Bravo gay

BravoCon 2025 officially returned to Las Vegas, and let’s be honest — it was basically Pride Weekend for people who organize their lives around Housewives taglines.

“Things that happen to us get pushed away like it’s not a big deal,” Goode said, forcing both Booko and the audience to consider that he probably would have behaved differently if she were in a relationship with a man. She kept things calm and classy, thanking fans and reminding everyone that the charges are still allegations.

Translation in Housewife-speak: stay tuned, I’ll talk when my lawyer lets me.

Below Deck: New Destinations, New Demands, New Gay Screaming

Bravo renewed both Below Deck and Below Deck Mediterranean, sending the yachts to Thailand and Croatia.

The network describes him as “the king of controlled chaos.”

Translation: he is still absolutely going to scream at someone on camera. (At BravoCon, she also led her cast in a “Protect the Dolls” chant onstage and called on Bravolebrities to speak up for LGBTQ+ rights.) The Real Housewives of Potomachad their own float at WorldPride in D.C. And on RHOC, Tamra Judge called out Trump fangirl Gretchen Rossi for “accidentally” liking homophobic and transphobic posts and “accidentally” following hundreds of hate accounts.

Beyond Housewives, Bravo’s other franchises have also become notably more queer.

Next Gen NYC, a new show that follows a bunch of 20-something nepo babies and Housewives offspring in Manhattan, became the network’s biggest debut in years. Venus Binkley, a long-haired gay SUR-ver from Texas, has the potential to either become the show’s Greek chorus, or its biggest villain — and remember, real equality is queer people getting to be just as awful as straight people.

Below Deck used to be similarly defined by the heterosexual chaos of its crew, to the point where it sometimes felt like a (very unsuccessful) dating show for yachties who all happen to look like models.

This year, queer Bravolebs were giving Main Character Energy.

LGBTQ+ talent and audiences have been central to Bravo’s story for decades. I would consider myself pretty clued up on LGBTQ+ issues but still found the conversation to be genuinely illuminating and moving.

If this year-in-Bravo has proved anything, it’s that queer relationship drama can be as juicy, ridiculous, and bewildering as what I call “straight-on-straight crime”; cast members just need the space to create it.

In 2002, when NBCUniversal bought the network, it moved away from arts programming and toward reality shows, spawning one of TV’s most important series: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It’s hard to describe how groundbreaking that show was at the time. Despite being situated in the gay haven of West Hollywood, the OG Vanderpump Rules, which ran between 2013 and 2024, starred an overwhelmingly heterosexual cast.

The format — where the original Fab Five showed up to help straight men reinvent themselves — wasn’t just a fun gimmick; it was radical in a world where viewers weren’t used to seeing gay people in any type of leadership role. On the latest season of RHOSLC, we saw Bronwyn Newport mailing Pride flags to people in protest of Utah banning them from government buildings.

In a tearful sit-down with Booko, she explained that queer women can often be the target of unwanted advances by men who don’t take their relationships seriously and feel entitled to sexualize them. And it’s been so refreshing to see the network’s vocal LGBTQ+ audience finally be represented onscreen in a meaningful way after so many years of shaping the Bravo fandom.

But the franchise has been gradually adding more LGBTQ+ cast members in recent years, and season 12 of Below Deck gave us a full-blown queer love triangle, with Solène Favreau and Jess Theron at the center of it. Think of it as the gayest road trip in television history: cross-country drama, shifting alliances, and the kind of confessionals that will have Twitter (X?

And while the original series did cast its first “friend-of” trans person, Billie Lee, queerness was usually brought up in the form of sniggering gossip or insinuations that came pretty close to outing people. After a two-year break, Caesars Forum was once again transformed into a glittering Thunderdome of wigs, sequins, and gays taking photos with Bravo celebrities like they’re ancient deities.

Andy Cohen, naturally, descended like the patron saint of chaos to deliver the news every Bravo viewer lives for: new shows, surprise cast returns, renewals, and drama hotter than the Vegas pavement in August.

Honestly? After serving six months in prison related to a 2024 DUI case, Karen Huger returns in the midseason trailer looking reflective, raw, and ready to reclaim her throne.

Bravo teased a heartfelt sit-down with Andy Cohen where Huger reveals a more vulnerable, stripped-back side of herself.

Oh Andy, where do we even begin?