For nearly two decades, The Real Housewives has delivered more one-liners than a West End comedy night and enough televised chaos to keep group chats fuelled for years. It’s reality TV’s most enduring cocktail: high-gloss glamour, low blows and, on occasion, airborne furniture (looking at you, Teresa Giudice).
What began behind the gated communities of Orange County in 2006 has gone global -- Nairobi to Sydney, Beverly Hills to New York -- racking up 11 US editions and more than 30 international spin-offs. Now, the franchise has finally unpacked its Louis Vuitton trunks in London.
The recipe is familiar: sprawling homes, lavish dinner parties, friendships imploding over luxury canapés and shade best served with vintage champagne. But this isn’t just a cut-and-paste of previous offerings. There’s a distinctly London twist; a mix of Belgravia gloss and Bayswater spirit, with a dash of British understatement and more than enough combustible energy to keep reality TV producers busy in the editing suite.
This debut cast? Six women with “no filter,” an allergy to being outshone and absolutely no interest in keeping the peace. Many already orbited the same social circles — the cameras simply magnify those connections until they splinter. In episode one, an International Women’s Day party ends with one Housewife branded a “liar” and told to “shut the f**k up” -- and that’s before the canapés have even made it out of the kitchen.
The Standard meets the new women becoming the face of the capital.
Karen Loderick-Peace
If Housewives were a sport, Karen Loderick-Peace would be playing in the Premier League. The mother-of-three isn’t a rookie in this game, she’s already got a Real Housewives of Jersey - the Channel Islands, not New Jersey - season under her belt. But while Jersey was her “starting point”, one she’s “forever grateful” for, London is, in her words, “on a whole other level.”
For Karen, London’s Housewives moment is history-making. “I feel living in London, it’s a melting pot and we're representing London to the world,” she shares. “The Queen, Margaret Thatcher… and now the Housewives,” she laughs. “How amazing?!”
Born in Jamaica, she moved to London in her twenties to study fashion and insists she makes the best cabbage and corned beef this side of SW1. As for a home base? Take your pick. She and her husband, Jeremy Peace, former chairman and owner of West Bromwich Albion, split their time between five properties: Belgravia, Chelsea, two in Jersey and one in Staffordshire.
She’s clear-eyed about the dynamics of six strong-willed women living in each other’s pockets. “Sometimes it's like one conversation, but six different opinions. So, you know how that is going to play out, right?” For this season, her mantra -- passed down from her mother -- is to remain Teflon in difficult situations: “What people think about you behind your back is none of your business… That’s why they call it talking behind your back. It’s behind you… water off a duck’s back, 100%.”
Amanda Cronin
When Amanda Cronin first appears on screen, it’s in the opening moments of episode one — gliding in an open-top Bentley and announcing, “No cost-of-living crisis here,” before adding, entirely straight-faced, “I pretty much live next to King Charles.”
A model-turned-skincare entrepreneur, Amanda specialises in making Belgravia look effortless. She lives in a three-storey mews house following her divorce from second husband businessman Mark Daeche,and her post-divorce dating life included a year-long romance with Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley. Single for now, she still counts Housewives veterans Meredith Marks and Dorinda Medley among her closest confidantes — and Medley’s one golden rule for Housewives survival? “Make alliances.”
Her closest ally is Karen, a friendship cemented from day one. But Amanda’s enjoyed shaking up her own expectations: “I’ve gotten closer to girls I wasn’t as close to and not as close to the ones I thought I might be.” She’s keen for viewers to meet “the real me, not the one they’ve heard about. Come and sit on my couch, have a cup of tea. Get to know me.” Of course, tea with Amanda , dubbed “the longest legs in Belgravia” by the tabloids, sometimes comes with a side of viral shade. In the trailer, she tells Juliet Angus to “go back to Paddington” -- a spontaneous ‘diss’ she now fully owns. “That scene was tough. It was real… And I'm just like thrilled that's become a thing.”
Her daughter, Sofia, an artist between London and Dubai, only learned of Amanda’s Housewives role at the last minute. “I'm a bit of a head in the sand, bit of an ostrich, so I leave things 'til the last minute... and actually didn't know what her reaction was going to be -- and she said, ‘Mom, that's amazing. Go for it.’”
As for public judgement? “It's not a popularity contest, and I'm not competitive, and certain viewers will like certain characters... you know, we're sort of almost like a girl band... But you do have to be thick skinned. I mean, you can't take things personally, whether it's within the cast or with the viewers, it's not the show for you .”
Her verdict on the season: “Hold on tight, enjoy the ride.”
Juliet Angus
Juliet Angus, the group’s resident American (and Amanda’s sparring partner), is already reality-TV fluent. A Ladies of London alum, she has lived in Montreal, LA, New York and now Notting Hill with her Canadian husband Gregor Angus, who runs the royal-focused streaming service True Royalty TV, and their two children.
She’s been a fashion publicist, Meghan Markle’s stylist, godmother to Lindsay Lohan’s children and a fixture on early-2000s LA reality shows like Diva Detectives and Beg, Borrow and Deal. “I tried being an actress, but I wasn't a great,” she admits. “.... I was just really good at the real moment.”
“No one’s surprised I’m doing this again,” she says of re-entering the world of reality TV. “It’s a great opportunity. I think we’re really entertaining.” Her kids largely avoid the camera, though the odd shopping bribe has worked: “They’re my proudest achievement. Like, ‘you make me look good, you know?’”
Juliet enters a little later in the season -- “I have to make a dramatic entrance” -- and immediately hits two viral notes, which have been teased in the trailer. The first, former Ladies of London co-star and pal Caroline Stanbury (RHODubai) suggesting she needs a facelift, to which Juliet assure me, “I don't [need one]” before pointing to her face, “There's not one wrinkle here.”
The second? A soon-to-be-infamous spat with Amanda. “There's a reason the two of us are in here right now,” Juliet says, sitting beside co-star and friend Juliet Mayhew. Amanda’s dig “Go back to Paddington” was met with bemusement by Juliet. “Go back to Bayswater and Notting Hill… like, go back to your house by Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens. Like, [I’m] just living the dream,” she says. “To me, it's so archaic, and maybe because Amanda's older, that still means something. But to me that means nothing. So, I don't get it.... I just think it's hilarious that she was appalled by that.”
She’s not letting it go to waste either, even considering putting ‘I Heart Paddington’ t-shirts in production in a nod to the viral moment. “No, you have no idea. Everyone's like, 'What do you mean?' She's now making Paddington cool, because everyone's like, ‘it is cool.’”
Juliet Mayhew
In Juliet Mayhew’s Chelsea home, even the pets sound like they’ve stepped off the Globe stage. There’s Portia the dog, Gertrude the taxidermied swan, the late Hamlet the rabbit as well as her children, Ophelia and Orlando.
Australian-born and Chelsea-based, she moved to England at 12 for boarding school and has since been many things: trained actress, leather trader, interior designer, party planner. Now married to hedge-fund manager Anthony (“Tiggy”), she’s traded “riding horses bareback like a jillaroo with no shoes on” for the polished soirées of SW3.
Before saying yes to RHOLDN, the family had a “very candid conversation.” Her daughter, “my biggest cheerleader,” chose to stay off camera. Her son Orlando? “He looks great on camera and he’s following in his mother’s footsteps… he appears in a small soupçon throughout.”
Juliet believes the franchise works best when the women are “in their natural habitat… where they flourish.” For her, that’s a Chelsea dinner party, not a screaming match as fans will see unfold this season. “I don’t shout at posh parties -- or at any party,” she says with diplomat’s precision. “If someone’s triggered, they react in different ways. I wasn’t raised to do that… no judgment. People under pressure do crazy things.”
Excited for the season but naturally guarded, she admits: “As confident as I am and I'm bright and bubbly, I actually am quite private too when it comes to me. So that is being quite revealing, like putting yourself out there.” Still, she’s leaned on her friends’ encouragement “’Go and be the best you that you are’” throughout filming.
Panthea Parker
Panthea Parker moves at 100mph and expects the room to keep up. Iranian-born and London-raised, she was a Nineties fixture at Annabel’s and met her husband, lawyer Edmund Parker, at George members’ club minutes after telling a friend exactly what she wanted in a second husband. Now in north London with their three children and her son from a previous marriage, she’s RHOLDN’s unfiltered firecracker, the one you watch because anything could happen next.
She swears she meant to stay calm on-screen but emotions -- and situations between the women -- took over. “The scary thing is, this is real…”
Panthea recalls of filming: “When I came home and talking to my friends on the phone, they were like, 'Oh, please, it's not real.' I'm like, 'You don't understand. This is real. This is as real as real gets.' My husband, after like, the first month, was like, 'this is work. You have to separate it. Can you not bring it home?' I couldn't. It was It consumed me. I dreamt about it.”
Life outside Housewives is equally unpredictable and glamorous. She recently curtseyed to King Charles at a Buckingham Palace garden party, though the selfie didn’t happen; “he literally was so close walking past, but he had his guard, so I couldn't” and she’s rubbed shoulders with a slew of celebs, including her doppelgänger Eva Longoria at an amfAR gala, “I've got a video on my Instagram and she goes, ‘you're more attractive than me’. I went, 'you're so lovely'.”
Joining RHOLDN was a family decision, at least in theory. Her eldest son initially said “absolutely not,” but she wasn’t really asking for permission. After weighing the pros and cons during a three-week holiday to Thailand, she decided. “I thought, 'this is an opportunity that if I don't do whether I want to do it or not, put it aside, I will regret it', and I'm not about having regrets.”
Nessie Welschinger
The youngest of the group but dubbed “the most mature” by Panthea, Nessie Welschinger splits her time between Chelsea and the Cotswolds with her French mining-entrepreneur husband Rémy and their three children. Born and raised in London, her path has been anything but ordinary: degrees in business and music, a stint on an investment banking trading floor and now a career as a children’s cookery author and founder of the Chelsea Cake Company, whose clients include Claridge’s and The Ritz.
She also has royal credentials -- for Elizabeth II’s official 90th birthday party at the Tower of London, she baked a vanilla cake. So which was more stressful: baking for Her Majesty, competing on Bake Off: The Professionals or filming Housewives? “I’d say trying to be a professional on television and be a perfectionist is more stressful than being yourself.”
Nessie’s the self-proclaimed series “hand-holder” and sees herself as “more than a peacekeeper, maybe a mediator… a really courageous job to have amongst these kind of women.” Patience, she says, is her secret weapon: “It takes a lot to rile me up.” Her best Housewives advice came from RHOSydney’s Nicole O’Neil: “’Be honest. Just be truthful. Be true to yourself.’ And I actually must say that knowing most of the girls before coming into this show… everyone has given their authentic self. You’re going to see that very quickly.”
She’s not precious about fame either and coming under possible scrutiny from the Housewives fandom. “We got 14 new followers after the trailer. Like, get me security,” she laughs.
The Real Housewives of London will stream only on Hayu from Monday, August 18
