Luann de Lesseps is letting "pure joy" dictate her life these days. "My team cracked me up, they're like, 'It's the Lu-naissance,'" Luann quips to ET, speaking over video chat. Nearly three years after signing off The Real Housewives of New York City (though, once a Housewife, always a Housewife, thanks in part to the Ultimate Girls Trip spinoff), the 59-year-old is leaning into her pop-star fantasy full-time.
What began as a hobby ( or maybe, a storyline ) on RHONY is now a full-fledged career, with Lu selling out venues across the globe with what seems to be a never-ending cabaret tour. The latest iteration, Marry F Kill , just made its UK debut, including a first-ever festival performance for Luann at Mighty Hoopla earlier this month. "It was like a sea of people," Luann recalls.
"It was, like, 30,000 people! I've never played to do crowd that big. ..
. It was like Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ." While she wants to get back to reality TV (and has some potential projects in the works), Luann is proving that there's staying power in the kind of fame that comes from the Bravo universe, if you work it.
A new "right-hand man," Roger Dawley, is helping her "be cool" to connect with younger fans, reinvigorating her social media with hit after hit. Her TikTok presence is quite different from that of her former castmate Bethenny Frankel , who's spent most of the past month flooding her followers' feeds with videos lambasting luxury brand Chanel for not allowing her in a st.