Rachel Zoe is heading into her second season of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” but she isn’t wasting much time trying to predict what awaits her.
With RHOBH Season 16 bringing some notable changes to the group, including the additions of Leah Remini and “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” alum Tracy Tutor, Zoe could have returned to filming with a carefully mapped-out strategy.
Instead, she is doing almost the exact opposite.
Speaking to Us Weekly in an interview published September 22, Zoe revealed that she is deliberately keeping an open mind about the season ahead.
“I’m kind of ready for anything,” Zoe said. “I can only control what I do, right? Not what anybody else does or says. So I think it’s just like, close your eyes and jump kind of thing.”
For a franchise where friendships can shift over the course of a single dinner, that may not be a bad philosophy.
Rachel Zoe Isn’t Trying to Plan Her Way Through RHOBH Season 16
Zoe, who joined RHOBH for Season 15, will return to a group that looks different from the one she initially entered.
Bravo confirmed in August that Remini and Tutor would join the cast for Season 16. Zoe told Us Weekly that she welcomes the new additions rather than viewing the changing dynamics as something she needs to prepare for.
“I’m all for it,” she said. “I mean, it’s just about the more the merrier. [I] love new people and you know, hopefully we can laugh a lot.”
That easygoing outlook extends to how Zoe is approaching filming itself.
Asked whether she had established any goals or intentions for the new season, the fashion designer admitted she hadn’t. There is no elaborate plan for navigating the group or anticipating how her castmates might behave.
“I just wing everything that I do, pretty much,” Zoe said with a laugh. “Especially this. I mean, it’s kind of hard to preemptively do anything with reality.”
It is a surprisingly simple answer for a show built around complicated relationships. But Zoe’s point is also difficult to argue with. No amount of planning can account for what another cast member might say, which friendships could change or what conversation might suddenly become the center of a season.
Instead, Zoe seems prepared to handle those moments when they actually happen.
RHOBH Season 16 Will Bring New Faces Into the Mix
Zoe’s approach could be tested quickly as RHOBH enters another period of change.
Remini and Tutor are expected to join Zoe alongside returning cast members including Kyle Richards, Bozoma Saint John-Watson, Dorit Kemsley, Erika Jayne and Sutton Stracke. Kathy Hilton and Jennifer Tilly are also expected back.
Zoe, however, sounds more interested in what the newcomers can add than in worrying about how they could disrupt existing relationships.
That tracks with the larger mindset she described during the interview. Zoe, who turned 55 in September, told the outlet she feels she is “probably the happiest I’ve been in forever.”
“I think I do live my life now with much more freedom in all areas,” she said.
That freedom may now be following her onto RHOBH.
Rather than attempting to engineer her second season before it unfolds, Zoe is entering it with one of the few strategies that may actually work on reality television: control her own choices, leave everyone else’s alone and see where the cameras take her.
