The local line on Bravo’s Real Housewives of Rhode Island, the 20-year-old regional franchise’s first foray into New England, was that the show would either be a boon or a trainwreck. Seven episodes in, we are here to deliver a verdict: It’s is an absolute gift. And by “gift,” we mean, it’s delightfully messy, stubbornly provincial, and deeply brunette. The rest of the world, turns out, loves it too, with RHORI’s April premiere scoring Bravo’s biggest multi-platform debut since 2024 and the network just officially renewing RHORI for a second season.
What makes RHORI so endlessly watchable is partly its beautiful, escapist backdrops. Shot last summer, season one is a dreamy travelogue of Newport’s gilded mansions and waterfront restaurants, a vineyard tour, and a polo match at Glen Farm. The show is also rife with gossipy dramatic arcs, including light polyamory and brazenly alleged infidelity.
But the most compelling aspect of all is RHORI’s colorful, uniquely New England cast—women you absolutely know if you grew up with any proximity to Rhode Island, Massachusetts’s South Coast, or, say, a Newport Creamery. Among them are: Liz McGraw, the eldest of the cast and Rhode Island’s self-made cannabis queen, who brings a strong bullshit detector and a real-life friendship with Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Dolores Catania, featured in a supporting role. There’s Alicia Carmody, a genuinely, helplessly hilarious mom, cracker fiend, and doll collector who drops malapropisms like loose change—“Jane’s Fonda,” “Epstein salts”—and speaks in an accent so thick and authentic it functions almost as a character unto itself. She’s also, underneath all of it, unexpectedly moving: she has spent years building a life with her fiancé Billy, raising a daughter, and lending herself to a restaurant named for her—Pizza Mamma—while owning none of it and coming to grips with that.
Rosie DiMare, a former Rhode Island television news anchor originally from Massachusetts, is the group’s designated outsider, a woman who arrived in this tight-knit circle having not grown up inside it and is now learning, sometimes painfully, that there are rules nobody wrote down. And then there’s Ashley Iaconetti, a reality-star-slash-influencer who found her husband Jared on The Bachelor, moved to Rhode Island for love, and is now navigating the more complicated reality of two small children, a struggling café, and a state where, as she puts it, everyone has been friends since kindergarten.
We spoke with these four to talk about representing New England, life in the smallest state in the union, and crackers.
Real Housewives of Rhode Island has put a very bright spotlight on New England. How does it feel to represent the region in this way?
Liz: I feel extremely proud because I am in love with my hometown of Rhode Island. I’ve moved away several times. There’s a magnetic quality that always drives you back.
Alicia: I am so proud of Rhode Island. I have always loved my state—that’s why I never left. So for me and my girlfriends to land this show for Bravo is wild. And the fact that people like the show is like a dream.
Rosie: I love Rhode Island. I grew up in Massachusetts, but I grew up so close to the border, I literally went there all the time—if there was a concert or I needed to go to the mall, we drove to Providence—and I’m glad that it’s finally getting a spotlight, and I’m glad that people are seeing how entertaining it is here and just how, kind of kooky it is.
(Left to right) Rosie DiMare, Ashley Iaconetti, and Alicia Carmody on the mound at Red Sox Bravo night. / Via Getty
How do you think the show has been received locally?
Liz: Rhode Islanders are the most critical of the show. If you read some of our local stuff, they’re like “What an embarrassment, trash! They don’t represent me.” And it’s only the Rhode Islanders saying it. I’m hoping they change that stance, but if they don’t, it’s okay. I am extremely proud of my state, but I don’t represent the entire population of Rhode Island—I can only represent myself: If there’s anything embarrassing that I do, it’s only on me. I don’t think it should affect whomever in Glocester, Rhode Island.
Alicia: At first everyone was like, “I want nothing to do with them”—it was almost shunned upon. But now everyone’s like, “Oh my God, we’re so happy” because they want to see it air, and they want to show the places that we’re going to be seeing.
Ashley, you grew up in Virginia, but your husband Jared is a Warwick [RI] native, which is what drew you both back to his home state. What’s been your experience adjusting to life in New England?
Ashley: I knew Jared loved Rhode Island so much. We were living in L.A. together, and whenever we visited here, I always loved it, so I was like, “I’d totally move here for you.” It’s an hour flight from my family. But what was a hard was when we started having kids: When we had [our eldest son, four-year-old] Dawson, I realized I didn’t feel like I had as much of a community here as I would have had in Los Angeles or in Virginia, because it is a little bit harder to make friends here. Everybody here has been friends since birth, since kindergarten—you don’t really ever have to make friends again because everybody [you grew up with] stays. People were not like that in Virginia.
Left to right: Liz, Rosie, and Alicia in Newport, all dolled up for an afternoon tea party. / Photo by Scott Eisen/Bravo
What sets your cast apart from other Real Housewives franchises?
Alicia: I think that we never tried to be famous. We like being from Rhode Island. I don’t think we ever thought this would happen, so we are very pure about it. And I also feel like we are all friends—we all really do love each other. We might fight and stuff, but at the end of the day, we’re all so connected. We can’t escape each other. If I want to talk shit about someone, I’m going to deal with their family and friends at the supermarket.
Liz: Rhode Island is such a tiny, tight-knit community. We don’t typically stray out of the lines, and shit catches on here like wildfire. I always thought Rhode Island would be a perfect place for a Housewives franchise because of that: How incestuous it can be, the one degree of separation, and also because of our beautiful landscape. We have a lot of hidden gems.
Rosie, having grown up in Massachusetts, what do you see as the biggest differences between Massachusetts and Rhode Island?
Rosie: Massachusetts is so much bigger. Rhode Island is like one small town that just happens to have different towns in it, whereas Massachusetts—there’s the Berkshires, the Cape, the islands, parts near New Hampshire. It’s so different. Obviously the accents are strong. But Rhode Island is very much its own place. [My husband] Rich always says Rhode Island is like Boston’s little cousin.
Liz McGraw, Rhode Island cannabis queen, hosted a Studio 54 party. / Photo by: Scott Eisen/Bravo
Liz, you, in particular, have been warmly received by the Bravo fandom. What do you think the audience is connecting to so deeply?
Liz: I think what people are most connecting to with me is maybe what gets me in trouble the most: The fact that I am super blunt and I call out bullshit. You haven’t seen a lot of that yet, but you will.
Rosie, in what ways did your broadcasting background prepare you for being on a Housewives show?
Rosie: It actually did the opposite of what it was supposed to do. When I was in [the] news [industry], it was “Report the facts, get everything triple-checked, follow your script.” I was, like, 24 years old and having to ask politicians crazy things: Why am I asking this? Because the newsroom told me to. So I’ve taken that into my adult life, and maybe I shouldn’t have done that. The last couple years I did a lifestyle show, which was a breeze, and that made me very comfortable being myself on camera—but even then, when you’re ad-libbing, you have an idea of where you’re going. And now [on RHORI], suddenly I’m thrown into a dynamic where there’s a secret language I don’t understand because I didn’t grow up with these people, and nothing I do is right. I also learned the hard way that you are not allowed to ask questions here.
“The beef is real, okay?” —Ashley Iaconetti
What’s been the most surprising thing about this experience?
Ashley: The beef is real—the beef is real, okay? It goes throughout the year. We’re not filming now and it’s happening. It’s getting worse. More intense, perhaps, than I would have assumed. I thought things could be dropped a little bit easier. I’m not saying they’re worthy of dropping—I’m not trying to speak for the others, because I’m not really involved in any of the drama. I’m just a friend of the drama, you know what I mean.
Ashley, you’ve had two separate reality TV franchise experiences: The Bachelor and now RHORI. What’s the biggest difference?
Ashley: Filming this is more… I’m more on edge every time. I’m always worried about a fight breaking out. I was relatively comfortable during the filming of The Bachelor—it was a different kind of nerve. The nerves of The Bachelor are like: “Is he going to like me?”; “Is our date going to go well?”; “Is he going to kiss me?” Those things are obviously very nerve-wracking—probably more nerve wracking, actually—but for some reason it was a more comfortable environment, because you were surrounded by people who weren’t going to pick an argument with you. Here you’re walking on eggshells all the time—I didn’t have to walk on eggshells during The Bachelor. That’s the difference.
Alicia, you’ve been refreshingly vulnerable on the show. What’s been the hardest part about sharing your personal life this way?
Alicia: [During filming] I was speaking from my heart, and after a while, I forgot there were cameras. But now that I have to re-listen to it, I’m like, “Oh my God. That means [her long-term partner] Billy’s mother knows I said that. Everyone at my daughter’s school knows how I feel. I walk in and the teachers know.” I’m literally an open book now. I feel exposed. But I’ve always been an open book, so—whatever.
“Everyone says we look alike because I used her plastic surgeon,” says Liz (right) about Dolores (left).
Liz, you and [The Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member] Dolores Catania are going into business together. Can you tell us about that? And how did Dolores guide you through the filming experience?
Liz: Dolores is truly one of my best friends in life—that’s not contrived. She is like the other half of my heart. We are on the phone together around the clock. I would have loved to have filmed more with her, just because she really understands me. We’re the closest in age—I’m much further along than the rest of my other castmates, so I would have loved to have her here more.
As far as Dolores guiding us—once we started filming, things went really fast, and sometimes there wasn’t even time to consult with her. What she brought to all of us, and it was real and probably the best advice we could have gotten, was just: Be true to yourself. And in something like this, that is the only advice you need. Was I successful at that 100% all the time? No, like, I kind of let myself down a couple of times.
As for our business: Dolores and I are a year apart and we are going through the exact same stage of life at the exact same time. I take eight million supplements a day, all natural. We thought, how much more serendipitous could it be for the two of us? Everyone says we look alike because I used her plastic surgeon. I’ll send you a photo that before I ever even met him, of the two of us together, I think we looked more alike then. We’re working on something combining things like beetroot, a natural beta blocker, something for heat, and a non-psychoactive cannabis product. It’s an adjunct to other traditional menopause therapies, and we are both so excited for it.
Jared and Ashley on the Fourth of July, in a scene from The Real Housewives of Rhode Island. / Photo by Scott Eisen/Bravo
Ashley, we’ve seen you open up this season about the challenges with Jared and the other woman in his life—[South Kingstown, RI café] Audrey’s.
Ashley: Thank God she’s a coffee shop [laughs].
How has it been watching those scenes back?
Ashley: It’s pretty reflective of life. I want people to know that Jared is an extremely involved dad. Even though he’s at Audrey’s a lot, if he’s not there, that man is with the kids—throwing them around, reading to them, playing with them. Audrey’s is just a time suck, a money suck—but that is what having a business is, especially in the first five years. You ask any restaurant owner who’s not the owner of a franchise or very well established, and that’s just restaurant life.
And how are you balancing the filming obligations with family life?
Ashley: It’s a hard, hard time. My calendar is completely full for May. But we don’t film all year round. I could never commit to something like that. So you just kind of count it down until you feel the weight lift off your shoulders. And you get through it with a lot of help—with the nannies, and Jared being here, and teamwork.
Alicia, your aunts have made a few appearances on the show and the Bravo fans seem to really love them. How do they feel about their newfound fame? They even have an Instagram account.
Alicia: My aunts are living their best life. They think they’re like 22 years old again. I don’t even deal with them anymore. I’m in a group chat and I can’t even answer them. They are actually like teenagers right now. It’s wild.
You’ve been dubbed the unofficial comedic relief of the show. How’s that feel?
Alicia: I’ve always been this way, so I guess I always make people laugh. But the fact that people love the way I say “crack-uh” is wild to me. I brought my entire life onto this show, and people want me to say cracker—and I love it, because that’s me.
But it’s wild that people are appreciating the weird things that I do. Like, [I mentioned on the show that] I ran over a woman, and like, people are like, “I’ve done this!” I’m really enjoying to hear, like, the feedback from people. I love it. I really do. It makes me feel like, “This is probably why I ran over that woman by accident”—but she dove in front of my car, I’ve said this so many times. But certain things like that—like having crackers. There’s so many people that friggin’ like crackers too. And I’m like, “Oh my god, I see you. You see me.”
Has Saltines offered you a spokesperson role yet?
Alicia: I have been talking to a few [companies].
The Real Housewives of Rhode Island airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on Bravo. This interview has been lightly edited and compiled from four conversations.
