The Eileen Davidson Agreement is signed for Amanda Francis and the mood is somber. Photo: Griffin Nagel/Bravo
This week on our favorite show, “Rich Women Doing Things,” wealthy women did different things. Out of five black cars parked in a palatial driveway, they walked to the Range Rover, but since they had the keys to the G-Wagon, they had to get in the G-Wagon…oh, who are we kidding? That’s not possible this week. I have to talk about Amanda Francis. That’s all I want to do and that’s what you all came for. Since her debut on the show, she has pushed the limits of the Eileen Davidson pact in the same way that Gwendoline Christie tries to fit into the youth box. This woman. This woman wears a Chanel backpack, orders a ceremonial matcha, and is covered in fashion labels. I can’t stand her and the fact that every item of clothing she wears has LV on it. To paraphrase European aristocrats, even casting directors at Louis Vuitton and Bravo make mistakes.
Before we really tear Amanda to shreds, there’s a story I’ve been wanting to tell since episode two. This happened when I was reviewing Season 4 of Selling Sunset. Amanda appeared in episode 5 when Davina Potratz tried to sell her house. Amanda is good with money, so she wanted to set a higher price than the market could bear. Jason Babenheimer told Amanda that he had redone his new home, but had made it too much to her standards, making it difficult to sell. This is what I wrote in 2021: “This house has marble walls and a bar with a neon sign that says ‘Vibes.'” That’s all you need to know. If anyone is wearing a flower crown and drinking rosé at Coachella, it’s this house. It’s avocado toast at home, and I’m sure the driveway is paved in millennial pink. ”
Amanda didn’t like me making fun of her house. In fact, she sent me a DM on Instagram expressing her dissatisfaction. “What do you think about neon signs? ….and yes…it was sold furnished. The new owner just happened to like the sign. LOL” Congratulations, Amanda, you’ve found someone with as bad taste as you.
The reason I tell this story is to show that Amanda Francis has no sense of humor about herself. When she walked into a desert coffee shop and ordered a matcha tea with half oat milk and half almond milk, she meant it. She died under really serious circumstances and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem with Amanda Francis. Paranoia is usually a great personality trait for Real Housewives, and all good housewives have a healthy dose of paranoia. But it’s not fun for Amanda to do it. Because there is an equal amount of thirst. Is she so concerned about being liked and being right that she DMs a reality show executive at the bottom of the media food chain to try to get him to understand? Also, if she’s so annoyed by jokes about her own neon sign, just wait until the reviews start pouring in for her appearance on this show where she’s a main cast member.
The women are very skeptical of Amanda. In the opening scene, Boz makes fun of his job, saying that if someone is teaching others how to make money, he could have made more money at a regular old job. “If I could roll my eyes at Amanda more, I would,” Boz says. Rachel says she doesn’t know if Amanda is real or not. But I don’t think there’s any unknown depth to Amanda. I think this is her, and I believe she is. She embodies the basic idea of what a rich person looks like and fakes it until she makes it. Rachel and Boz are also right that she brought up Sutton and Avi to score points or cause drama. She’s so greedy and innocent that we can’t even plot against the women until we see all the puppet strings she’s trying to pull.
Her next trouble comes when all the women go to Rachel’s house, which has no electricity, for a tarot card reading party. Dorit brings out her new Mini Kelly, but it’s not a new AI-powered home assistant. It’s one of those stupid bags that everyone has that won’t clasp shut. Dorit says she has a book deal, and Erica asks if she has a co-author who is as good-looking as her. Dorit said, “No, that doesn’t exist in the universe and I never tried.” Dorit says they formed a mother-daughter team instead, but I have no idea how this would work. How will she get an interview from two people? Who decides what questions to ask, who decides what to write? And more importantly, who decides when to tell Dorit to shut up, that this conversation was only scheduled for seven hours and she’s had 18 days gone by? A perfect one-upper, Amanda tells the ladies that she doesn’t use a ghostwriter. She just sat down and started writing. Well, good for you, Aviva Drescher. Anyway, Amanda brings it up again and pretends to be curious, but really it just makes her realize the difference between other women who used ghostwriters and herself who didn’t but should have.
Once Amanda was gone, the women said it was strange that she had said that. Although Erica hasn’t written any books herself, she is a New York Times bestselling author. She doesn’t mention my name, but I’m certainly there in spirit. Rachel says she’s been a NYT bestseller twice, but that’s not her second bestseller. That’s a statement of fact to prove that Amanda has no idea what she’s talking about. Dorit makes a good joke that for someone who claims to be a writer, Amanda certainly doesn’t know how to read a room.
The party progresses and Sutton tells Jennifer Tilly that he is offended by Garcelle saying that she knows why she is not friends with Sutton. They make up and that’s it. It’s cute though (blows endless raspberries). Amanda then sits down with a tarot card reader and asks him if he is also a medium. Tarot card readers sometimes say, but she can’t predict it. Amanda wonders if he knows something about her, but the medium says no. This was very annoying to me. It’s like when you go to a restaurant and ask if they have whiskey, and they say, “No, we only have beer and wine.” And I said, “Okay, but I’d like to drink some whiskey. Do you have any?” No, sister! They just said they didn’t. Are you listening? It’s not all about what you want at this particular moment.
Amanda asked because today marks the third anniversary of her son Zion’s death, after he died just a few days after he was born. She talked to Kyle about it in the car on the way there, but says she thought it would be a good distraction to be with her friends. But did she feel that way? Of course, losing a child is a tragedy, and I don’t mean to underestimate the grief that Amanda experienced that day, or every day since. But there was something about her behavior and the way it was edited that made her seem like she was walking around the party with a sigh, hoping someone would ask her what was wrong and they could talk about it. I know she’s upset, I know she’s sad, but if she wants to talk about it, please do. Just tell me you’re sad. Why keep waiting for that to happen?
That’s exactly what happened at the dinner table when Dorit brought up that Amanda had an opinion about Dorit saying shit about PK (the mustache that grows on the inside of the lips instead of on top) during their divorce. The point of this fight is that both are wrong, both are terrible, and both are terrible. Although Amanda didn’t actually say this, she repeated it at Kathy’s dinner, she just parroted what Kyle said and took it as her own. These are Kyle’s feelings mirrored by Amanda, who desperately wants to be in the group more than a neon sign that says “Vibes”. Was Dorit right to go after her? Probably not.
Still, when Dorit raises the issue over dinner, Amanda says, “Zion passed away three years ago today. I’m holding my own.”
Kathy Hilton asks, “Is that your dog?”
“That’s my son,” Amanda replies.
Then Kathy says, “Your… your… your son!” Oh, Kathy Hilton. Never change it.
I have so many feelings about all this and I don’t know which one is right. If Amanda was really that upset, she didn’t need to go to dinner. Boz is in the middle of IVF and just had his eggs collected, so we’ll have to talk about it sometime, but that day isn’t today, so he opted out. But I think Amanda chose to be there because she wanted to make a movie and maybe take it in front of the camera. Also, she’s using it here as a kind of trump card. Now that she’s leaked the news, they can’t confront her and she’s getting paid to attend this dinner. What matters is that Dorit challenges her about it and Amanda talks about it. But mentioning the death anniversary not only declares that you don’t want to talk about it, but also undermines what the show is supposed to be about. She is rewriting the rules as she declares victory.
Of course, Dorit is surprised and says they can have this conversation again, but then she rushes right ahead like Fritz’s bumper car and asks him again without even asking if he wants to continue talking. Amanda is wrong on many counts and I question her motives, but Dorit should have stopped it there. After limping a few times, Amanda got up from the table and said she wanted to go home and cry with her family. I mean, yes. What are you doing here anyway, young lady?
As Amanda waits by the front door (she drove, so it wasn’t an Uber or anything), the girls convince Dorit to come apologize. She is sincere and kind and tries to wipe the tears from Amanda’s eyes. Amanda asks him not to touch her, but Dorit says it was just a kindness. What is this? Severely off? Are they just trying to outdo each other in front of Rachel? Amanda says she should have ended it there when she told Dorit about her son. “I told you the child was dead and you kept going,” she says. She’s not wrong, but is she right? Amanda heads to her Porsche in the driveway with the top down, pulls the car out of Rachel’s driveway, and drives down a straight boulevard in Beverly Hills. She felt the air moving through her hair, drying her wet face, washing away the powder of all the stars in the sky, turning them into perfect little glowing spheres. All she feels is a sense of loss, but knowing that she has been exonerated and retreated makes her feel a little bit of a victory.
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