Many Real Housewives are known for being partiers. They “whoop it up.” They indulge in “turtle time,” do the splits as a party trick, slur suspect stories about how they “partied with John-John Kennedy and Madonna all the time, or, god forbid, flip tables.
Heather Dubrow, however, throws the parties: the posh events with eye-spinning price tags that serve as the very expensive venues for the drunken melee.
The Real Housewives of Orange County star is the aspirational ideal of the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” prototype for the Bravo franchise. Her time on the show is highlighted by the high standard she holds herself and her castmates, not to mention the real estate porn of her and husband Terry Dubrow, of plastic surgery reality show Botched fame, buying and selling their various properties worth upwards of eight figures.
Dubrow’s famous soirees act as centerpieces of pivotal episodes of RHOC, often with Bravo editors cheekily dropping the astronomical price of the event on the lower third of the screen—as is the case with the landmark Season 20 premiere of the series. Revealing how much these shindigs cost in front of a camera crew? It’s not so much bragging as it is candor, part of the gig when you’re a reality star.
“I wish I didn’t have to share that,” Dubrow told me once, while I sipped champagne with her at the Four Seasons hotel in Manhattan, where she was hosting yet another party. “But if I don’t say it out loud, [editors] put a chyron underneath [with the price]. It’s like when I build my houses. ‘How much are your cabinets?’ I go, I don’t wanna talk about that. Then ‘$200,000’ appears on screen. You know, I can’t win.”
A summer later, we’re back with flutes fizzing with champers in the same red velvet seats, gossiping about her castmates just weeks after the Season 20 premiere aired. The episode, naturally, featured an event Dubrow hosted and splurged on: a Valentine’s Day “Hearts and Heel” party where guests could enjoy a perfume bar, customize merchandise, go “fishing for diamonds,” and get real tattoos.