Bozoma Saint John surprised herself and her inner circle by choosing to join The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 14 cast.
“I’ve made so many different moves in my career that I don’t think anybody could actually guess what would be next for me. Girl, like including myself,” Saint John, 47, exclusively told Us Weekly at the One Fair Wage Event at LadyHawk in L.A., hosted by Chrissy Teigen, on Thursday, September 5. “I swear to you, I know people think that I must have this grand master plan, but I’m really just driving on instinct. I’m driving on what feels good to me. And what I feel like is going to be good for my spirit, for my career, for my next steps, for the foundation.”
Noting that she’s “always been a champion of diversifying spaces,” Saint John saw the chance to join the Bravo family as a positive “opportunity.” She explained: “I was like, ‘What can I add to it? What can I add to this group of women to the platform that already exists?’ It’s obviously highly watched, highly anticipated, highly fanned over. And coming as a businesswoman who has had her fair share of obstacles and struggles and hasn’t really talked about her personal life all that much, this is [a great opportunity].”
Saint John is known for her work as a marketing executive at companies such as Uber, Apple Music and PepsiCo. She previously served as the Global CMO at Netflix and Endeavor and published her memoir, The Urgent Life in 2023. (She shares a daughter, Lael, 15, with her late husband, Peter Saint John, who died in 2013 after a battle with cancer.)
Bravo revealed back in May that Saint John would be joining returning cast members Kyle Richards, Erika Jayne, Garcelle Beauvais, Dorit Kemsley and Sutton Stracke for the new season of the reality show, which premieres later this year. Kathy Hilton and Jennifer Tilly are also set to return as “friends” of the cast.
“There’s a BADASS in the HOUSE! 💎,” Saint John captioned her May 22 Instagram casting announcement post.
Ahead of her Bravo debut, Saint John told Us that she’s received advice from some of her fellow Housewives. “I’ve known a few of them. And so, they were just like, ‘You’ve got to come and have a good time, get to know a group of women that you know you don’t know before that you can bond with, you can give advice to,’” she shared. “And I think, as an adult woman, sometimes it’s hard to make new friends. It really is.”
As she went into filming RHOBH season 14, Saint John said she “really wanted to be open to the experience and get to know people for who they are, not by what anybody has ever said about them.”
Saint John also revealed that she’s a big fan of another show in the Real Housewives franchise: The Real Housewives of Dubai. “[Chanel] Ayan? Fabulous! Her looks? Come on! Nobody, nobody can compete. I’m not even competing with Ayan,” she gushed. “Like I’m not, I’m not. I’m just trying to come into second place. You know what I mean?”
She went on to joke: “There’s room for both of us [in the franchise], but she can have the crown. I’ll give it to her easily. No problem. I’m not even competing. It’s fine. It’s totally fine.”
In addition to being a RHOD fangirl, Saint John is also a self-declared “champion of equal wages across every industry.” She was one of many celebs, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Keegan Michael Key and Ike Barinholtz, who helped highlight the need for higher wages and improved conditions for service workers at Thursday’s One Fair Wage Event.
“In this space, especially for service workers in these industries, I can’t imagine that we still want to be in a place where we’re paying such low wages that people have to depend on tips in order to live and barely that, you know?” she told Us. “And so, I think it’s just about time that we raise the wage and allow people to actually have a good standard of living and also keep the tips.”
