Reality star and businesswoman Bethenny Frankel knows the importance of a well-constructed contract -- and she recently shared it with her followers on Instagram. When she started on the mega-popular series “The Real Housewives of New York City,” Frankel wasn’t exactly swimming in cash.
"How much was my contract for season one of the Real Housewives of New York City? The contract said $7,250, which I did not dispute," she told her followers. "I was a nobody. There wasn’t a lot of money to me. All I had was time on my hands. No kids, no family, no problem."
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But Frankel did have one issue with the contract Bravo sent. "The only thing I did cross out was the thing that said Bravo would take a percentage of anything I made," she recalls. "I had nothing -- what would I care? But somewhere down deep inside of me, I understood conceptually that that was wrong, that I was going places, and I was going to do something and no one was going to own any part of it."
Frankel goes on to say that the choice changed her "entire life"--and it changed the legal practices of reality television contracts, too. "Bravo woke up," Frankel says in her reel. "They created what is now referred to by the industry as 'The Bethenny Clause', which means that anybody going on reality TV has to give a percentage to the powers that be."
"I was not a business person," she reiterates. "I read a contract. Something didn't feel right to me. And I took it out, and it changed my entire life. And it changed the entertainment industry and [its] practices. So never assume anyone is smarter than you.”
Bethenny sold her liquor brand Skinnygirl for $100 million in 2011. And Bravo didn't see a single penny of it.
