It takes seconds for them to call each other “bro.”
Alexia Nepola and Marysol Patton join our Zoom call as if already mid-conversation. The Real Housewives of Miami stars are so close that they’ve referred to each other as “Siamese twins.” Their conversations are whiplash dialogue with no interruption or pause. They complete each other’s sentences as if dishing sessions are unfolding on a single ticker tape, teasing each other, gossiping, confiding secrets, therapizing, sometimes arguing and screaming, and then cycling back to joking again.
They are “bros,” in every sense of the word. Well, as much as two Latina bombshells—Nepola’s nickname is “Cuban Barbie”—who are famous for screaming, crying, and cracking fans up on Bravo can be.
Fittingly, it turns out that I am, in a way, catching the pair mid-conversation.
“Alexia, I’m so tired,” Marysol moans. “You had me on the phone til like 2 am last night. It was 2 am and [my husband] Steve was like, ‘Are you gonna come to bed?’ I woke up at like 10:20 today. I never sleep that late.”
“I woke up at 7:00 and went to the gym,” Alexis responds. There’s a beat of silence, but anyone who has ever watched these two on Real Housewives of Miami knows what was happening: Marysol was doing one of her famous eye rolls, a gesture of exasperation at which she’s so talented she should have some sort of medal for it.
And what were they gabbing about late into the night? “Our show,” Alexia says, laughing. “Pretty much,” Marysol agrees. “About people who were a–holes and s— like that.”
“Remember, Kevin, we filmed this show last year,” Alexia says.
The “friend group,” as Real Housewives stars typically refer to the cast of women they’re contractually obligated to hang out with, has gone through more life cycles in a year than houseflies by the time Bravo fans see an episode.
“What happens is, we see it again, we relive it, and we’re like, ‘Oh wait, you said this about me on the confessional!?’” Alexia says. Marysol delivers an emphatic mm-hmmm: “All the fire starts again, you know? You’re like, ‘Oh, I forgot about that. And f— her.’”
And, oh, this year—and especially with these two—is there fire.
‘I Never Expected Him to Do This!’
Wednesday night’s Season 7 premiere of The Real Housewives of Miami begins like one of the most harrowing documentaries you’ve ever seen. You’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d mistakenly put on the History channel instead of Bravo.
There’s a flashback to Alexia’s April 2022 wedding to Todd Nepola: their vows, their kisses, their professions of love. Actual fireworks go off behind them. Then there’s a record scratch. Ominous music plays as a bevy of dramatic headlines flash on the screen: It is now April 2024 in the timeline, and Todd has filed for divorce.
We hear Alexia squeaking unintelligible things in between sobs as Marysol clutches her tightly. “I never expected him to do this, Marysol!” she cries.
She then goes over the timeline: On a Friday night earlier that month, she and Todd went to a romantic dinner, a date that was his idea. They went home and “had, like, amazing sex,” she says. “He told me how he loved me so much and that I was the most beautiful woman and how I was the best lover.”
The next morning, he rushed her out of the house to run her errands. When she returned home, everything was missing. Todd had moved himself and his daughter out. For a month, he had been taking things to a secret apartment. Several days later, he officially filed for divorce.
The “friend group” meets to react to the news and, regardless of the status of their relationship with her, console Alexia. They gather around her while she weeps, an image that is like a Renaissance painting—that is, until they all, in classic RHOM fashion, start cracking jokes at the high drama of it all.
“This is a dramatic season premiere for you,” I tell Alexia, as we exchange pleasantries when our call begins. “It’s always dramatic for me,” she says.
“I feel very anxious and it’s kind of like, I want it to be over already,” she adds. “We filmed a year ago. It’s hard. I’m at a different place in my life.”
As anyone who’s been filing gossip blogs knows, that’s certainly true when it comes to her and Todd. Bless Marysol, always counted on to cut tension with humor: “Her story’s much more interesting than mine,” she says when she joins the call. “But let’s do this.”
In March 2025, Alexia and Todd finalized their divorce, but, despite the drama and feelings of betrayal we see in RHOM season premiere, they maintained at the time that “our relationship has not ended.” To wit, earlier this spring, they were spotted kissing on a beach. Alexia has since confirmed that she and Todd are back together.
“A lot has changed [in the last year],” Alexia tells me. “Every relationship, there’s ebbs and flow. You guys are gonna be in my journey and in my path to where I am today. That was last year. I’m actually in a very good place with Todd right now.”
Alexia has called her life “a telenovela” in the past. Her first husband Pedro Rosello was the subject of the 2021 Netflix documentary Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami and has been incarcerated twice. Her youngest son, Frankie, 28, suffered serious brain damage following a car accident in 2011. In 2016, her second husband, Herman Echevarria, passed away. Alexia later learned that he was a closeted gay man.
This Todd divorce-and-reunite soap opera is just the latest chapter.
“Relationships are so difficult, Kevin, which I’m sure, like everybody, you know,” Marysol says, stressing the last part of the sentence in a way that makes me wonder if she’s hacked into my therapy sessions. “We have s—ty relationships and great relationships, and we try to make things that we shouldn’t work, or vice versa. It’s human nature.”
“In every relationship, there’s decline and then there’s regrowth,” Alexia says. “The truth is that [Todd and I] love each other and we want to be together. We’re working on it and we’re trying to fight for communicating better. Unfortunately, something like this maybe had to happen for us to really know how much we care and love each other and want to be together.”
“Something like this” also provided an opportunity to see how the various members of the “friend group” would rally around and support Alexia—or, in at least one case, wouldn’t.
The Season 7 ensemble of RHOM includes Alexia and Marysol’s fellow original cast members Larsa Pippen and Adriana de Moura, as well as returning Housewives Lisa Hochstein, Guerdy Abraira, Julia Lemigova, and Kiki Barth, and newbie Stephanie Shojaee. Several of these women’s own breakups and divorces have played out over the series.
“There’s one thing about the group, that no matter how much people just don’t like each other, when one person’s hurting, everybody piles in and rallies,” Marysol says. Though, she caveats, “I was surprised that one person in particular kept kind of poking at her and asking a lot of questions.”
As the duo continued to rave about how RHOM sets itself apart from other Real Housewives franchises because the cast “has genuinely become friends with each other,” loving each other even if they “obviously fight like sisters,” they keep interjecting with a clarification. “Except for one,” they each say, respectively, at different times.
“I know who Marysol is referring to,” Alexia says. “I’ll guess that the viewers will probably be agreeing with us as well,” Marysol adds. “I’m sure Kevin can already guess.” (I have my suspicions, and to that, I won’t say any more-a…)
Fans of RHOM would likely agree that the show benefits greatly from this lived-in dynamic. Of all the Real Housewives cities, the Miami series is unique in that there was a seven-year hiatus before Bravo and Peacock brought it back for a fourth season—something unheard of in reality TV. That meant that some of these women have known each other for going on 15 years, and also are in much different places in their lives than when they first joined the show.
“I feel like we are more free, not only because of our age but because of our circumstances,” Alexia says. “We have more wisdom. And you know what, Kevin? At our age, we don’t give a s—. We’re not gonna apologize.”
“I think that’s why these shows work better with older women,” Marysol says, referring to different Real Housewives cities. “Every time they’d bring a new cast with young girls, they’re all super sensitive and they’re overacting or observing characters on other shows and trying to be like those characters. We’re just ourselves, because we don’t care.”
Alexia adds a series of mm-hmmm, mm-hmmm, mm-hmmms.
“That’s why the Luanns [de Lesseps] work beautifully in New York, that was the magic of Real Housewives of New York,” Marysol continues. “That was the magic of Atlanta with the older girls. Once you get to a point in your life and you don’t care, you’re going to be like my mother [RHOM fan favorite Mama Elsa]. She was an old woman, and she didn’t care.”
“Well, I don’t want to say I’m an old woman!” Alexia interjects.
“We’re not geriatric,” Marysol says, eye roll likely accompanied. “I’m just saying that I think sometimes people are a little more self-conscious when they’re younger and it’s not as good TV.”
At this point, it’s clear the conversation could go on for hours. Alexia and Marysol are energetically talking over each other, and there’s no sign of fatigue. In fact, the discussion may not stop just because I have to hang up.
“We’re always on the phone together,” Marysol says. “Kevin would have loved to have been on that call last night. We’ll threeway you in next time.”
“Oh my god, no he would not!” Alexia shrieks. “Oh yes he would,” Marysol insists. “It just might not have been good for us…”
For the record: Yes, Kevin would.
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