The season 15 premiere of The Real Housewives of Atlanta kicked off on May 7 with a flash-forward to Sanya Richards-Ross‘ husband’s 40th birthday party. What was supposed to be a fun-filled night quickly turned disastrous after Sheree Whitfield introduced her new boyfriend, Love & Marriage: Huntsville star Martell Holt, to the ladies. They knew she was dating him — Sheree made that reveal during last season’s reunion — but now, things are “official” between them. Obviously, the ladies should’ve been happy for Sheree, but unfortunately for her, they heard that Martell might be cheating on her. But we’ll get to that later — before too much drama was shown, the episode went back in time to four days before the party.
Check out this SNEAK PEEK from this Sunday’s season 15 premiere. #RHOA
New friend Courtney has words for Kandi. pic.twitter.com/2yhWMT5Lnx
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It was then that Sheree welcomed Martell into her home and told the audience how much “respect” Martell’s shown her since they started dating. After her failed romance with Tyrone Gilliams, she’s happy that she “didn’t give up on love”. Especially because Martell “exudes big d*** energy”, according to Sheree. Anyway, she surprised him with a home cooked meal from a private chef, and during that meal they talked about Ross’ upcoming birthday party. Martell wasn’t thrilled about running into Kandi Burruss because she called him an “opportunist” in an interview. Kandi feels Martell is using Sheree for “publicity”, but they said if anyone’s an opportunist it’s Kandi’s husband, Todd Tucker.
Interestingly, when Kenya Moore was mentioned, Martell said he was excited to see her, but never met her. However, Kenya later revealed that he actually DM’d her, so it’s possible he was withholding some information from Sheree.
Anyway, in Kandi’s opening scene, she revealed Sheree’s clothing site had crashed. And she tried helping Sheree get it back up and running, but Sheree refused the help. Then, when she was joined by Kenya at her office, Kenya revealed that she was recently set up with a friend of Monyetta Shaw‘s and she’s really into him. It was during this conversation, that Kenya also told Kandi and Monyetta about Martell’s DM to her. Kenya said she never approved the message, so Kandi told her to so they could all read the message. Unfortunately, after approving the message, they saw that it was deleted before they could read it. It’s obviously possible that Martell was only saying hi to Kenya, but it also could’ve been more. Especially because Kandi and Monyetta both said they heard Martell was seeing other women behind Sheree’s back.
#RHOA Season 15, Episode 1 SNEAK PEEK 3. All new, Sunday 8/7c on @Bravotv. (Source @Bravotv @NBCUniversal) pic.twitter.com/vF0FIMgDxe
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And speaking of Kandi, she also shared that her and Todd have hit a rough patch. He doesn’t feel she’s making enough time for him, and she doesn’t think he’s making enough time for the kids, so they’ve been butting heads lately. Kenya told Kandi that if she and Todd don’t fix their issues, they may end up heading to divorce court.
Later in the episode, Sheree invited her friend, Courtney Rhodes, over during an at-home workout with Sanya. Not a lot is known about Courtney yet except for the fact that she dislikes Kandi. She claimed that she was told Kandi was calling around and asking about her. Apparently, Kandi thought Courtney was telling people they were friends, but Courtney told the ladies that she never said that. So she had no idea why Kandi would tell anyone that, and she planned to confront Kandi at Ross’ birthday party.
#RHOA Premiere Preview: This *all* goes down during the 1st episode! pic.twitter.com/VV0P8fsZWl
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And that takes us to the party, which Sanya said cost her $100K. Everyone showed up looking fabulous in their costumes. And at first, everyone got along with one another. But in true RHOA fashion, that didn’t last very long.
Courtney confronted Kandi like she said she would, and Kandi didn’t like her “crazy energy”. Kandi admitted to asking a mutual friend if they knew Courtney, but nothing more than that was ever said about her. Courtney said she heard differently, so they started yelling at each other and arguing. Both Kandi and Courtney insisted that they didn’t know each other as though the person who knew the other the least would come out the winner. It was very bizarre. And then, after Courtney accused Kandi of trying to “clout chase”, and told her to “calm down”, Kandi threatened “to head-butt” her. Things got so wild that Sanya and Todd had to jump in the break the ladies up.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the party, Monyetta told Sheree what she and Kandi had heard about Martell, but Sheree didn’t let it bother her. She said Martell was with her the last three days, so it wouldn’t be possible for him to be seeing another woman on the side. But then Kenya told Sheree about the DM, so Sheree asked Martell to join the conversation. Footage showed how wild things were about to become, but that’ll play out next week because viewers were hit with a “to be continued” message.
Want more? New episodes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta air Sundays at 8pm on Bravo.