Drag queens, reality stars and a proposal — sounds like a typical Saturday night at GW.

Four reality stars from Bravo’s hit TV franchise “The Real Housewives” — New Jersey’s Melissa Gorga, Potomac’s Karen Huger, New York City’s Dorinda Medley and Salt Lake City’s Lisa Barlow — gamed, gossiped and made it nice in Lisner Auditorium following performances from three D.C.-based drag queens earlier this month on Oct. 5. Bringing the drama to GW, the reality stars spilled behind-the-scenes secrets and dished on their relationships with other cast members while sipping espresso martinis from pink tumblers. 

Viewers have flocked to television network Bravo particularly for their Housewives franchise, amassing an invested, passionate fanbase.

Luke Rozansky, a 2014 alum and realtor, organized the event — “Housewives Night Out!” — and moderated the discussion. He said similar housewives events have occurred in other cities, which inspired him to host one in the District in Lisner to draw in GW students. Rozansky added that one of his friends is a talent manager who represents some of the reality stars, like Huger and Gorga, and had existing relationships with D.C.-based drag queens, which made it possible for his vision to become a reality.

“I watch all the housewives,” Rozansky said in an interview. “I know a couple of them personally, so I thought it’d be a fun way to get Bravo fans together, and GW seemed like a great spot to make it happen, to get some of the GW community there as well as other people around the DMV.”

Dynamic performances from three D.C.-based drag queens, Crystal Edge, Mia Vanderbilt and Druex Sidora preceded the housewives’ grand entrance. They danced to original songs by Real Housewives, including Gorga’s “On Display” and New York City’s Luann de Lesseps’ “Feelin Jovanni,” which Medley inspired when she repeatedly screamed the fashion designer Jovani’s name at one of de Lesseps’ cabaret performances in season 10. 

When Rozansky — clad in a red-sequined jacket — brought the housewives out on stage, the audience roared with cheers. Rozansky kicked off the panel by asking each of the housewives about their respective franchises, delving into where each woman stood regarding their future at Bravo.

The glamorous, dramatic and ridiculous storylines have kept viewers invested for more than 30 franchises, spanning from Orange County, California to Potomac, Maryland, across nearly 20 years. 

New Jersey’s Gorga said she was disappointed that this past season of Jersey didn’t have a reunion due to personal drama within the cast. Tensions have heightened between Teresa Giudice and almost everyone on the cast since she married her second husband, Luis “Louie” Ruelas, as the cast claims Ruelas hired private investigators to look into cast members’ past. The future of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” is unknown, even to current cast members.

“The truth is that nobody knows,” Gorga said. “They’re making decisions, they’re figuring it out. My personal prediction is we’ll hear something after the holidays.”

Huger shared behind-the-scenes information on the ninth season of “The Real Housewives of Potomac,” which premiered on Sunday. Huger, nicknamed the Grande Dame of Potomac because of her elegant brick mansion in Potomac and witty retorts, was charged with a DUI in March. She said her charge altered her relationship with fellow cast members and showed her who her true friends are.

“You’re gonna see a whole different chemistry,” Huger said. “We’re not the same. I’d say we’re better by nature — just so much more intense.”

Barlow said the rumors that she got “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” season four antagonist Monica Garcia fired are false. Garcia joined the cast in season four after running @realityvontease2 — a gossip account on Instagram last reported active in January designed to expose the misdeeds of former Salt Lake City cast member Jen Shah, who was sentenced to prison in 2023 for running a telemarketing scam targeting the elderly.

Original cast member Heather Gay brutally exposed Garcia for running the account in the season four finale, bringing the “receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots” to a windy dinner in Bermuda, where the other cast members unloaded on Garcia for not admitting the truth.

“Oh my gosh,” Barlow said. “I don’t have that kind of power. If I did, I’d have a way better edit.”

Medley is no longer a New York City cast member after Bravo revamped “The Real Housewives of New York City” in 2023 with a younger, new cast after the old cast received unprecedented low ratings, as viewership dropped by more than 240,000 between the season premiere and episode 10.

Bravo has brought back beloved members of the old New York City cast through various “RHONY legacy” initiatives, like travel show The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip, which is streaming on Peacock.

Medley said she talks to her former castmate Ramona Singer nearly every 10 days and just hung out with some of the old crew in Manhattan, including Singer, de Lesseps and Sonja Morgan. 

Medley said the audience should embrace the new cast members and see what they do in their second season, which is currently airing Tuesday nights on Bravo. At the same time, she acknowledged that people will always miss the old, original “The Real Housewives of New York City.”

After the panel, Rozansky led the women in a game called “Name ’em,” which paid homage to Beverly Hills’ Sutton Stracke repeatedly asking her co-star Kyle Richards to name all the times she was overly dramatic. Medley received the biggest applause from the game, when she named Jill Zarin as the “thirstiest,” or the most desperate, housewife.

Zarin has been desperate to get back on Bravo air after the network fired her in 2011 and returned to the franchise in “The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Ex-Wives Club” in 2022 for the first time in 10 years.

The show concluded with a Q&A session. In the middle of the panel, an audience member proposed to his boyfriend. He expressed the couple’s mutual love for Gorga before putting his boyfriend “On Display,” as Gorga does with herself in her original song and asked him to marry him. He said yes.

The stars ended by giving their thanks to D.C. and to Rozansky, who left the audience with a question that made everyone scream for more: “Should we do another one of these?”