The cast of RHONY, approximately. (Bravo)

Despite the finger-biting anxiety of the last two weeks, when negotiations between Bravo and the members of The Real Housewives of New York City broke down, causing the network to threaten cancellation, it looks like all's well in the RHONY world after all.

Reports have seen the women out and about together with a camera crew at various NYC locales, including the studio of celebrity trainer Will Torres.

But the question remains: will all the Real Housewives be making it back for the next season?

According to E!, there are two women who are in danger of being replaced:

"At this point, the returning cast members include Ramona Singer, Sonja Morgan, Carole Radziwill and Heather Thomson," Bravo tells E! News. (E! and Bravo are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)

Meaning, LuAnn de Lesseps and Aviva Drescher—whom a source told us had been "demanding more money"—are not sure things for another seaon.

While Countess LuAnn may still be on the fence, sources have told The Observer that Ms. Drescher has indeed signed her Bravo contract, as several outlets have already noted. Whether or not Bravo would axe a cast member after they've already inked a deal for a new season, however, remains to be seen.

RHONY, Season 5 (Bravo)

Last week it looked like The Real Housewives of New York City could get shut down for good when all six of the cast members refused to sign their contracts. Shooting for the series was supposed to commence last Wednesday (according to several news outlets), but was delayed when negotiations stalled.

Thank goodness it might not be over. According to Deadline, RHONY ladies Carole Radziwill, Ramona Singer, LuAnn de Lesseps, Heather Thomson, Aviva Drescher and Sonja Morgan all received modest pay increases, though how "modest" that money is definitely on a case-by-case basis; Ramona Singer made $500,000 last season and was holding out for a million, while a source close to the negotiations told The New York Observer that The New York Post’s quoted "average" payout for a housewife--$65,000--was "in the ballpark" of what was being offered this time around.

According to an industry insider, however, none of the ladies have officially signed their contracts yet, so don't be jumping for joy just yet.

According to another source, Bravo waited until the last minute even to send around the contracts with the numbers, leaving only two weeks before filming began for the women to try to negotiate for higher wages.

But the industry insider scoffed at that idea, saying that there would never be a planned shooting schedule before the ladies signed the contracts. "Things need to be in place, Bravo needs to know their availability, and the reps need to sign the contracts," said the insider.

"You have to remember, there are no unions for housewives," another source told The Observer, explaining that shooting can last all day on some episodes, with only a short break for lunch. Then there are the costs of the job: hair, makeup, and clothes are not provided, and if someone has a scene inside a house, the cast member also has to pay for all the cleaning costs to make her home presentable.

"A lot of the ladies end up in the red after the money they put toward being on the show," our source told us.

But our insider disagreed, saying that RHONY was about showing women leading their everyday lives, hence it would be ridiculous to pay for the extra perks. (Though for some red carpet events and special occasions, the person noted, the ladies may be afforded their own hair and makeup.)

According to the Deadline article, the new (unsigned) contracts "threw in a few more contractual baubles like covering expenses for additional hair and make-up for the cast."

Several other sources who wished to remain anonymous told The Observer that the problem was that the money simply wasn't there. They complained that Bravo they didn't spend nearly as much on advertising as they had the previous seasons, and the show was put in a more competitive time slot, moving from Thursday nights to Monday. "Of course the show would see lower ratings if you pit it against American Idol or something," one individual close to the negotiations remarked.

But Monday night's lineup is shattering the network's internal ratings, according to Nielsen.

The RHONY cast: Ramona Singer, LuAnn de Lesseps, Aviva Drescher, Caroline Radzwill, and Heather Thomson (Getty Images)

With the 5^th season of The Real Housewives of New York City airing June 4th, the first teaser trailer has given fans a lot to look forward to. Not only are there three new Housewives—Aviva Drescher, Heather Thomson, and Carole Radziwill—but the sneak peak shown earlier this week has everything from prosthetic, skinny-dipping, and an elderly gentleman suggesting that he could give one of the ladies her "first squirting orgasm." And a lot of booze, to be sure.

Ms. Drescher, an advocate for amputees (she herself only having one leg) appears to play a major part in the drama of the season. The trailer begins with Ramona Singer asking if the toes on her prosthetic are "real" and ends with Ms. Drescher calling the tenured Housewife "white trash."

"I regret having said those words," Ms. Drescher told The Observer by phone yesterday. "I have a much larger vocabulary than that."

Without giving away storylines, Ms. Drescher admitted that she did feel very betrayed by Ramona. "That scene illuminated to me that friendships can certainly take up and downs," said the mother of four. "And in that way the show—art, in quotation marks—imitated life. Ramona and I did not start out that way."

As for her father, the 80-year-old widower who talks like Hugh Hefner, Ms. Drescher has nothing but love. "He's living life to the fullest. He's a dashing, brilliant playboy. My father has a rich storyline in the show, and he also started out by getting along with Ramona."

Ms. Drescher pauses dramatically. "And…well…I can't say the same for the end of the season."

As for her other new cast mates, Ms. Drescher is quite fond of Carole Radziwill: "She was a journalist too!" The Housewife mentioned repeatedly during the conversation, and positive that The Observer would get along fabulously with the widow of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' nephew.

Despite her friendship with Ms. Radziwill and her tempestuous quarrels with Ms. Singer, Ms. Drescher denied that the ladies teamed up "Newsies versus Oldies." Ms. Drescher also managed to maintain some perspective on the "reality" of Real Housewives. "It was like an sociological study: we were essentially forced to make the kind of friends over the course of four months that would usually take you four years to become that close to."

As for the rumors that her cousin-by-marriage Fran Drescher, didn't approve of someone from the family being on a reality show? Ms. Drescher said that the footage would speak for itself. "Fran said she used to not like reality shows until I started doing them. She came on the show, and she said to me afterward, 'Do you think I would ever say things about the show and then come on it? I definitely think those quotes from her were misconstrued."

Even though she hasn't seen much of the season besides the sizzle reel that was played for the Housewives on Wednesday night during Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live, Ms. Drescher believed the whole experience was worth it, if only to get the word out about her philanthropic efforts and raise awareness for amputees.

"If children and teenagers at home with disabilities watch this show and see me running around and married with children…living this lifestyle…they can say to themselves, 'Wow, I can grow up and do that too.'"

Housewife de Lesseps.

Don’t let the warm weather fool you, we are officially in Fall season mode. You can always tell the changing of the seasons by the changing of the leaves, or at least by the changing of the hair colors of The Real Housewives of New York—which we anticipate will take place any day now in some of the city’s higher end hair care establishments as LuAnn de Lesseps and Ramona Singer reap the rewards of their cast-off cast members by doubling their salary. The two will now be getting $500,000 each to throw champagne in each other’s faces. Who says that there are no high-paying jobs anymore? Rather unbelievably, fellow New Yorkers, these are the 1%.

Meanwhile, the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are some heretofore undetermined percentage of the remaining 99%, have moved on to their fourth consecutive week in the hospitable lodgings of Zuccotti Park. Mayor Bloomberg changed his tune about the city’s newest attraction, saying that the protesters were welcome to stay in the park as long as they liked. (Which, he’s hoping, will not extend past November’s first frost.)

The cooling temperature could also be a good excuse for city-dweller Beyonce, whose baby-bump seemingly collapsed during an interview with an Australian TV show this week, fueling speculation that she was just using the padding... as insulation for her real baby, due in February! It was an embarrassing faux-pas for the Harper’s Bazaar cover celeb, who spent her profile in this month’s glossy talking about her pregnancy. The reception was, shall we say, icy.

Other places where the chill factor drops to below zero? The New York Times, where a memo circulated reminding staffers to report any speaking engagements where they received more than $5,000. We’re still trying to guess the blind item on who failed to ask “pretty please,” but if we had to take a guess, we’re going with Jill Abramson pocketing extra scratch by talking up cute puppies during a secret Westminster semi-final event. Perhaps she could join up with New Yorker’s Susan Orlean, who held her book party for Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend at The Kennel Club.

And really, is there a quicker route to fame and fortune than writing a book about dogs? Sure: just be the perkiest thing at 4:30 in the morning (without the use of recreational stimulants). We assume that’s the reason that NY1’s traffic reporter Jamie Shupak was profiled in The New York Times this weekend under the title “A Star Is Born.” We have nothing against Ms. Shupak, who we recently named one of New York Media’s most eligible bachelorettes, but the bar for stardom must have dropped a bit closer to sea level if you can reach it now by reporting construction delays on the BQE. (That or Times headline writers have been using recreational stimulants.)

Then again, we’re not sure where the stardom bar is anymore anyway. Elizabeth Olsen, who took a break from NYU classes to premiere her breakout feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene, at the New Yorker Film Festival, seems to be eclipsing both of her famous twin sisters. The bar there, for thespianism at least, is somewhere in the Dead Sea basin range, but the Other Olson seems to doing well critically. You never know what Autumn will bring.

"I love burlesque!" Ms. de Lesseps confessed to the Daily Transom on Wednesday night, May 27, during intermission at former Roxy and Palladium promoter Lee Chappell's risque weekly Foreign Affairs show in the dimly lit lounge at Vikram Chatwal's Night Hotel on West 45th Street.

Sporting a slinky black Michael Kors dress, the 43-year-old co-star of the popular Bravo series the Real Housewives of New York City sat legs crossed, slowly sipping a glass of red wine, while onstage the contortionist and onetime Cirque du Soleil aerialist Ekaterina Sknarina performed a steamy striptease and bawdy hostess Lady Rizo belted out an appropriately schizophrenic cover of the 2006 Gnarls Barkley song "Crazy."

"I've been to the Crazy Horse in Paris," noted Ms. de Lesseps.

Not to be confused with the Crazy Horse in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Daily Transom pointed out. (Slightly different aesthetic.)

"I haven't been to that one," Ms. de Lesseps said, laughing. "I'm married to a Frenchman, so ..."

In fact, her marriage to the Count Alexandre de Lesseps has been the subject of much speculation in recent weeks, with her rep ultimately confirming rumors of a split.

She vowed to cling to her noble title, nevertheless, she told the Daily Transom. "And the jewelry!" she added, laughing.

"But I love cabaret and I love this kind of music," Ms. de Lesseps said. "I'm a big fan of Mae West. So this takes me back. I actually just wrote a book called Class with the Countess. And I write about Mae West and I write about how I think that she was such a great woman because she knew how to be a woman. You know, how to flirt. I talk about the art of seduction in my book and I talk about Mae West and I pull out a lot of her quotes, which I love. You know, 'It's better to be looked over than overlooked.' I think it's a lost art. I really do."

She said she was enjoying the evening's rather suggestive show while still respecting its tastefulness.

"It's not over the top," she said. "I'm sure it can be," she added, "but so far this show has been pretty low-key. Don't you think? Compared to the Box?"

Had the classy countess been to the Box?

"I've been to the Box a couple of times," she said.

Had she cozied up to Simon Hammerstein, the prurient proprietor of the ribald nightspot on Chrystie Street?

"I know Simon," she said. "But I haven't been there in a while."

What's the most over-the-top craziest routine she had ever seen at the Box?

"They do some pretty crazy stuff," Ms. de Lesseps said, slightly giggling. "It's hard to pick one thing."

She added, "Actually, I haven't been going out that much."

She said she was busy promoting her new book, with an upcoming appearance at Bloomingdale's on June 16, and noted that the Bravo network would soon be airing an entire episode of "lost footage" from the recently concluded reality series.

"They always drag whatever they can out of it," she joked.

The season finale was, what, four hours long?

"We sat there for, like, seven hours, so they had to make two shows out of it," she said.

What was it like being in that room when the claws came out?

"Well, you know what? It's not really played up," Ms. de Lesseps said. "It is what it is. Those are the personalities on the show! Kelly Ripa on Regis & Kelly, the other day, he asked her, 'So, what did you do last night, Kelly?' And she said, 'Why do you always ask me difficult questions?' And then she goes, 'Okay, I remember, I was watching the Real Housewives. I'm a huge fan.' And Regis was like, 'Come on, that's not real. It's scripted!' And Kelly went, 'Ooooh nooo, it is real because I know some of the girls on the show and I know Kelly [Bensimon].' And he says, 'Don't you feel guilty about watching bad television?' And she said, 'If watching the Real Housewives of New York City is wrong, then I don't want to be right,' which I think was really funny."

How long can the show, which just wrapped up its second season, go on?

"That's a good question," she said.

Would it ever get to the point where everyone gets along?

"I don't think so. I think there's always friction between Jill [Zarin] and Ramona [Singer]. And Ramona and I have had our share of friction. And Kelly and Betheny [Frankel]? Oh my God! That could last forever."

Maybe the producers could make them mud-wrestle?

"That's a terrible idea," she said. "I would hate to be in the audience and get dirty," she added, laughing. "Maybe Jello's better."

What's next for the countess? A younger new husband perhaps?

"I'm not a cougar!" she said. "I'm looking more to do a game show."

Like Jeopardy?

"No, no, no! Like The Dating Game," she said. "It would be fun, right? Who better than the countess to do The Dating Game?"

Where is the populist-iconoclastic-demagogic tabloid press to turn in these troubled times? I know: the Sports Pages! A rather ambitious piece of analysis gets a front-page refer with the copy: “Meet the happy Yanks.” Here, roughly, is the argument of the piece, which is full of interviews with most of the stars in the Yankees' lineup: Alex Rodriguez got a lot of attention for the Steroids scandal from the press, including the Daily News! This was good because it meant that sportswriters were not microanalyzing the rest of the team's every pre-season muscle-tear, pitching style, etc. Then A-Rod went off to rehab his hip, and that was good too, because the team was less “distracted” by the spectacle. Damn Yankees, everything always goes their way!

The top of the page flags in smallish type the investigation into the apparent homicide of 26-year-old Caroline Wimmer. An autopsy is being performed today; though the young woman was found dead in her Staten Island bathroom with a hair-dryer cord around her neck, it's not clear to the reporters that her death was caused by strangulation. It's a sad story, and all of the required interviews are here: the parents, neighbors, a former coworker. It's a sad truth that true crime always sells; it's perhaps a less obvious truth that true crime is usually more likely to land the front page of the News when readers can identify with the victim than the front page of the Post, where a tantalizing detail is usually necessary to get it there.

The New York Post: Today is one of those rare days when not a single story has made the cover of both of the big city tabloids. So let's take it from the top! “Madonna trading in human trinkets.” You may remember from yesterday, the Daily News fronted a story about the graceful Lourdes Ciccone-Leon walking around a Malawian village like Little Lord Fauntleroy inspecting the slums, the natives gawping at her finery, as she and Madonna contemplated adding a little one to the troubled, glamorous brood. Also yesterday you may remember the Post repurposed Gisele Bundchen's Vanity Fair interview in which she promised to make a glue-sniffing Brazilian street urchin the object of some kind of Victorian rags-to-riches narrative. Today, Andrea Peyser weighs in on the whole gruesome spectacle. “THE baby monster must be stopped!” Ms. Peyser gamely fumes. She knows what we like: “Stuck in a midlife crisis, Madonna is hoping to soothe the pain of being 50, manless and well past her freshness-expiration date by taking home a Third World daughter to match the last baby she bought like a human trinket.” Me-ouch! OK, it gets better. The girl's name is Mercy! Dickens couldn't have done better. Of course if you read Ms. Peyser's article, the offenses stack on one after the other; if you can be bothered to read anything else about it, let us know how fair it is. We're content to enjoy this, not form an opinion of our own and move along, noting only that if Madonna had announced all this in a Vanity Fair interview in which she appeared mostly naked, she probably wouldn't have to have put up with this.

Have you heard of the Countess de Lesseps? She is a character on The Real Housewives of New York, a reality show, and it seems her Count has been doing a little bit of relief work himself, taking up with a mistress who is perpetually described only as an “Ethiopian beauty.” You will find this article on the front page of the Post today! "Real NYC housewife in real divorce," reads the disappointing copy. You read it all yesterday online but here goes: Luann de Lesseps marched over to Europe to get to the bottom of it, but it appears that divorce will be the result. She's keeping that surgically-reconstructed chin up, though, and announces that she will always be … the Countess! That would be an important bit of public relations, since her book, Class With the Countess, comes out next month. Classy indeed!

'BLEED US DRY' screams what is purportedly the “main” news story on the front page of the Post today, though it appears at the bottom. Here, Post reporters have figured out exactly how a spate of new taxes in the new state budget will affect New Yorkers. Inside is a big graphic that gives a pretty good breakdown of who the Post thinks you are. There are two families, one with a combined income under $100,000 and one with a combined income just under $500,000. They look like pickup photography, and we always sort of wonder how these ersatz “families” feel about being used in a news graphic like this, though those television shots of people's paunches walking down Broadway to accompany pieces about obesity in New York are obviously worse. But perhaps most remarkable is the fellow on the right of the inside graphic (click the photo at the top of this story for a slideshow that will take you to the graphic! OK, fine, just click here.) Because once the happy families have been fleeced by the State, the question becomes, what will happen to assholes? “The Single Guy” is drinking a can of Budweiser and smoking a cigar. He's 30, has no kids and makes $100,000 a year. Pony up, buddy!

General observations: It's either easier or harder to judge the front pages when they don't share a single story, but today it's easy. The Geyser of Peyser is almost always a winner, and given the News' coverage yesterday, the placement of the story seems like a direct attack on the News' news sensibilities. This is a war, and so that is a score. Luann de Lesseps is definitely a character for Post readers, but then the Staten Island murder victim is probably just as good a character for devotees of the News. We're left with “AUTOCRAT” vs. “BLEED US DRY,” and both for copy and reader-relatability we have to choose the latter.

Winner:The New York Post, by a mile.

Of course, this is a show that's predicated on cattiness and social climbing, so it was unsurprising when Housewife Ramona Singer, smugly clutching her husband's arm, told us that she's thinking about writing a book about the rules of being happily married. Then she leaned in and whispered, pointing to Housewife Bethenny Frankel: "She wrote one. She failed them all."

Ms. Frankel did bring "a gorgeous date," as she referred to him. But "he's probably broken up with me by now," she told us. "Because I've been here [talking to the press] for 45 minutes."

Last season, Ms. Frankel was the only single Housewife; this season, with the addition of newly single Kelly Killoren Bensimon, she has a partner in crime. (Or at least, crimes of the heart.) Ms. Killoren Bensimon thought the show was "a great opportunity for a single mom to explore this amazing life that I've created for myself and show of my amazing friends," she told the Daily Transom. "If anything, the others are veterans, and I'm not. But that doesn't make it less fun for me. You know, life is a roller coaster—you've just got to buckle in and go for it. You only live once. We are not cats."

Housewife LuAnn "The Countess" de Lesseps seemed not very eager to dish any dirt; she does, after all, have an etiquette book coming out later this year. But she did allow that she is not afraid (or so she says!) that her appearance and behavior on the show could in any way undermine her position as self-appointed authority on good manners. "I think it will help people relate to me. They will see: She is a countess, but she's also only human."

According to all the Housewives, season two is bigger and better; there's more drama, they say, and since they know each other better, the fighting is much more intense. When we asked Ms. Zarin about her incident with Ms. McCord, she seemed to harbor few illusions about what was in store. "I'm anxious to see what was said behind my back," she said.

An indignant Tim Robbins spent five hours attempting to vote yesterday after a registration mix-up that eventually required the attention of two police officers and the Board of Elections. [R&M]

The red and black dress Michelle Obama wore at last night's acceptance speech was from Narciso Rodriguez's Spring 2009 ready-to-wear collection. [Mrs. O via Racked] 

Cameron Diaz refused to share her cigarettes with her fellow guests at Drew Barrymore's Halloween party. [P6]

The National Enquirer likely stole a dirty diaper belonging to Rielle Hunter's son. The gossip sheet plans to submit the find to DNA testing in order to prove that John Edwards fathered the child. [R&M] 

A "disoriented" Countess Luann de Lesseps, of The Real Housewives of New York, "couldn't stand still" at Noah Tepperberg and Danny A's Halloween party at Lucky Strike Lanes. [P6]

She also rejects the “socialite” tag, one that her co-stars and Bravo seem eager to associate with the series. “I am not a socialite. I don’t want people calling me a socialite because I’m not," she said. "A socialite is someone that goes to parties. I go to parties, but because I’m covering them for Page Six, or I went before because I was the accessories editor of Elle. I’m not really a socialite.”

Well, we wondered, what was she doing on the show? “I have a lot of different businesses and things that I’m working on and I thought it would be fun to explore. You know, I have a great life and I wanted people see what I do and where I go and who I hang out with.”

Fair enough, we thought, as we were speaking with Ms. Bensimon at a small get-together at East 12th St.’s Owl’s Lab boutique in honor of her new jewelry line. Citing the actress and style icon Talitha Getty as one of her inspirations (“She was the ultimate hedonistic woman. She was incredibly beautiful but really playful and fun. She had a really great, serious life but she didn’t take it so seriously”), Ms. Bensimon told us her time on the editorial side of the fashion industry was the main motivator for the project: “I was one of the editors of Elle Accessories…Here I was--this editor--and I was supposed to tell everyone here’s how you mix it up. I was a New York fashion person who was supposed to tell you how to operate and dress. And then I became the ambassador for WOOL and I traveled the country and I went into all these different stores and I was like, wait a minute, you can buy any great beauty product you want, but you can’t buy any accessories for under a hundred dollars? So I decided I wanted to start a jewelry line.”

As for the line’s aesthetic, she said: “I just wanted a medallion kind of feeling, that very Italian Riviera, vacation destination feeling. I liked the idea of heirloom pieces that are rooted with integrity.”

And how was she getting along with her castmates (none of whom were at the party) so far? “Each one of them has a strong, definitive character that I like," she said. "[Countess] LuAnn [de Lesseps] and I get along because we’re both similar in a lot of ways. We have kind of similar backgrounds. I like Ramona [Singer] a lot--I’m really impressed by her and the way that she works. Jill [Zarin], I like her enthusiasm and Alex [McCord], she’s a lovely mom. I like that Bethenny [Frankel] is hardworking. Each one has their own thing and that’s what New York is. It’s a melting pot, not just one type.”

We also asked Ms. Bensimon to tell us about her experiences with the ladies at New York Fashion Week, which she had mentioned in her Page Six Magazine column: “Well, I didn’t really take them all to Fashion Week. We went to one Russell Simmons show and I took LuAnn to one show, so it wasn’t really me with, like, five other women. I wouldn’t really do that. If they wanted to go--if we were all going to the same show, that’s fine, but shows are really serious for me. I’m there for a reason. I’m there to support my friends. It’s not something that I just will bring—I’m not just going to bring people to a show. It was fun to take LuAnn. It was great! You know, I’m not Anna Wintour! I can’t be like, let me just bring 10 people with me!”

Real Housewives of New York City star Luann de Lesseps managed to give dating advice to two women at the St. Regis that was at once unsolicited, racist, and sexist. [P6]

Drew Barrymore's friends think she start seeing guys her own age after she was spotted with three different twentysomethings last week. [Full Disclosure]

Dennis Quaid is unhappy that ex-wife Meg Ryan discussed their breakup while promoting her new film, The Women. "I, myself, moved on years ago," he said. [R&M]

Jermaine Dupri drank "Jay-Z's Ace of Spades Champagne and Patrón tequila" until he vomited in girlfriend Janet Jackson's lap at Tenjune. [P6]

Heather Locklear was arrested in Californa for driving under the influence of prescription medication. [US Weekly]