Lynda Erkiletian Sets the Record Straight on the Season 2 Rumors

Zap2It.com:

As we reported on Thursday (March 24), news that Bravo would not be renewing "The Real Housewives of DC" for a second season spread on the Internet.


And even though the network clearly stated that it had not made a decision regarding the show's Season 2, the reports continued. Now, one of the cast members wants to set the record straight.


"There's no official announcement," cast member Lynda Erkiletian tells Zap2it exclusively. "There's no way. [Cast member Cat Ommanney] is going on 'Watch What Happens Live' on the 28th. One might wonder why [Andy Cohen is] having a DC housewife as a guest [if the show is canceled]."


"There's negotiations taking place," she adds. "And no decision has taken place. Whoever started the rumor was basically doing it for attention."


We spoke to Lynda further on the cancelation rumors, the talk of low ratings and the criticism that the cast just wasn't exciting enough in Season 1.


Who and for what reason would someone want to start the rumor that the show was canceled?
I think we certainly have people out there who like attention, thrive on it, make stuff up, and are habitual at it. So, my first thought was that a team who had something to gain, which is a firestorm, leaked it. I'm perfectly happy living my real life in the real world while negotiations are taking place.


The article's source says the show should be shooting by now. Is that true?
That's not true. Basically, we're four months on, four months of promoting and finalizing interviews, and that sort of thing, and normally four months off.


And when you say we're supposed to be filming right now, we're obviously filming when we're supposed to be filming. And if we're not filming right now, that means we're not supposed to be. It's just craziness.


How do you feel about the reports that your show failed in the ratings?
The thing that I really hated about what was going on yesterday was that people kept talking about the ratings. Our ratings were double, triple what Bravo had anticipated. Our ratings, basically as I heard it from Bravo and [the show's production company] Half Yard, we were only second to New Jersey as a freshman show. Our first episode had 1,700,000 or 1,600,000 viewers. Beverly Hills didn't have that on their first episode.


So, the idea that people were saying we were terrible in the ratings? We weren't. We exceeded everyone's expectations. We knew that the [White House] incident may affect our viewership and some people wouldn't want to watch. So, we came from a disadvantage and we managed to run over a million viewers for every single episode. I was very proud of our ratings considering the circumstances, but most importantly because we were a new show.

Thank goodness for Lynda--is there a 'Housewife' who does a better job at providing us with the truth (I mean, now that Bethenny's gone)? I still say the haters out there talking about RHODC supposedly suffering from low ratings are more upset with Michaele Salahi than anything--then too anyone who thought the first season of RHODC was "boring" clearly didn't watch it. But then would it be shocking if we found out that the Salahi's are the ones leaking this mis-information in the first place? Probably not.