I’m curious about casting in smaller cities/regions (like Potomac and SLC). Granted, we’ve seen them struggle with casting huge cities like NYC, but the difficulty in a place that has a tinier group of potential women must make it really hard (unless they’re literally recruiting people to move to the area to be on the show, which wouldn’t seem that reasonable. Becoming a HW isn’t a sure thing).
It’s also harder to recruit authentic people unless they’re batsh!t crazy (and not in a good or fun way). You have more and more people who’ve watched for years and are either playing the part of HW (badly), looking solely to self-promote and give as little as possible, or find themselves at sea trying to navigate the game of it all. There’s a lot of straining for effect from new housewives and very few people can pull that off.