Garcelle Beauvais is outspoken, on and off ‘Real Housewives’

Viewers of “The Real Housewives” have grown accustomed to watching stars of the popular Bravo franchise battle it out over a range of topics — from the superficial (questionable leather pants, tipping off paparazzi at Disneyland) to the serious (alleged embezzlement, mortgage fraud). But it’s rarer to get cast members’ unfiltered stances on political or social issues.

Garcelle Beauvais, however, has something to say.

The Haitian actor and producer, whose tell-it-like-it-is approach has made her a standout on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” is having some of her most strikingly real moments this year after the cameras stopped rolling on the show’s 14th season.

When we speak, it’s just hours after former President Trump is declared the winner of the 2024 election, and Beauvais is audibly shaken by the news.

“I know it sounds so simple and naive, but I don’t understand how the bad guy keeps winning,” she says, choking up, her soft voice tinged with disbelief. “He told us exactly who he is, what he’s going to do, and we still vote for him. I don’t understand.”

Beauvais’ reaction is political and personal: In the wake of Trump amplifying false claims about Haitian immigrants during his lone debate with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, Beauvais posted a video to social media condemning his comments.

“Staying silent in the face of racism and hate is something that I refuse to do,” she said in the video, speaking in both English and Haitian Creole, which has been viewed more than 1.1 million times on Instagram. “The lies that have been spewed about the Haitian community — about my community — have been disgusting, deeply hurtful and dangerous.”

She sat on the video for a week, wary of the risk in posting it. “But how could I not stand up for my people?” she says when I first visit her Porter Ranch home in late September.

“I looked over my shoulder for the two days afterward, honestly. I would drive to pick up the boys or drive to go run errands, and I would look over my shoulder.”

Would she have been open to the idea of cameras capturing moments like these?

“I think it’s real,” she says. “You can’t have a reality show and not see what my reality as a Black woman is.”

She adds: “I get it — it’s entertainment. We’re glamorous, and we fight about stupid stuff. I understand that. But I also think that if it’s reality, you have to show what’s really happening.”

They are never easy, but for Beauvais, public conversations about sensitive subjects have become par for the course. Although she built a career as a model and actor in such projects as “Coming to America,” “The Jamie Foxx Show” and “NYPD Blue,” it’s on “The Real Housewives” that the 57-year-old has found her widest audience — “White women now love me,” she says. On the show, she’s brought frank, provocative discussions about race and privilege to the often shallow waters of reality TV.

“The reach of this show is so different and across the board. I didn’t realize the scope of it, of how the fans are invested. I remember my friend texted me [during my first season]. She’s like ‘You’re trending.’ For what? I’ve done so many things, I’ve worked with incredible people in the industry. But it wasn’t until this show that everything blew up.”

That being herself would become her biggest role yet wasn’t obvious at first. While she was a casual viewer of “Beverly Hills,” and she knew, to varying degrees, members of its cast, she hadn’t ever considered being a part of it. But in the lead-up to the show’s 10th season, producers approached Beauvais’ manager. He advised her not to do it, adamant that it would kill her career.

“There was still some taboo about it,” Beauvais says of actors pivoting to unscripted projects. “But when I transitioned into acting, they didn’t think models could walk and talk either.”

Garcelle Beauvais became the first black woman cast on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” “I remember before my first season aired, I freaked out. I called my friend to walk me off the ledge. It was feeling the pressure of being the first black woman — am I supposed to be a certain black woman that people want to see?”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Beauvais embraced the idea. Most of her acting jobs took her out of L.A., and she wanted a gig that would keep her around as her twin sons, Jax and Jaid, began middle school. She ran it by then-cast member Lisa Rinna and Rinna’s husband, actor Harry Hamlin, while at a party hosted by producer Mark Burnett. “I saw Harry, and I was like, ‘What do you think?’ And he goes, ‘You know, I didn’t think it was good for Rinna either, but it does what it does.’”

She joined in 2020, becoming the first Black woman to be cast on the show, and she made her debut during a trip to New York City for cast member Kyle Richards’ fashion show. Over drinks with Teddi Mellencamp, Erika Girardi and Denise Richards, a friend since their time working together on a failed ’90s TV pilot, Beauvais quickly shed any inhibitions when she revealed a dating snafu as a single parent: “Once, one of my kids found my vibrator in my bed,” she said.

“I’ll never forget her first scene [on ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’] — I never called them scenes because a scene is where they say ‘action,’” says Richards, who was in her second season on the show when Beauvais joined. “So we were about to be filming a moment. And she didn’t know that she was supposed to start. I told her, ‘They don’t say “action.” And she goes, ‘I don’t know when to go.’ I go, ‘Well, I’ve learned when you have that mic on, you go.’ It was a learning curve for us.”

Beauvais has settled in since then, opening up about the end of her nine-year marriage to agent Michael Nilon (and her revenge on her cheating ex), and calling out cast members, like when she confronted Dorit Kemsley last season for exhibiting, in her view, “unconscious Karen behavior.” It’s played to mix results with viewers. But Beauvais has learned “you just gotta keep doing you.”

“I remember before my first season aired, I freaked out. I called my friend to walk me off the ledge,” says Beauvais, who also became a co-host on the now-defunct daytime talk show “The Real” around that time. “It was feeling the pressure of being the first Black woman — am I supposed to be a certain Black woman that people want to see? I just want to be me. I don’t want to pretend.”

Sutton Stracke, left, Garcelle Beauvais and Dorit Kemsley in Season 11 of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

(Erik Voake / Bravo)

Beauvais says an unexpected bright spot has been her friendship with Sutton Stracke, a wealthy divorced woman and West Hollywood boutique owner who also joined the show in Season 10. It initially seemed like Beauvais, Rinna and Richards were poised to be a Hollywood trio to be reckoned with on the show, but then Rinna and Richards left the series. Stracke and Beauvais, who connected over their experience as newbies and single mothers, became a fan-favorite duo.

As Stracke describes it, their friendship is genuine, with the tenderness and hiccups of any dynamic. When Stracke had a medical emergency during last season’s reunion, Beauvais left the taping to be with her friend at the hospital until she was discharged, six hours later, at midnight. When Stracke was late for a recent lunch date, a peeved Beauvais stormed off upon her arrival. “I insulted her time,” Stracke says. “I understood that and I was wrong. I apologized profusely. Later, we had a laugh about [it].” And while the show has been known to end or strain friendships, Stracke is confident their bond can withstand it.

“We have never worried one day that this show would get in the way of our friendship, and we talked about it after Denise left,” says Stracke, who recently helped plan a baby shower for Beauvais’ 33-year-old son Oliver. “I just remember saying, ‘You know what, Garcelle, no matter what, we are friends, and I see us being friends for life.’ And she said, ‘Absolutely, this is just a television show. Our friendship is worth so much more.’”

Andy Cohen, the Bravo talk show host and executive producer of the “Housewives” franchise, credits Beauvais for not approaching her time on the show as a character.

“She’s herself,” he says. “I think if it was as a role, she’d be throwing wine glasses around. And that’s not who she is.

“But also I really relate, as a viewer and as a parent, to what she shares about raising the boys. And in terms of a group dynamic, she is someone who absolutely does not break a sweat when sharing her feelings and opinions, and that is the hallmark of a great housewife.”

Garcelle Beauvais, center, with Kyle Richards in Season 14 of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

(Griffin Nagel / Bravo)

Beauvais may not approach a new season the way she would an acting job, but it does require some preparation, like accruing outfits: “When I see things on sale, I grab them because I know we’re going to be doing a lot of things and you don’t have time during the season to really shop.” Still, she’s in a curious position as an actor who is taking a swim in the fish bowl at a time when the long-running reality franchise is confronting growing pains — cast members are sometimes criticized for performing for the cameras or for not having interesting storylines, a term Beauvais has come to despise.

“I hate that word,” she says. “You cannot predict what seven other women are gonna do. It’s almost like improv. You say, ‘Yes, and …’ Cameras are supposed to be following our lives. Whatever they get, that’s our story.”

With this season of “Housewives,” Beauvais’ fifth, she has had to contend with Jax’s decision to discontinue appearing in the series after experiencing online bullying. She says she struggled with how to honor his decision and guard his privacy while also making sure that it didn’t come across like he didn’t exist in her life.

“I felt guilty because I’m like, ‘I brought this onto him,’” she says. “If he wasn’t on the show, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Garcelle Beauvais has leveraged her “Real Housewife” visibility to help advance her scripted pursuits, collaborating with Lifetime on several movies as a star and executive producer. “To be in a place where I’m working now at my age, it’s amazing,” she says. “I think it shows women not to give up. It shows women that you can do whatever.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Asked if she would quit the show if her sons made the request, she says she would.

“One thousand percent, if the boys said something like that, I would honor that,” Beauvais says. “They haven’t. When Jax said how he felt, I respected that, and didn’t push him … And it’s not always up to us. Bravo has a say in who comes back and who doesn’t.”

For now, she’s got a job to do. She says she’s on better terms with Kyle Richards and Kemsley this season. “I feel that I showed up and I was engaging. I said how I felt,” she says. “Was I maybe too nosy about Kyle’s relationship? Sure, but who isn’t?

“I really came in with this idea that I was going to meet people where they’re at. With Dorit, I felt like last season, she was living in a bubble. So I met her where she’s at, and I felt like she surprised me when she came in — you haven’t seen this — and apologized to me.”

And she has continued to leverage her “Real Housewife” visibility to help advance her scripted pursuits, which this season’s premiere episode captures. She’s been involved with several Lifetime movies as a star and executive producer, including “Terry McMillan Presents: Tempted by Love,” playing a chef who strikes up a romance when she returns home to care for an ailing aunt, and “Black Girl Missing,” as a mother who turns to a community of amateur internet sleuths to find her missing daughter.

“Garcelle straddles the perfect intersection between being accessible and aspirational,” says Lifetime movie executive Karen Kaufman Wilson, who has appeared on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” when cameras document Beauvais’ Hollywood ventures. “So as a person who watches her on television, there’s a part of you thinks, ‘I can go to Zara and buy that sparkly outfit and try to find the right guy like Garcelle does.’ In terms of ‘The Real Housewives’ and Lifetime, Garcelle is very pointed about using her platform for good, talking about issues that matter to her — the Black girl missing, fighting to try to get Kamala voted into office. We get an opportunity to have conversations about creative storytelling that still stays on message for her.”

Regardless, she’s grateful about the path she’s on. As someone born in Saint-Marc, Haiti, who moved to the U.S. when she was 7, her platform now — and its potential for good, whether it’s escapism or speaking out — is a bright spot.

“When I first got into this industry, they said women over 40 are considered irrelevant or they won’t work, especially if you’re a Black woman,” she says. “So to be in a place where I’m working now at my age, it’s amazing. I think it shows women not to give up. It shows women that you can do whatever. And I also think it’s important for my kids to see that I’m realizing my dreams too.”