Bethenny Frankel Explains Why She Didn't Participate in the Group Hug at the 'RHONY' Reunion

Bethenny Frankel confessed to PEOPLE why she remained seated during the group hug on the RHONY reunion

After the smoke cleared on the final part of the Real Housewives of New York City season 8 reunion Wednesday, all of the Housewives participated in a group hug to put the drama behind them.

Well, all but Bethenny Frankel.

Yup, as Luann de Lesseps, Ramona Singer, Dorinda Medley, Sonja Morgan, Carole Radziwill and Jules Wainstein embraced one another – and Andy Cohen – the Skinnygirl mogul remained seated.

It wasn’t clever editing either. Frankel, 45, confessed all to PEOPLE Now on Friday.

“I did not hug,” she told hosts Andrea Boehlke and Jeremy Parsons. “I did have strep, and I had 102-degree fever so it wasn’t an option.”

Frankel said she told Cohen and the Housewives why she wasn’t getting up on the show – though that audio didn’t make the episode’s final cut.

“I remember – and you couldn’t hear me saying it – I did say, ‘Oh God, thank God I have strep.’ So I was happy to not have hugged,” Frankel admitted.

It was a brutal three-part reunion for Frankel. She had explosive fights with de Lesseps, Medley and Wainstein – and even had to prove to de Lesseps that she hadn’t begun dating her boyfriend Dennis Sheilds when he was still happily married and living with his family.

The battles were so tough on Frankel, she said that she wouldn’t have jumped up for a hug even if she didn’t have strep.

“I don’t double kiss. I don’t usually group hug. But I definitely don’t fake group hug,” she said. “I’m not angry, it’s just – I’m not fake.”

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She continued: “It was a bad, bad experience and a bad vibe and it would be fake. Just seems like it would be fake. It was like, in the mafia. Every couple of years there needs to be a war, I guess. And this was the year. It’s crazy.”

If there’s one strike in the war Frankel doesn’t regret, it was telling de Lesseps that her fiancé Tom D’Agostino, Jr. had been unfaithful. And she doesn’t think she has to defend herself from how she decided to go about it.

“Who gives a s— how I told her?” she exclaimed. “Your man is making out with someone at a bar the night before your engagement party. Is everyone focused on the right stuff or the wrong stuff? I don’t care if you don’t like the way I did it. Your man’s cheating on you and no one’s talking about that!”

She joked: “Next time I’m going to send a carrier pigeon.”