Bethenny Frankel Revisits Housewives in New Rewatch Podcast: 'This Is Where It Started for Me'

Taylor Hill/FilmMagic Bethenny Frankel

Bethenny Frankel is returning to the Real Housewives franchise — well, sort of.

Three years after leaving The Real Housewives of New York City, the Skinnygirl mogul is "putting the real back in Real Housewives," as she says, with a new rewatch podcast produced by iHeartMedia.

Titled ReWives, the podcast — the first installment of which premieres Nov. 14 — will see Frankel watching iconic episodes throughout the Bravo franchise's history, like "Scary Island" from RHONY, the "Dinner Party from Hell" from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the "Who Gon' Check Me Boo?" episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta and the iconic "Table Flip" season 1 finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Each week, Frankel will be joined by unexpected thought leaders and celebrities like Elisabeth Moss, Jerry Springer, Suze Orman, Kevin Nealon, [Barstool Sports founder] Dave Portnoy, [TikTok star] Griffin Johnson, Maren Morris and more.

Launching a Housewives-focused podcast might be a move that surprises fans of Frankel, who will surely recall that she has been vocal about her desire to not return to the show since walking away from it, saying that it's "devolved." She's even been critical about projects that look back on the show, saying they focus on "women trashing women" and are only about "capitalizing on our weaknesses."

But speaking with PEOPLE about ReWives now, Frankel, 52, says the show isn't a typical rewatch podcast and won't be about rehashing the drama.

"We don't delve into that territory," she explains. "I wanted to do a rewatch podcast, but I didn't want to do something derivative. I didn't just want to rewatch a show, scene by scene. So I thought 'How could I do this in an interesting way?' — not just having another Housewife talk about it to me like others do, but instead delving deeper. So it's really about the real dynamics that are going on underneath, which I find to me more interesting anyway, and not the low-hanging fruit trash that others take away from it."

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WesAndAlex for iHeartRadio Bethenny Frankel's podcast ReWives

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According to a release for the podcast, ReWives will "explore real-life issues including family, fame, finances and friendship, through the lens of the Housewives series." Many of those are topics Frankel herself says she didn't notice were being exposed on the show until she went back and rewatched the episodes.

"I never realized how many interesting dynamics are underlying that you don't really discuss because the media only discusses what's splashy about it and that's what gets the headlines," she notes to PEOPLE. "So watching it back, I'm finding different things that were never talked about before. I'm not just picking up on the big, shiny items. It's really about narrowing in on what's insightful and talking about the whole themes in a way that somebody who has never seen the show would be as wildly entertained as someone who's obsessed."

One conversation with Springer, 78, about RHONJ's season 3 premiere — which featured an epic battle between Teresa Giudice and her brother, Joe Gorga, at his son's christening — turned into a deep discussion about "the actual meaning of family," Frankel says.

"We were talking about how their father had two heart surgeries before that argument happened, and that led to this conversation between Jerry and myself about what does family mean and how do you define family?" she reveals. "And how does that change when you get married and have kids of your own? Really deep, meaningful stuff."

Jay Sullivan/NBC/Getty Bethenny Frankel and the season 1 cast of The Real Housewives of New York City

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"I'm not really interested in a table flipping over, but what are the dynamics surrounding that? What does it mean?" she continues. "It's not talking about whether or not Shereé [Whitfield] got a seven-figure settlement in her divorce. It's about, is she actually going to get that? And how do you mandate that?"

"It's asking, 'What does Elisabeth Moss have to say about comparing acting to being a reality star?' " Frankel says. " 'What does it mean that there are actual actresses on these shows?' And talking about what it means to feel the pressure to be rich because everybody else is? Or what does it mean to get married and think it's all going to be great and then find out that you didn't know anything about your husband, who [has] a briefcase filled with receipts? What that would feel like?"

According to the star, "There's just a thousand dynamics no one's thinking about and they just come out," she tells PEOPLE.

"Like, Suze Orman, we had a full financial breakdown conversation of the Housewives," Frankel recalls. "I didn't suggest that — it's just what she pulled from this episode that she watched. And it was fascinating because I hadn't thought of a lot of what she said. So it's just really different, really amazing conversations."

Charles Sykes/Getty Bethenny Frankel

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Many of her guests had never seen the show before, while others — like Moss, 40 — are Housewives superfans (though Moss told Frankel she "studied for this harder than any role I've ever studied for").

Frankel first got the idea to do ReWives from her fiancé Paul Bernon, who suggested she do a rewatch podcast.

"I still have never listened to a podcast besides when I'm editing my own, so I didn't even know what rewatches were," Frankel tells PEOPLE. "And then he told me about all these different rewatches that breaking down shows, which to me doesn't sound that interesting. ... But he said, 'You're the Tom Brady of Housewives, so you should be breaking down the game.' "

She's been enjoying watching the episodes back herself. "It's so fun to go back and there are a lot of parts of the beginning that I like even better than what I see now," Frankel says. "So it's very nostalgic. And it's shocking to see what people looked like back then, what they wore. I mean, there's an episode in RHOBH where Camille [Grammer] calls someone to invite them to a party and leaves a message on their answering machine. Who has an answering machine anymore? It's really funny to notice those things."

Paul Cheney/Bravo Bethenny Frankel and Luann de Lesseps on The Real Housewives of New York City

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"And I think it will make people go back and watch shows again," Frankel adds. "That's why Bravo's going to love [my podcast] too — because it's going to make people go back and watch."

Ultimately, Housewives, Frankel says, will always be something she discusses — be it on this podcast, her other iHeartMedia show Just B with Bethenny Frankel or in one of her many Instagram and TikTok videos.

"You can't forget where you came from, so I always reference it," Frankel says to PEOPLE. "I mean, it led to such tremendous success for me. This is where it started for me. I don't want to be there in the same way that I was. But it's such a larger-than-life concept that you can't help but indulge in it."

ReWives is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and will be available on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere podcasts are heard. Its first trailer is out now, while episode 1, with Moss, drops Nov. 14.

Most episodes from the Real Housewives franchise are now streaming on Peacock.