Sonja Morgan and LuAnn de Lesseps Talk Bunking Together on This Season of 'RHONY' : We 'Feel Like We're a Married Couple'

Sonja Morgan opened up her Upper East Side townhouse to the Countess for season 8 of The Real Housewives of New York City

Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty

Are Sonja Morgan and Countess LuAnn de Lesseps the Upper East Side’s newest odd couple?

At Dorinda Medley and Julianne “Jules” Wainstein’s season 8 premiere of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City Wednesday at 42 West in N.Y.C., de Lesseps opened up to PEOPLE about moving in with pal Morgan this season at her sumptuous-but-chilly Upper East Side townhouse.

“I was actually staying with her while I was looking for an apartment this season,” admitted de Lesseps. She has that big, rambling townhouse. Her daughter went to boarding school. My kids were both at college – Noel went to college – and I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to stay with Sonja.’ “

The pair had to make due without a full-time maid. “Well, sometimes,” clarified the Countess.”

So did The Countess handle domestic duties? “No, darling,” she shook her head. “There are a lot of interns.”

“Cohabitation with the Countess was very interesting,” Morgan said. “We raided the wine cellar. We fell up the stairs, we fell down the stairs. We brought the luggage up in the elevator, and then we eventually brought the luggage down in the elevator, because she got engaged.”

But did they get along?

“Luann and I feel like we’re a married couple; we don’t have to talk when we’re together,” said Morgan, who went on to explain that there was one stumbling block. “It’s just that Ramona gets a little annoyed, because Ramona and I are very close and she gets very possessive.”

So Singer was jealous? “Oh, yeah!” Morgan confirmed.

Morgan also shared where de Lesseps slept: “I put her in my daughter’s suite on the fourth floor,” answered Morgan. “There were stuffed animals everywhere and a terrarium.”

And was that conducive to gentlemen callers? “She wasn’t allowed to have any,” house mom Morgan insisted.

And if the Countess and Morgan appear to be wearing extra layers this season, blame it on the cost of heating fuel and the square footage of the manse. “I don’t keep the heat up high,” explained Morgan. “It’s very expensive, so we layer up. In the trailer [for Season 8] Luann came down in furry slippers and a vest, and I put one on too. . . this morning I woke up and the house was 59 degrees.”

Meanwhile, Singer ventured a theory as to why this RHONY odd couple got along so well before the Countess was engaged and decamped: their partying ways. “I don’t think they were ever home together at night,” Singer conjectured.

The living arrangement also managed to impress new housewife Wainstein.

“I loved that the girls stuck with girls and when somebody needed a place to stay,” she said. “That’s wonderful. It’s a real girl friendship.”