‘Housewife’ enjoys reality of being herself
People have certain ideas about the women who appear on the long list of Bravo TV’s housewife reality shows, but it’s fair to say Sonja Morgan simultaneously meets and defies all these expectations.
Yes, the longtime cast member of “The Real Housewives of New York City” runs her own lifestyle brand, oversees a small army of interns in her Upper East Side town house and has her own signature sparkling wine line, Tipsy Girl (a venture that caused
much drama with fellow housewife Bethenny Frankel).
But she’s also a 56yearold single mother, who has managed to raise her daughter amid the swirl of cable television fame while also making her own artistic ventures, appearing in the offBroadway play “Sex Tips for Straight Women From a Gay Man” and dabbling in live sketch comedy with Improv Asylum.
Morgan is appearing, along with fellow housewife Kelly Dodd, as part of “An Evening With the Celebrity Housewives,” which comes to August Hall in San Francisco on Friday, Jan. 17. The Chronicle spoke to her from her home in New York. Q: You’re appearing at a rock club in San Francisco, but I imagine there’s not going to be much singing and dancing at “An Evening With the Celebrity Housewives.” A: No, no. It’s like a panel where we have a moderator who asks us different questions. It’s sort of cabaretstyle because the audience is right in front of us. And then afterwards, we get to meet everybody up close and personal. Oh, and after the moderator asks a bunch of questions, they let the audience ask personal questions. Those are the fun questions, actually, because you never know what the audience is going to ask. Q: Since you started doing “The Real Housewives of New York City” in 2010, everyone knows your business. What is the best and worst thing about living your life in public? A: Well, the good thing about being in the public is I’ve been able to support my charities more because of the social media following and really being able get the word out there. The bad thing is if I want privacy on a date or with my daughter, people get so excited when they see me, they can hardly keep it together. They don’t mean to be intrusive, but when they see my face they’re just like, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” They know me as the one that you most want to hang out with on the show, so as soon as they see me, they want to jump right into character. Q: How much is what we see on TV a reflection of who you are the other 23 hours of the day? A: Oh, that’s who I am. When you see me partying with the girls at 2 a.m., that’s who I am. We all have our private time, which is when you’re alone, Netflix and chilling or reading a book or gardening, you know. Everybody needs those moments you don’t see on the show because it’s like watching paint dry. Q: Has watching yourself given you cause for selfreflection or selfawareness? A: I think since I’ve been on the show, I’ve just really let it all rip. There’s no shame in my game anymore. Growing up as a young girl, there’s rules to follow to get through high school and college. Then there are the dating rules and marriage rules and corporate America rules.
Once you get up to reality TV, it’s sort of like, it is what it is. I just like to be real and authentic, and it’s been very beneficial to me and for my brand. So I’m happy with being able to be myself more so than ever. It’s not just being on reality TV. It’s also when you reach a certain age, and especially after divorce, you just come into being fully yourself. Q: How did you get into standup? A: I like writing skits and acting them out. I enjoy having fun with delivery and punch lines. I surprised myself that I could do it. I like making people laugh. That’s what I love about my show as well. If something insane (is) going down in my life, it will make somebody else forget their own pain for five minutes.
That’s why we read trashy magazines and newspapers in the airport — so we don’t have to think about the plane being up in the air. It takes your mind off your own problems. Q: What’s a typical day like for you? You have the show, you design your own fashion line, you’re a mom — how does your brain process it all? A: It’s a lot to manage. Some days I just go MIA because I have to decompress. When I’m on, I’m being pulled in a million directions, even if it’s a day with interns, where we’re trying to get a lot of things organized and done and I’m being pulled in directions by them because they’re not sure how to prioritize.
I’m a night owl. I’ll be in bed alone, like any mom, buying food online or buying clothes, reading my emails, and then I go into the design mode and be looking at, “Well, here’s my spring season.” The next thing will be the comedy stuff. I write it in two seconds if I’m going to do a little cabaret skit that I just Siri out on the phone very quickly, right off the top of my head. Because the first blush is always the best.
The offBroadway was intense. Those were ninehour rehearsal days, and just getting there for Sonja Morgan is a struggle because I don’t like to go out of my neighborhood. I had to go down to 41st Street and Eighth Avenue. The traffic was a nightmare. So I just started taking the train down there and having hot dogs. It was just like a real New York experience. It was really quite good at the end.
Q: I guess the secret with you is you just don’t sleep.
A: It’s a problem because you can’t just keep going, going, going. My trick is to take off seven or eight days and do a whole juice fast or something to stop the clock. Because if I just keep going like this, it’s too much.