ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’.
UPDATE: Bobby Berk never named anyone specifically during his interview, but thanks to a tweet he posted in 2014, fans have theorized that he may have been referring to former RHONY star Aviva Drescher. “Oh @AvivaDrescher, UR such a con-artist,” Bobby wrote via Twitter on September 15, 2014. “Guess I’m not the only one you F’ed over. So pathetic!”
ORIGINAL STORY: Queer Eye star Bobby Berk, 38, may not be the biggest fan of The Real Housewives. Especially after an unpleasant run-in with one of Bravo’s finest. During an appearance on The Jenny McCarthy Show on June 18, Bobby told Jenny McCarthy, 47, that celebrities can oftentimes “expect everything for free”. Bobby went on to explain that he almost worked with a star from The Real Housewives of New York City — years ago — before things turned ugly.
“I had a New York Housewife come into my store years ago in New York, and [she] was like, ‘Oh, I’m buying this new place’,” he began explaining to Jenny. “Turns out, of course, she wasn’t buying it. She didn’t even own the last one she had on the show that she said she owned. She’s like, ‘I want you to come in and design it all. I’m gonna put you on the show.’ And I wasn’t on TV yet. I still kind of liked the Housewives, so I was like, ‘Oh, OK, but just so you know, I’m not doing it for free. I don’t need to do it for free. I don’t necessarily know if the Housewives is really the exposure I want anyways, so I’ll do it for you at cost.’ And she’s like, ‘OK, OK, that works.’”
And while everything seemed to be going well initially, Bobby was sorely mistaken. “Then, her husband calls and her husband’s like, ‘No, you just really need to do this for free,’ and tried to bully me into doing it for free. Finally I was like, ‘You know what? I’m not only not doing it for free, I’m not doing it anymore. I don’t need this,’” he said. “She came into my store the next week when I wasn’t there and told my staff that I had said she could take anything out of the store that she wanted to design her house for the shoot and here was her credit card and ‘If I don’t bring anything back, if I like something, you can just charge the credit card.’”
https://twitter.com/bobbyberk/status/511633854944133120
Sadly, Bobby’s employees had no idea that he wasn’t working with the RHONY star anymore. “They gave her whatever she wanted. She cleaned the store out,” he explained. “Months and months later, there were certain things in inventory that I was looking for. I was like, ‘Hey, where is this?’ They’re like, ‘Oh, they’re at blah-blah-blah’s house.’ And you could tell by the way they paused that they knew they had f***ed up. They knew they had been scammed. Because apparently, months went by and they called and they called and they called, and when they could not get any response, they tried to charge the card, and of course, it was declined.”
Bobby went on to say that he later confronted the RHONY star about “literally” stealing from his store, but she then allegedly threatened him. “They said, ‘You know what? Then let’s go to court. This’ll be good TV. It’s easier for us just to have our lawyer deal with it than it would be to actually pay you.’”
In the end, it was a major lesson learned. He said, “If you’re somebody in this industry, I need to really know you because when I first met this person, I was like, ‘Oh, she’s great.’ But I didn’t really know her. I’m very picky about the type of clients that we work with now — especially in Hollywood.”