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The third of the franchises to hit the airwaves, and what would become its highest rated franchise overall, actually debuted to incredibly low ratings. After many complaints of the lack of diversity in the RHOC & RHoNY casts, Bravo astutely set a show in the Atlanta outskirts and thus the Real Housewives of Atlanta was created. The original cast contained four women of color DeShawn Snow, Lisa Wu Hartwell, NeNe Leakes and Sheree Whitfield, as well as Connecticut transplant Kim Zolciak. It could be argued that Bravo played into stereotypes of black woman only being rich through being married to athletes; Snow, Whitfield & Hartwell either were or had been married to NFL or NBA players, but at least they got away from the 100% Caucasian cast of the first 2 franchises.
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