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Dorit Kemsley reacted to Amanda Frances‘ shady comments about her book deal after last week’s episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
As Amanda, 41, defended her comments about Dorit, 49, having a co-author and the rest of the cast shared their thoughts on about the title of Dorit’s memoir, Unburdened, Dorit accused her estranged husband, Paul “PK” Kemsley, 58, of being “ice cold” amid their split and admitted to thinking that he didn’t really want to get divorced.
“I came in, and I shared it with the girls, and I said, ‘I signed my book deal.’ Everyone, and I mean everyone, they were like, ‘Yay! Yay! Book deal! Book deal!’” Dorit recalled on the January 22 episode of the RHOBH: After Show.
But, as Jennifer Tilly, 67, noted, Amanda wasn’t so thrilled.
”It’s Dorit’s moment. It’s a little bit of sunshine that has come into her life, and Amanda was acting like she was cheating,” she shared as Dorit slammed her behavior as “unflattering.”
Then, after Bozoma “Boz” Saint John, 48, wondered who published Amanda’s book, and Dorit confirmed it was Amanda, the newbie insisted she wasn’t trying to slight Dorit.
“I didn’t mean to be shady. I was confused because I didn’t know what a co-author was,” she explained. “So I said, ‘Do you mean ghostwriter?’ And then I go, ‘Oh, I wrote my book myself,’ which I can see how that would seem like I was throwing shade.”
According to Amanda, who is currently writing her second book, she sits at her laptop and does it herself, even though it’s “so much work.”
“I still need an editor and a proofreader, and there’s still other people besides me, but I sit and write, and I love to sit and write, and I think it’s how I became an author, so it was just a new concept to me,” she continued.
Elsewhere, Erika Jayne, 54, confirmed that she, too, used a co-author when she wrote Pretty Mess.
“I’m a New York Times bestselling author. We have co-authors. You need help writing a book. It is your story, and it is your work, but you also have a professional helping you organize and tell the story. You have editors for a reason,” she explained.
In addition to needing help for clarity, Dorit said she also needed help due to her busy schedule.
“For me to be able to do it with the deadline while being a single parent, it would be something that would take me three, four, five years,” she noted.
As for the title, Sutton Stracke, 54, said she “[didn’t] understand” it, as Kyle Richards, 57, agreed that she was “not sure” about it.
“I don’t know what her book is about, but if she’s saying unburdened and she was sharing her life or her journey, I’m not sure,” she stated. “But I do wish her the best.”
Then, after Amanda joked that Dorit’s book should be called, How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Dinner Party, Jennifer reasoned, ”I think the title is not gonna make people reach for it. I think what’s gonna make people reach for it is Dorit’s picture on the cover.”
Meanwhile, Dorit revealed that it was her publishers who chose the title.
“I had a long Zoom with the publishers, and I was sharing with them my feelings, where I am, the place I’d gotten to, and I had used that word, and they came back, and they had titled it and said, ‘This is the title of your book. It so encaptures where you are,’” she shared. “So everything is born and coming from me.”
Amanda also acknowledged that it was “hard to tell a story when you’re in the messy middle,” and she added that she hoped the process would be “healing” for Dorit.
“Writing, or having someone else write, expressing yourself is very cathartic,” she stated.
During another portion of the RHOBH: After Show, Dorit made it clear that while she’d been discussing her woes with the cast, there was a “flip side” to the sad and depressing things.
“There are a lot of great things on the horizon, work-wise. Signing the book deal was definitely a highlight,” she gushed.
She then spoke of her finances and split from PK.
“I always had financial independence. However, my life was so intertwined with PK. So, I feel liberated, and I have the freedom to now go pursue things, whereas before, I didn’t,” she shared. “I’ve been very unbalanced because PK still has the power, so I can’t plan. There’s no clarity. It’s unfair. And his finances, whatever he’s doing, it’s completely disconnected from the family.”
According to Dorit, she never anticipated that PK would behave in the way he did after they broke up.
“I would have never expected that from him. Now I look back, and I think to myself, ‘Why did I not expect that from him?’ I never expected him to be so capable of, like, this ice cold cut,” she explained.
“It’s more of a game than anything. I don’t think he even wants the divorce,” she added.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 15 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
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