As Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Angie Katsanevas descends the staircase at her flagship Lunatic Fringe salon, the orchestra strikes up: blow dryers blasting their shrill hum, wash basins projecting the splash from their faucets, the static sound of combs teasing hair, and the cacophonous symphony of gossip rising from every chair and station.
Katsanevas—or Angie K., as she’s known to Bravo fans—waves as she takes my arm and teeters down the steps in her sky-high heels.
One woman, hair sopping wet and cloak still over her shoulders, darts over to introduce herself. A man I’m told is one of the first stylists she hired when the salon launched three decades ago delivers a business update. Clients, some of whom predated Katsanevas’ fame and others who were there precisely to sneak a selfie with the star, all beam at her.
This is reality TV’s version of Hello, Dolly!. Katsanevas has returned to the business that is its own supporting character on RHOSLC and subject of some of its most viral moments, smiling and nodding at the patrons and employees who are the bustling fruits of her labor.
Katsanevas is also the guest on a new episode of Obsessed: The Podcast. Watch the full episode here or below.
It’s been years since the maestro-of-memes Real Housewife has been behind the chair. Though, with the jet-black waterfall cascading down her back without a strand out of place, she is still revered as an expert—and, now, a brand partner with styling-product company Kérastase. And, of course, she loves doling out hair advice.
She’s several times now, over the multiple occasions we’ve spent time together, talked me out of dyeing my grays—“You’re a silver fox with a baby face!”—and has a dream of giving Andy Cohen a haircut during his Watch What Happens Live talk show. “Though I have to say, I’m loving his long hair right now.”
Then there’s one of her most iconic Real Housewives lines, a quip that leaped from the Bravoverse directly into the mainstream’s internet culture lexicon: when she insulted castmate Britani Bateman by saying she has “high-body-count hair.”
When I quite gayly mentioned the Helly, Dolly! vibes of the scene I had just witnessed, Katsanevas was oblivious to the reference but adored the quite accurate connotation: “When someone says, ‘Well, what do you do for the salon now?’ I joke that I’m the Walmart greeter.”
We proceeded down another staircase to a quieter room, one that, no one thinks to prepare me for, features a centerpiece wall of wigs. “Oh, isn’t this hilarious,” Katasnevas laughed, noticing my startled stare.
I was in Salt Lake City to interview the Real Housewives at the places where they live and work (and drink and fight).