*We spoke to Dr. Wendy Osefo about Season 9 of “The Real Housewives of Potomac” and celebrating new milestones in her personal life as she enters an exciting new chapter.
The award-winning Nigerian-American media personality also returns with brand-new episodes of her YouTube series “The Dr. Wendy Show,” which features guests comedian Jess Hilarious, Gia Peppers, Happy Eddie, LaTavia Roberson, Antjuan Seawright, and most recently White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Full of engaging, must-see moments for your viewing pleasure, the 30-minute show features new episodes each week on Mondays at 4PM ET/3PM CT.
As fans dive into Season 9 of “The Real Housewives of Potomac,” Wendy remains a standout, breaking stereotypes and providing strong representation for Black women in academia.
The new season premiered on Sunday, Oct. 6 with returning cast members Gizelle Bryant, Ashley Darby, Karen Huger, and Mia Thornton. They’re joined by first-time ‘Wives Stacey Rusch and Keiarna Stewart, as well as returning friend Jacqueline Blake and new pal Jassi Rideaux. You can stream episodes on Peacock.
This season, Wendy is embracing new experiences as she approaches her 40s, and introducing viewers to her various businesses, such as Happy Eddie Cannabis Brand, Onyi Home Essentials, and the novel Tears of My Mother. Check out our Q&A with the multi-talented professor below.
I feel like 40 is something that you probably thought about when you were younger, but now to enter it is completely different. For me, I feel like anytime a new milestone hits, whether it’s a milestone birthday or just a life milestone, it lets you reflect and think about the things you want to do differently, but it also gives you a new chapter, a fresh new page of possible goals and things you want to achieve. So, for me, 40 has been so enlightening. I feel so liberated. I feel that I know myself more than I’ve ever known myself, and I think that shows when you’re watching this new season of Real Housewives of Potomac. You’re able to see me let my hair down, have fun, be super confident in everything I have accomplished, and also super excited about the things I’m looking to do in the future.
I’ve been on the show for five seasons, and this is the first time we’ve ever celebrated my birthday on camera. I’ve usually been able to sneak away during filming and do something privately with my loved ones, but now we go on a cast trip during my birthday. It was different because I’m rooted in family, and I’m rooted in surrounding myself with people who’ve known me for so long. So, that was different for me, but it was also exciting. I think that it encapsulates what it means to be 40, which is trying new things, trying new adventures. So, celebrating my birthday on camera, although something different from the past, is something that I embraced this season because it allowed the viewers to see who Wendy is when it’s her birthday.
I love holidays. I feel like I’ve passed that on to my kids. I make every holiday super special, and I always tell my kids that the best and the biggest holiday is their birthday. You guys see me doing that, making my birthday something larger than life.
Being an entrepreneur is something that you often see people talk about, but once you do it yourself, it’s a whole different monster. This season, you guys will see me juggling multiple hats, but doing it my way. Before getting into the entrepreneurial lane, I worked as a professor for so long at my prior university. However, since stepping down from that position, it’s allowed me to give more time and attention to the things I’m passionate about. I’m an investor in Happy Eddie, which is a cannabis company that my husband founded. It not only works to ensure that people who want and have access to cannabis are able to do so, but they also have a social justice lens, making sure that individuals who were criminalized for cannabis in the past are now able to get their records expunged.
So working with my husband on that venture is something that I’m super excited to do. I have the Dr. Wendy Show, which is in season two. I was able to dig deeper into the show and frame it in a way that allows me to get conversations going around topics that are near and dear to my heart. We are in an election year. I interviewed Karine Jean-Pierre, who’s the press secretary of the White House. My interview with Jess Hilarious was just released. I still have my Home Essential line, Onyi Home Essentials, which is something I’m still super excited about and deeply passionate about. And that has all of your home essential needs from candles to hand lotion to room diffusers. And most importantly, I’m a mom and a wife.So this season, you guys get to see me juggle all of those things. I think what makes it different is that I do it my way. I’m able to devote the right amount of time and attention to the things that are near and dear to my heart.
When I started Dr. Wendy Show, it was something that was a jump-off point from my professional career. I have been a political commentator for more than 10 years now. I wanted to make sure that when I started my show, I spoke about topics that were of interest to me, topics that I find myself in my social circle looking to find more information about. Sometimes those conversations are very delicate and it takes a lot of nuance to be able to navigate them.
I want the Dr. Wendy Show to be able to tackle hard topics but do it in a digestible manner for viewers. Being in the political arena, I know that politics is something that is often very complicated for people and they don’t either want to talk about it or they may not deeply understand it. I wanted to make it such that we can talk about politics and people understand why it impacts their community.
My show is rooted in deepening the conversation, making sure we are thinking critically about important topics, but doing it in such a way that’s palatable for all viewers, whether they have experience or knowledge in a subject matter or not. That’s what the Dr. Wendy Show is. As we are now in the second season, we are having deeper conversations about topics that matter and impact people.
In my interview with Jess Hilarious, we talked about motherhood and what it’s like to be a working mom in a society that often makes you feel like you have to pick between motherhood and career. And with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, we talked about the importance of the 2024 presidential election, but also the importance of being civically engaged as a whole. So for me, these are the types of topics that I often yearned for when I was younger and I felt like I didn’t have the resources or the platforms to provide me with these conversations. I want to make sure that my show can do just that.
I think it’s important that all of us are politically engaged. And being politically engaged doesn’t just mean voting in the election for president. It also means knowing who your congressperson is, knowing who sits at the head of the educational system, who’s the school superintendent. Because the truth of the matter is that we engage more often with local politics than we do with federal politics. For any of these presidential candidates to be able to effectuate change, they need the power in the Congress, and we also vote for that too. I think it’s important for people to understand how the political process affects them. If you don’t like the way your garbage is taken out every day, that’s a local election. If you don’t like the way your school system handles certain topics within the classroom, that is a local election.
The importance of being civically engaged doesn’t only run from the top, but it also means that we have to be civically engaged even when it’s not an election year. Because some of these elections that matter the most to us happen during the midterms, and those are not federal elections. I think it’s important for people to know that these elected officials are not only passing policies for you but also for your loved ones. If you care about the ways in which your loved ones are going to live, whether that’s healthcare, education, or any other civic duty, then I think it’s important for us to all be engaged in some capacity.
I think if we look at it from a surface level, I was the first PhD holder to be cast in the entire franchise. That’s not just Potomac, but that’s all of the Real Housewives. After I was cast on the show as the first PhD holder, and also the first Nigerian ever in the franchise history, you then saw a trickle-down effect. You saw Real Housewives of Dallas, which is now no longer on air, but they cast Dr. Tiffany Moon. Then you saw Real Housewives of Miami, then they cast Dr. Nicole Martin. There became this trickle-down effect after I was cast, and it was successful to show women who are not your traditional housewives, but who also can be professional women as well. To me, that’s important, because even the women I named, they’re not Black women. To be a Black woman and to be able to change what people view as a traditional housewife is something that is not lost on me.
I’ve had people reach out to me, DM me, or when they see me in public, they’ll say, because of you, I went back to school. That’s what matters. Oftentimes, reality TV gets a bad reputation for showing things which are not necessarily the most positive, and I get that, and I understand that. However, when you can represent a certain swath of Black women who are not traditionally seen in reality TV or mainstream media, I think there’s power to that. I think there’s power to show me and my Black family.
A lot of times, even if you look at my franchise, you have people who are married, but they’re in interracial relationships. I know growing up, I always wanted to see someone who looked like me and represented me. We could take it deeper, not just my Black family, but my dark-skinned Black family. I think that there’s power in showing beauty and success in Black people because we often don’t see that. The media has this tendency to portray us in a certain way, and media is powerful. If you look at someone who resides in rural Iowa, who may have never had an encounter with a Black person, but they often watch Bravo TV, then you have to understand that the ways in which they think about Black people is rooted in what they see on television. Understand that me being on TV as a woman who has a doctorate, who’s married to a Black man, who is an attorney, who has little Black children, that’s powerful.
If nothing else, I think that once I am no longer on this show or no longer on that platform, that will be one of my greatest legacies, was to show Black family in a positive way.
My kids are my greatest gift. I may have these professional accolades, but my greatest accolade that I will always hold to the highest are my children. I want to make sure that they are able to not only know who they are, but also know where they come from. My Nigerian heritage is something that I hold near and dear to me. In one of the most recent episodes, I think it was episode three of Real Housewives of Potomac, you see me, my daughter, and my mom cooking a traditional Nigerian dish of yam porridge with stockfish in the kitchen. When I posted it on my social media, I had so many Nigerians and kids from African descent saying, this was so relatable…and there’s power in that.
I want to make sure that my kids have a positive outlook from this experience. Even when it’s time to film, I always ask them, do you want to? And if they say no, I’m like, okay, go downstairs. I want this to be positive for them. I don’t want them to look back on this time and say, I remember when you did that and we didn’t like that. They still love everything that comes with the Real Housewives of Potomac. They still love the fact that they get to see what they look like a year ago. It’s almost like a memory book. I think for me, making sure that I talk about my Nigerian heritage and also instilling that in my kids is something that is a priority for me because I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for my Nigerian upbringing.
I speak the language, I eat the food, I’m deep in the culture, and I know that my children are a generation removed, but as much of that culture that I can instill in them, whether that’s through the platform of the Real Housewives of Potomac and them having those core memories that they watch back from years to come is something that I try to do.
Tune in to “The Real Housewives of Potomac” Sundays at 8/7 c on Bravo.
