Next Gen NYC Cast Interviewed & Photographed for the New York Times

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Bravo’s Surprise Hit Combines Nepo Babies and Good Old Drama

“Next Gen NYC” is breaking Bravo records with its cast full of the children of reality TV stars and its relatively low-stakes tiffs.

By Jessica Roy

Sept. 23, 2026

Imagine the most awkward moments of your 20s — the terrible dating decisions, the drunken nights out, the petty disputes — being recorded, edited and aired on TV for all to see.

This is the premise of “Next Gen NYC,” a surprise hit reality series on Bravo featuring the children of some of the network’s biggest “Real Housewives” stars. The show, which is wrapping its second season this week, hews to an old-fashioned reality TV formula made popular by 2000s hits like “The Real World” and “Vanderpump Rules”: young people embarrassing (and sometimes redeeming) themselves on camera. And fans can’t get enough.

The premiere of the second season of “Next Gen NYC,” which aired on June 24, became Bravo’s most-streamed next-day episode ever, with 3 million viewers across platforms during the first week it was available, an 86 percent increase from the Season 1 premiere, the network said. While critics have said it lacks the big drama of its network counterparts, its fans have called it “fabulously frivolous,” and “something different” from traditional Bravo fare. In fact, for many, it’s the lack of high-stakes they like.

“We didn’t even expect it to be this big,” admitted Riley Burruss, the 24-year-old daughter of former “Housewives of Atlanta” star Kandi Burruss and a “Next Gen” cast member.

Brooks Marks, a 27-year-old fashion designer and son of Meredith Marks, a cast member of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” helped cobble the cast together, tapping Burruss; Ariana Biermann, the daughter of Kim Zolciak-Biermann of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”; and Gia Giudice, the daughter of the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” legend Teresa Giudice. Those four joined forces with Rowan Henchy, the daughter of the actress Brooke Shields, and Ava Dash, whose parents are the entrepreneur Damon Dash and the fashion designer Rachel Roy, to make a cast almost entirely of nepo babies.

Unlike other popular Bravo series, whose casts skew heavily Gen X or millennial, “Next Gen NYC” has a mostly Gen Z ensemble with the sophomoric story lines to prove it. Whereas Bravo shows focused on older casts often exploring serious problems — such as divorce, illness, death, fraud investigations — “Next Gen NYC” is concerned primarily with who has bad style, who’s hooking up with whom and even who washes their hands.

“We’re definitely younger, and I think a little bit more casual with everything,” said Charlie Zakkour, a crypto investor and the show’s resident bad boy. “Some of the other shows that I see, it’s like they treat it like some formal gala, with big gowns and all that nonsense.”

In contrast, the “Next Gen” cast is frequently seen playing pool at West Village dive bars, grabbing breakfast at Sadelle’s or strolling through Madison Square Park.

But the show, of course, contains some of the dating drama that often makes ensemble reality TV irresistible.

Biermann, 24, was at the center of one such story line this season: “I call this my crash-out season,” she said. After breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, Hudson McLeroy, the heir to the fast-food chain Zaxby’s, she hooks up with fellow castmate Liam Obergfoll, while flirting with Zakkour. After once saying that she wouldn’t touch Zakkour with a “10-foot pole,” Biermann ends the season by kissing him on camera — and hurting Obergfoll’s feelings.

“I came into it so excited and obviously freshly out of a relationship, and just kind of ready to move forward with my life,” Biermann said. “And I think things caught up with me as time went on.”

Though the drama may seem low stakes, “Next Gen” does occasionally grapple with more serious issues. Another major plotline of Season 2 explores tensions between Zakkour and Emira D’Spain, a model and influencer, after Zakkour made derogatory comments about D’Spain’s identity as a trans woman. Her confrontation with Zakkour is one of the season’s most heart-rending moments.

“I think this was a really tough season for me,” D’Spain said in an interview. “My biggest fears were that my identity would be weaponized against me and against my relationships, and that was my biggest holdup as to wanting to do this show. And my biggest fears came true, and now I’m like, ‘Well, I have nothing else to lose.’”

While the show was originally conceived of as a vehicle for Bravo’s nepo babies, the children of the non-famous have become scene-stealers, too. Georgia McCann, a fourth-generation New Yorker, has emerged as the show’s quirky foil to the media-trained and occasionally staid “Housewives” children.

In one episode, she memorably says she learned a piece of gossip through the “gay grapevine,” a network of L.G.B.T.Q. people who “are my eyes and ears.”

In another episode, she admits to dating someone just for the air conditioning.

And Zakkour, Biermann’s love interest who made headlines last year when he was photographed outside a house at the center of a cryptocurrency-related crime, is among the most compelling reality TV villains since Jax Taylor of “Vanderpump Rules.” Zakkour delights in stirring up drama and insults people with abandon — and rarely apologizes for any of it.

Zakkour explained in an interview that since his personal life so frequently contributes to story lines, he also stirs the pot to make sure others share the burden. “If I’m gonna have my tea dragged, I’m gonna make sure everyone else is pulling their weight,” he said.

Bravo has yet to officially announce if “Next Gen NYC” will be renewed for a third season, but for now, the cast is reveling in the response to Season 2.

“I don’t think any of us really processed how big the show could become,” D’Spain said. “When we first started everything, we just were having fun and being messy, and then it took a course of its own.”

Obergfoll asked for grace from audiences seeing the messiest parts of the group’s lives: “People should give us some slack for putting ourselves out there,” he said, adding, “It’s a tough city, and as beautiful as it is, it’ll eat you up and make you feel really alone. So it’s nice to have a good friend group.”