‘RHONY’ Star Luann de Lesseps Begged Bethenny Frankel for $6M Before Second Intervention

Luann de Lesseps was in over her head trying to buy a $6 million mansion before the Real Housewives of New York City star’s friends staged a second intervention.

In Wednesday’s all-new episode of the Bravo series, de Lesseps met up with Housewives Bethenny Frankel and Sonja Morgan, new “friend of” Barbara Kavovit and another close friend to thank them for convincing her to return to rehab in July 2018.

While the former Countess had previously been sober for a few months following her first court-mandated stay in rehab, predicated by her 2017 Christmas Eve arrest, a legal dispute with her children about the ability to sell a home sent her into a tailspin.

“I had been sober for months, and gradually I had a glass of wine here, a glass of wine there, and then having this lawsuit with my kids was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she confessed. “I polished off two bottles of Rosé and that still wasn’t enough.”

It wasn’t long before her friends realized something was up when she began begging them for $6 million to buy an 8,000-square-foot mansion in upstate New York, Kavovit revealed, asking, “Who does that?”

“That night on intervention weekend, there was an emergency,” Frankel added. “Luann had been making a lot of irrational financial decisions. Then she got mad at me, because she was telling everyone, ‘Oh Bethenny is a bad person, she won’t give me $6 million for this house.’”

The cabaret star, newly sober for 55 days at the time of filming, backed up her friend’s claim.

“Believe me, I called everybody I knew for $6 million, and there weren’t many on the list,” de Lesseps admitted. “And [Frankel’s late boyfriend Dennis Shields] was one of them.”

“I wanted that house more than anything,” she added to her friends. “I would have sold my soul at that point, that’s how bad I wanted it.”

Once the women realized de Lesseps had fallen off the wagon, Kavovit seized power of attorney for her friend, while Frankel began to block calls and emails going out from de Lesseps.

“We all realized enough was enough,” she continued. “If Luann refused to get help, we were literally going to strap her down, put her in a car and bring her to rehab. She had no choice.”

Luckily, de Lesseps explained the second stay in rehab, while brief, helped re-center her: “I had to relearn in rehab the second time around that alcohol was a power greater than me.”

The Real Housewives of New York City airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.

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