How much do Real Housewives make? The Wall’s schedule: WTF? – reality blurred

In this edition of Ask Andy, two questions, answered: One about how much Bravo’s Real Housewives stars earn from their work on the shows, and another about what happened to The Wall season six episodes.

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How much are Real Housewives paid?

How much do Real Housewives get paid? I assume the vacations are paid for by the network, but are they paid on top of that? —Rich

Cast members are definitely paid, in addition to perks like the free travel for the annual fight-on-vacation trip.

They’re paid per episode, but how much they receive varies widely.

Imagine Real Housewives as a company: even among people in the same job, salaries may vary based on experience, or when someone was hired. Most entry-level people might make the same, while those who come in with more to offer (in this case, a name, because they’re already a celebrity) receive more money. And behind the scenes are contract negotiations that affect all of it.

Real Housewives expert and writer Brian Moylan’s The Housewives: The Real Story Behind The Real Housewives book has a lot of details, so I highly recommend it for that—and all its other insights. (Read an excerpt here.)

Brian reported that first-time Housewives receive about $60,000 a season. He wrote that a cast member who returns for a second season “will usually double her salary to $120,000. If she’s invited back yet again, her salary will be around $300,000 for the third season and then hover between that figure and $500,000 for the length of her stay on the show.”

The book was published in 2022, so figures may have changed, but the idea is the same: start low, make more over time—ideally like any job, though we all know wages for a lot of us haven’t been increasing in recent years!

The biggest stars, of course, get paid a lot more, whether it’s their first season or they become the breakout star of their franchise.

Recently, a Redditor, primal_slayer, compiled this amazing list of Housewives salaries with links to sources.

Not all the sources are primary sources (e.g. they’re not coming directly from a cast member or a court filing), so the actual sources may be questionable (Is it someone trying to negotiate a higher contract? Or make a cast member look better?).

Still, it’s quite a resource, and fascinating to compare: Vicki Gunvalson earned a reported $450,000 for her seventh season, while Melissa Gorga received a reported $750,000 for her seventh season.

Meanwhile, many in The Real Housewives of Atlanta cast were paid more than $1 million a season starting around season 12—higher than other comparable seasons in other franchises. That shows how valuable RHOA and its cast are to NBCUniversal, Bravo, and Peacock.

Of course, cast members’ pay for being filmed is just one way they can earn money from their Bravo fame, so many of these cast members are making a lot more.

Where are more Wall episodes?

Announcement

Are more episodes [of The Wall] in the can? —Marc

Some behind-the-scenes here: As Marc and other fans of the NBC game show knew, The Wall returned for season six on Jan. 5, aired four new episodes in five weeks, and then disappeared.

Marc asked this question in early March, so I reached out to NBC. A spokesperson told me: “there will be more Season 6 episodes for The Wall later this year, but no dates to share yet.”

Then—literally days later—NBC announced its new summer schedule and said The Wall would return Aug. 19, airing Wednesdays at 9.

That’s more than six months between episodes four and five! I held this question thinking I’d publish in August, before the return, so people would know.

And then, surprise surprise, The Wall season six reemerged July 20, now on Mondays at 10. If you missed those, they’re free to watch on NBC’s site.

New episodes are now scheduled through the end of August. That’d be episode 11 of season six. Season five had 20 episodes, so if there are more, we’ll see if more end up on the September schedule, or the show will take another long break.