The meaning behind the ‘RHOBH’ phrase ‘Bravo, Bravo, Bravo’

The “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” have always spoken their own language, but now they’re letting fans in on it. Kyle Richards, Erika Girardi, Teddi Mellencamp, Sutton Stracke and Dorit Kemsley discussed the origins of the phrase “Bravo, Bravo, Bravo” on the “RHOBH” after-show after Denise Richards used it to try to get producers to …

The “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” have always spoken their own language, but now they’re letting fans in on it.

Kyle Richards, Erika Girardi, Teddi Mellencamp, Sutton Stracke and Dorit Kemsley discussed the origins of the phrase “Bravo, Bravo, Bravo” on the “RHOBH” after-show after Denise Richards used it to try to get producers to cut a tense dinner scene in which Mellencamp confronted her over allegations that Denise had sex with Brandi Glanville.

Denise also used the phrase in other scenes that were cut from certain episodes but were shown in flashback clips.

“When I first saw the, you know, the trailer for the season I was like [gasp] ‘They’re breaking the fourth wall?’ Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!” Kyle said.

Kyle, 51, explained that that the phrase dated back to the show’s first season (2010-2011), saying that she, Lisa Vanderpump, Taylor Armstrong and “all of us, we’d like use that time to quickly like you know put a little powder because it’s not like we have, you know, glam!”

“So we would touch up our makeup and then they’d be like, ‘Pull the cameras back up!’” she continued. “But we for some reason — it was the show was so new to us, we didn’t want to be like caught touching up our lip gloss, which now you’ll see us do that in scene all the time — that we’d go, ‘Hold on! Bravo, Bravo, Bravo! Hi Andy Cohen!’ like touching up our lip gloss. That was that.”

Kemsley, who joined the show in its seventh season (2016-2017), echoed that she had heard “some of the O.G.s had said it in the very beginning when they wanted to touch up their makeup or something” but she has “never seen anyone do it to cut something out or not have something used or not to put an end to a conversation” like Denise tried to do.

The Beverly Beach by Dorit founder, 44, explained, “When you mention the network’s name then, you know, the network can’t use that footage and I think that that is where what she was hoping to achieve by saying that.”

Kyle insisted that the phrase was never meant to shut down actual drama that was unfolding.

“That is the downside of being on reality television,” she said. “There’s an upside, obviously. We have a lot of fun. We go on great trips. We do fun stuff together. We care about each other but you know, when there’s parts of it you don’t want — there are parts of your life you don’t want the audience to see, it can, you know, be very difficult. Parts that you don’t feel are fair and unjust and not true and all of that but you know that’s part of the deal.”

Girardi, 49, also joked, “That’s why we always say roll with the punches. Because sometimes you really get punched in the face.”