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Luann de Lesseps is looking back on a memorable moment from the early years of The Real Housewives of New York City.
During an appearance on the podcast The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show, the Bravo star shared her thoughts on a scene from the season 2 episode “Hamptons Retreat… But No Surrender,” in which she orders dinner for her two children, Victoria and Noel.
It’s a moment from the show she thinks caused a misconception among fans.
“Well, you know, what people don’t realize about me is that I’m down to earth,” she said on the podcast, released Thursday, Sept. 18. “I’m not this ‘countess’ that they built up ordering pizza.”
In the 2009 RHONY clip she’s referring to, she calls for delivery, asking, “Can I order two large, plain cheese pizzas? That’s it. The name is Mrs. de Lesseps.”
“Countess!” she then clarifies, as her teenage daughter looks up, seemingly embarrassed.
“Remember that famous scene?” she asked the podcast’s hosts, Lauryn Evarts Bosstick and Michael Bosstick. “They couldn’t get de Lesseps right. They couldn’t get Luann right. So I finally resorted to ‘countess.’ Like, they’re going to know what a countess is. I mean, I didn’t know what a countess was.”
“I think that’s what’s so endearing about you though, and why it did so well on the show,” Lauryn observed.
Andrew Eccles/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty
When RHONY premiered in 2008, Luann was married to first husband Count Alexandre de Lesseps, with whom she shares her two children. The French aristocrat filed for divorce in 2009 after 16 years of marriage.
The RHONY alum also brought up an infamous season 1 moment in which she called out fellow cast member Bethenny Frankel for introducing her to a driver as “Luann” instead of “Mrs. de Lesseps.”
“I just moved from Europe. I mean, I was always referred to as ‘Mrs. de Lesseps,’ right? I didn’t ask for ‘countess,’ but ‘Mrs. de Lesseps,’” she said.
She added, “It just was what I was used to. So, you know, I have a lot of people that love that about me and then people that hate it, right? Because they think that I’m trying to put that person down. It’s not about that. It’s about how I was raised as a young adult in Europe.”
The TV personality and cabaret star appeared on RHONY’s first 13 seasons, and has also starred on the spinoffs The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip and Luann & Sonja: Welcome to Crappie Lake.
