Brynn Whitfield Knows How To Land The Lover Of Your Dreams

For Real Housewife of New York City Brynn Whitfield, getting recognized hasn’t gotten old yet — even at times when most people would rather go unnoticed. “I had to get a facial the day before yesterday,” she says. “I’m in a Brandy Melville dress. It’s flying up. I’m on a Citi Bike like, ‘This is gross.’ The material is thin. I had on underwear but it didn’t feel safe.” It also happened to be the last gasps of summer. “So from 18th Street to Saks, I biked up in that heat. And two people throughout the day got pictures with me. They’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s Brynn from RHONY!’ I turned to them like, ‘What the f*ck is up with this traffic?’”

She’s telling me this over cocktails at the then-unopened West Village location of Little Ruby’s — the owner is a friend of hers — one day after taping the show’s reunion (part one of which airs this Sunday). The 14th season of The Real Housewives of New York City featured, for the first time in Bravo history, an all-new cast, and no ’wife quieted doubts about the reboot like Whitfield, an Olympic-level flirt with a endless supply of double-entendres and the kind of people skills that no amount of LinkedIn endorsements could ever do justice. From the very start, her tagline — “I love to laugh, but make me mad, and I’ll date your dad” — announced her as someone who was simply born to be on television. And there doesn’t seem to be any difference between the real-life Whitfield and the one we see on screen, except for maybe her freckles are more pronounced in person. In no time at all we’re talking about our boobs (“I’m on a mission to educate women on asymmetrical breasts,” she says), drunk-shopping misadventures (she once ordered delivery to her Barney’s dressing room), and dating pet peeves (don’t ever suggest going on a walk: “I’m not a f*cking dog”). When a server stops by to ask if we need anything, she answers with a giggle: “10 more drinks.”

Some Housewives quibble about their portrayals on the show, but Whitfield praises the editors for accurately capturing her sense of humor. “I don’t know if you’ve ever watched 30 Rock,” she says. “You know the one where they show how each character sees the world? I’m like what’s-his-face.” She means Kenneth. “I see flowers everywhere, everyone’s my friend, and everyone wants to give me stuff for free,” she says, laughing. “In my mind, after I tell a joke, I hear ding! boink! I hear those sounds in my head when I talk — I’m like, ‘How did [the editors] get that?!’”

“I don’t care what you have rocking down there, I’ll date you. When you check my boxes, you can check this box.”

She’s always been like this. In high school in South Bend, Indiana, she was the kind of popular girl who could make herself at home at any lunch table: “I was friends with the nerds. I smoked pot with the hippies.” She also was, as she puts it, a “f*cking lunatic” — partying, shoplifting, vandalizing. She got fired from her first job at Dairy Queen for being stoned. “I had a couple of mornings where they’re like, ‘Brynn, don’t eat the food.’ And I was like, ‘OK, boss.’” Cut to a little later: “I turn around and my eyes are bloodshot, chocolate all over my face. He’s like, ‘You have to go home.’” Whitfield is often comic relief on RHONY, but during the cast’s Thanksgiving gathering, she opened up about how her difficult childhood — her parents weren’t in the picture — informs her happy-go-lucky zeal. “When you have nothing,” she tells me, “you have nothing to lose.”

Before she was cast, Whitfield already had a personal connection to the Bravo universe: When she moved to L.A. after college, she was roommates with Beverly Hills alum Lisa Vanderpump’s daughter, Pandora, whose husband, Jason Sabo, was a high school friend of hers. But Whitfield made the decision to join the show the same way she makes a lot of decisions: “I got drunk and said ‘F*ck it,’” she says. “The company that I was with had [gotten] acquired. I took a year off and was like, ‘I don’t have anything else to do. It might blow up or it might be fun.’ When I look back on the best sh*t in my life that maybe should have never happened to me, it’s always because I took a chance.” She scrunches her face. “I know it sounds like a No Fear T-shirt from the ’90s.”

Perhaps because she jokingly bragged in an episode about only having to do 10 hours of work a week, Whitfield — a freelance marketing and communications consultant — has had her career history come under Internet scrutiny; some viewers suggested she was a sugar baby. “I don’t really give a f*ck,” she says of the chatter. But last month, she defended herself on Instagram by posting her professional bio, which listed public-relations work during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as a career highlight. That raised some eyebrows. “You know what I worked on?” she says, eager to clarify. “I worked with Shell Oil [on its] sustainability group. It’s called Shell Eco-marathon. Each year, they host all different universities who are specialized in mechanical engineering. They fly you down to Houston and basically, the students compete in this sustainability race. Then the BP crisis hit and affected the whole industry. I got pulled on the crisis communications team and we helped to brief the boys for their Capitol Hill hearing. So again, I am proud of that experience.”

As for the 10 hours — uh, yeah, of course she’d like to work as little as possible, especially if she has children one day. “It’s so funny that people say [in response] ‘But you love working and you’re so great at it!’ I’m 37. I’ve worked since I was 15 years old. Why do I want to work? I want to stay at home. I can keep myself busy all day long.” She’s shared bits and pieces of her journey toward domestic bliss on the show, talking about an egg-freezing consultation that she had and introducing us to one of her three ex-fiancés, Gideon, a dashing, clearly rich Brit who obviously still adores her. All my friends told me to ask Whitfield: Are her other ex-fiancés as hot as he is? “Yes,” she says. “The rings weren’t as big, though.”

Whitfield has some advice about how to land the lover of your dreams. “All you need to do is establish eye contact,” she says. “Then you have to do the most awkward thing in the world that no one wants to do: You need to hold the eye contact for at least four to six seconds.” She does this to me, and I do feel awkward. “Then when they come approach you, make sure you look at their right eye as they’re talking. And then you look down at their mouth, and then you look back at their eyes.”

She looks over my Raya profile and tells me to delete a photo of me doing a rap squat in front of the Barbie movie poster. “We don’t need this,” she says. But she believes in-person connection will get you further than a cleverly curated profile any day. “I can get any guy,” she continues. “If you do the things I do, any person can. Female or male, male or female, doesn’t matter how much money you have, what you look like. It’s a science.”

Whitfield has had a jokey flirtation going on all season with co-star Jenna Lyons, and she teases that they reprise their finale kiss during the reunion. But their obvious chemistry has had fans wondering: Is it just a joke? “I swear to God, if she was really, really actually interested and we actually sat down and had a real conversation and stopped joking, I honestly, 100%, would date Jenna — why not?” Whitfield says. (Lyons is in a relationship with photographer Cass Bird.) “She has everything that I’m looking for. Check, check, check. I don’t care what you have rocking down there, I’ll date you. When you check my boxes, you can check this box.”

“I’ve worked since I was 15 years old. Why do I want to work? I want to stay at home. I can keep myself busy all day long.”

As she’s gotten older (and also grown rightfully tired of dealing with men), Whitfield has wondered about whether dating a woman is something she’d ever actually want to do. She recently took a friend’s daughter shopping at Aerie and had flashbacks to her first formative brushes with Victoria’s Secret when she was young.

“I remember thinking, ‘Look at Gisele, look at Adriana Lima, they're so beautiful.’ And I got excited,” she says. Because of her Catholic upbringing, though, “I automatically took that excitement and processed it as ‘I want to look like them.’ And I grew up and — look, I got my boobs done. I wanted to look like Gisele Bündchen. Had I been living in this time and age, [I’d consider] that excitement maybe was sexual attraction. I just think it wasn’t an option for me. I think I wanted to kiss her. I didn’t just want her body; I wanted to touch her body.”

By this point, our table is scattered with empties of espresso martinis, piña coladas, and margaritas; she jokes that some drunk-shopping might be in order. Whitfield chats with all the servers and restaurant personnel who stop by to say hello, but it’s unclear if she actually knows them all or if she’s just the kind of New Yorker who is comfortable chatting up anybody. One of the biggest gifts of being on RHONY, she says, is a renewed connection to the city. “I’m on a show about that building and that building and all the taxi cabs and all the people that walked here,” she says. “I feel like I work for the mayor’s office or something. I’m an ambassador for New York.”

After watching herself back this season, Whitfield has… no notes. “When we went around at the end [of the reunion], everyone shares a final thought, and everyone’s was so spot on and self-actualized and nice and gorgeous, and then [it’s my turn] and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so funny!’” What’s the point of putting your entire life on camera if you’re not going to enjoy yourself? Whitfield gives me her personal motto, which has all the makings of another iconic tagline: “I always say, ‘Unless you’re feeding me, funding me, or f*cking me, you can’t tell me what to do.’”