Bethenny Frankel cried while discussing her lengthy divorce from her second husband, Jason Hoppy, in a new interview.
The “Real Housewives of New York City” alum got shockingly candid about the painful split on Wednesday’s episode of Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, saying “nothing” — not even her rough childhood — could compare to the “torment” she experienced when leaving Hoppy.
“I have seen my mother slit her wrists. I have lived my whole life chasing her into bathrooms, trying to catch her throwing up. I’ve been around guns, the mafia, the race track. I’ve been through everything. I’ve seen her beaten within an inch of her life. I have seen everything. Nothing compares to what my divorce was for 10 years. Nothing,” Frankel, 55, stated.
The Skinnygirl founder noted that her mom’s lifelong struggles with bulimia and alcoholism were “child’s play” compared to the “trauma of someone wanting to torture you and telling you that they’re going to do it.”
Because she was the “more successful” of the two, Frankel felt the “optics” made her look like “the powerhouse tyrant” while Hoppy, 56, was branded “the victim.”
“It was so traumatic. It was 10 years of my life. I lost hair. I thought I would never survive it. I didn’t want to,” she confessed to Cooper as she got choked up. “I had to because of my daughter. I literally thought, ‘I’ll never be happy again.’”
Frankel and the pharmaceutical executive wed in March 2010. They welcomed daughter Bryn, 15, two months later. They announced their separation in December 2012, with Frankel filing for divorce the following month.
The split wasn’t finalized until January 2021.
“I treated it like a marathon, and I went one mile at a time, and I checked every box,” the former Bravolebrity said of the divorce process, alleging that “it was fraud, it was stealing, it was hacking, it was harassment, it was abuse, it was Googling me 60 times a day, it was staying in bed and staring into my face, it was calling me every bad character in the books.”
In January 2017, Hoppy was arrested and charged with aggravated harassment in the first degree, harassment in the second degree and stalking in the fourth degree after allegedly sending Frankel a series of abusive emails and then showing up at Bryn’s school to threaten his then-estranged wife, “I will destroy you.” (Hoppy denied the charges.)
Frankel told Cooper that her divorce was “the worst thing [she] could ever wish upon a person.”
She recalled spending “millions of dollars” in the split and claimed that “every single lawyer said they’ve never seen anything like it, ever. Like, it was insane.”
The businesswoman admitted that the “only thing that got [her] through” that time was the hope that she could one day “help people” experiencing similar distress.
She emphasized the importance of having a prenuptial agreement in place before marrying someone and “going with your gut” because “cracks become craters.”
Despite her feelings of despair and defeat during her separation, Frankel made it a point to “never talk bad” about Hoppy in front of Bryn, even though she believes the teen “energetically felt” the situation.
“Just because you’re not saying it in front of the child, it doesn’t mean they don’t feel,” she argued, adding, “It’s a long road. Your kids will become cognizant, and they will understand. You don’t have to say it to them. You don’t have to prove it to them.”
She continued, “You should never, ever say a bad thing about the other parent, ever, because it is the worst thing you could do to a child. It is the worst thing you could do.”
Frankel shared that she “navigated” the ordeal by reminding Bryn that she’s “loved” and “letting her know a lot about what [her own] childhood was like” to show her that “everybody has something” that makes them “stronger.”
Additionally, “therapy is a big thing in [their] house.”
Hoppy did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
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