Any doubts that the friction on "The Real Housewives of D.C." is fake were doused this past weekend by a glass of red wine.
The Bravo series, which debuts Thursday, is highly anticipated because of the participation of Teraq and Michaele Salahi, best known as the White House gate crashers. I got a first-hand look at just how polarizing they can be when I happened to take a table next to them and other cast members from the show near the pool at the Beverly Hills Hilton. All of sudden, I felt a splash hit me -- and then another.
Teraq had flung his wine at another "Housewives" cast member, Lynda Erkiletian, and she had retaliated by tossing her Perrier in his wife's direction. Michaele quickly departed but not before asking me for directions to her cabana room. When the Salahis had departed, I asked the remaining party what had happened and was told to mind my own business.
That's when things got even stranger. A few minutes later, housewife Catherine Ormanney, a British interior decorator, plopped herself in a chair next to me and announced that her 39th birthday celebration had been ruined. She spent the next 20 minutes apologizing for the scene and blasting the Salahis.
"Being associated with those kind of folks is like swallowing a tablet the size of an orange," she said during a hilarious and sloppy late-night rant.
I suppose the antics could have been staged so the show could get some publicity in the Star Tribune. If so, well played, Bravo!
