Originally posted Monday, July 1, 2019 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Love her or hate her, Kim Zolciak Biermann keeps her fan base happy and Bravo is now shooting season 8 of her sturdy spin-off show "Don't Be Tardy."
That’s impressive longevity going back seven years. Production began last month.
Of reality shows focused on a family, very few have made it to an eighth season. Two examples come to mind: A&E’s “Duck Dynasty” (11 seasons and 130 episodes from 2012 to 2017) and E!’s “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” (16 seasons and 242 episodes so far from 2007 to present).
Biermann arrived on the scene in the fall of 2008 as part of the inaugural cast of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” which quickly became the most popular show on Bravo.
She was dating a wealth real estate developer Lee Najjar nicknamed "Big Papa" on the show because he financially supported her lavish lifestyle. She was friends with NeNe Leakes, which is how she became the profanity-laden "token white person" on the cast.
Over the first five seasons, her relationship with NeNe fell apart and after she met Falcons player Kroy Biermann in 2010 and had a child Kroy Jr., her appetite for hanging out with the other ladies waned. She soon quit.
By then, her spin-off show “Don’t Be Tardy For the Wedding” focused on her wedding had debuted in the spring of 2012 and had performed relatively well. This allowed her to stay on TV and still earn a nice paycheck. (The show title was eventually trimmed to “Don’t Be Tardy” season two.)
Her fans enjoyed Biermann’s sardonic wit, her husband’s laid-back style and her two wise-cracking daughters from previous relationships. “Don’t Be Tardy” didn’t do as well as the mother ship “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” but Bravo obviously liked it enough to keep it going.
She remained impressively fertile for a woman in her 30s. She got pregnant with her second child soon after they got married and Kash arrived in 2012. She then had twins in 2013.
Her oldest daughter Brielle became a a model and Instagram star in her own right with 1.3 million followers.
Biermann returned briefly as a part-time cast member for season 10 of “Real Housewives” but it didn’t work as ratings slumped and she didn’t return for season 11.
“Don’t Be Tardy” has been slotted at different times of the year so it’s unclear when it will return though given the shooting schedule, it’s like Bravo will air it in the fall when “Real Housewives” returns for its 12th season.
The only other “Housewives” spinoff that has stuck is “Vanderpump Rules,” which has aired seven seasons.
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