By Nikita Frenney
A cell phone rings. Peter Thomas answers immediately, as if he has been anticipating this call all day.
“2.1 million at 8pm, and a combined 3.4 million for both 8 and 10pm,” he says into his iPhone. “That’s good shit.”
On the other end is a producer for the wildly popular reality television show where Thomas has become a bit of a dichotomy. Real Housewives of Atlanta fans either love him or flat out love to hate on him. This phone conversation is all about the ratings for the hour long Husbands Revealed show that aired two days previously on Bravo – a special that was born out of Thomas’ cache of creative ideas.
“I told you it could work. Now you see our voices matter. People wanted to hear what we thought and what we had to say,” he says into the phone, but also to the people gathered near him.
It’s early afternoon in Atlanta, and Thomas has two meetings scheduled simultaneously at barOne, his popular tapas lounge: one for this interview; the other with the team of realtors, financiers, accountants and lawyers he has assembled in his efforts to purchase the building that currently houses barOne. Before either of the scheduled meetings can begin, in comes this phone call that takes him slightly off task.
Even as he juggles the day’s chaotic schedule and shuffles between meetings, fans of RHOA and tourists stream through the parking lot of barOne hoping to catch a glimpse of Thomas, his wife, Cynthia Bailey, or any of their fellow cast members who just might happen to be in the building.
Thomas is still on his phone call when a mother and son walk in the door. The son is on summer break from college and is looking for a job. Thomas puts his call on hold, asks the young job hopeful a few questions and tells him to come back an hour later to meet with the barOne manager. In less than 5 minutes, Thomas decides he’s going to hire the young man if his manager agrees.
“I like this kid. He’s in college. He was mannerable. He came in with his mom,” he says. “If he works out, great. If he doesn’t, at least I gave him a chance.”
After about 30 minutes, his call ends with the RHOA producer. It’s time to start the business meeting regarding the purchase of the building. Yet the building’s owners, nor their representatives have arrived. Thomas makes a call, the person on the other end says the owners’ representative is en route.
“See, this is that bullshit. They’re not coming,” Thomas says. “They don’t want me to have this building. They want to play games. In the end though, barOne will survive whether it’s in this space or another.”
For more than 9 months, Thomas and the owners of the building have been in a battle over the space. Thomas claims he has been paying rent on time since signing the lease, and that the building’s owners have not been paying the mortgage. Thomas has made an offer to purchase the building, which is nearing foreclosure, but the owners have not been cooperative. And as he suspected, they never show up for today’s meeting.
But Thomas can’t allow this setback to stop his hustle.
“When Cynthia and I joined the show, viewers all watched me lose Uptown. People acted like I lost it because I am somehow a bad businessman. Uptown (Lounge) closed due to the recession. I wasn’t immune from that shit. No one was,” Thomas says. “Banks closed. Department stores went under. Real institutions, like General Motors, were about to shut their doors. But remember, they got bailout money. Who bailed the black businessman out? Nobody. Bailout money went to white CEOs.”
But with the support of his wife, Thomas conceptualized, designed and built barOne lounge, and has plans to build more. He admits that RHOA has not only helped the brand grow, but has made the husbands on the show as recognizable as their wives.
“This last season of the show, the husbands were very vocal and very visible, and there is no doubt we helped to contribute to the enormous success of this season ok?” he says. “We were as important to the show as our wives this season.”
Thomas, who regularly tweets and engages the shows fans during every episode, gained nearly 60,000 new Twitter followers during this sixth season of RHOA, evidence that he is quickly becoming the favorite husband.
“What sense does it make for me to be on the show and simply be quiet?” he says. “It makes no sense for any of the men to just sit back and not open our mouths. If the women on the show don’t want me to say shit, they shouldn’t have the conversations in my presence.”
He continues, “Yes, this show is called the Real Housewives of Atlanta. But they can’t be wives and their reality wouldn’t be real without their husbands.”
It was the husbands’ popularity that prompted Thomas to lobby for an appearance by the men of RHOA on Watch What Happens: Live (WWHL), the nightly talk show series hosted by Bravo producer and former head of development Andy Cohen. WWHL is the only live show in late night television, and features an array of guests that include everyone from Bravo personalities to the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Lady Gaga. During a trip to New York with Bailey, who was appearing on WWHL, Thomas approached Cohen about his idea.
“I asked Andy why is it that he comes on five times a week and he never has the husbands on? We have a lot to say and we contribute greatly to the show,” Thomas said. “Andy said he thought it was a good idea and four weeks later he booked us.”
It was the first time husbands from any of the Housewives shows appeared on WWHL without their wives, and the ratings were quite impressive. About 1.9 million people tuned in to hear what Thomas, Nene Leakes’ husband Gregg, Phaedra Parks’ husband Apollo Nida, and Todd Tucker, Kandi Burruss’ new husband had to say. The success of this appearance led to the full one-hour Husbands Revealed special.
It’s rare that American television viewers are treated to a primetime special featuring married African-American men having intelligent conversation about something other than sports, a feat Thomas is quite proud of.
“When does something like this ever happen? Never.” Thomas says. “So if people want to call me a bitch for creating this opportunity and giving America the chance to see four black men talking about our marriages, how to make them work and supporting each other through our own shit, then they really don’t get the big picture.”
And the “big picture” for Thomas includes using the enormous platform of RHOA to make even bigger moves. For Thomas, opening up his life to 4 million viewers has not been easy, but he is determined to make sure it’s not in vain.
Thomas continues, “Being black men on reality TV isn’t an easy task to manage. But I feel like our responsibility as black men on this show is to project a more positive image for young black men. We aren’t perfect, but for the most part we certainly are not being as foolish as some of the other black men on reality TV.”
His intention is not to knock anyone else’s hustle, but Thomas says some of the images being portrayed on other reality shows do nothing positive to tear down the pervasively negative stereotypes of the African-American community.
“We are not Love and Hip Hop, ok? We are not on that bullshit,” he says. “Good for them. I’m really cool with some of those guys. But I take my responsibility much more seriously and it’s not to project that foolishness that they have going on.”
For the most part, RHOA does tend to feature a relatively positive display of black marriages. And the husbands’ popularity is on the rise with the men being as recognizable as the women on the show. Thomas is bombarded daily with requests for pictures and pleas for him to follow the accounts of fans on Twitter and Instagram.
On a recent one-day business trip to the Bahamas, Thomas took more than 200 pictures with fans from all over the world. The same thing happened in Thomas’ native home of Jamaica earlier this year.
“It’s evident that the show goes beyond the borders of the US,” he says. “People come to barOne from Europe, from Africa to check us out. I’ve been told ‘Oh my God I watch this show in Istanbul. We love you in London.’”
Yet, Thomas can’t help but wonder why the major endorsement deals and advertising campaigns for the RHOA cast aren’t rolling in.
“The Real Housewives of Atlanta is the number one show on Bravo, not just in the Housewives franchise. I need people to understand what that means,” Thomas says emphatically. “No other show on the network does our numbers. Not one. This ensemble cast of black people is number one on a very popular network, but not one of our wives’ faces are on a billboard advertising the show.”
Thomas says he was in Los Angeles recently and saw billboards for reality shows that don’t generate the high ratings of RHOA.
“Why doesn’t our show get the same exposure,” he says. “I asked that question to a Bravo executive and I was told it’s because they don’t need to advertise for us. We get the numbers anyway. But imagine if they did. And let’s not get it twisted, if this all black cast was doing as poorly in the ratings as some of the other shows on the network, we’d be fired and the show would be cancelled.”
While Thomas is excited about how well the show is doing, and the opportunities that exist because of it, he wants everyone to know he and his wife were making successful business moves before reality TV, together and independently of each other.
“Peter Thomas was Peter Thomas before the Real Housewives of Atlanta,” he says rather matter of fact. “Reality TV didn’t make Cynthia Bailey or Peter Thomas like some of the other people on our show. We were doing big shit before this.”
It’s pretty common knowledge that Bailey has been a model for more than 25 years. The Essence magazine covers, and editorials in Vogue, Elle, Glamour and Vanity Fair; the Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s spreads made her famous the world over. Many may not have known her name. But the face? People knew the face.
Thomas didn’t have the same instant recognition, and the biggest misconception about him is that his wife made him recognizable and relevant. According to Peter, nothing could be further from the truth. “I’ve been in the game for years,” Thomas says. “I am certainly not new to the entertainment industry and people in the industry knew me well before my wife became a Real Housewife.”
Thomas’ history in the entertainment industry isn’t well documented in writing. You can’t simply Google him and find out much more than his involvement on the reality show. But there is definitely an oral history that is fascinating and spans more than 30 years of making some major moves behind the scenes at Def Jam and The Source Awards.
It was Thomas, who in 1996, founded the How Can I Be Down? (HCIBD) entertainment conference, which remains the largest urban conference of its kind to date. HCIBD was created to provide industry insiders and those interested in pursuing entertainment careers a venue to network, connect and create business opportunities in the urban entertainment and lifestyle industry. At its height, HCIBD registered nearly 10,000 participants, and attracted the likes of Def Jam founder Russell Simmons, then-Uptown Records Executive Andre Harrell, and up-and-coming music mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs, as well as other hip hop impresarios and high power players.
“I created How Can I Be Down simply to change the hip hop game, ok?” Thomas says. It’s obvious now that this conference was his baby. He’s become much more animated and hyped as he reminisces. “My goal was to teach these kids, many of whom were lyrical geniuses, that they needed to own their material.”
He continues, “You can’t be truly passionate about something if you don’t own it. I was determined to get them to understand that the lyrics coming out of their mouths are coming from their souls. I needed them to own that, own their work and never sell the publishing to anyone. Most of the people in this business don’t know a damn thing about publishing. Michael Jackson owns the Beatles publishing. That was a smart move. His estate will never go broke because of it.”
Thomas served as a consulting executive for Def Jam and managed the label’s efforts in Europe for a few years. In 2000, Thomas was the executive producer of The Source Hip Hop Awards. Currently, he serves as Vice President of Entertainment for Uptown Ventures Group. But creating lifestyle entertainment venues is his first love.
In 1985, he opened his first lounge Club Manhattan, in Miami, followed by several other successful venues. Some credit Thomas with bringing African-Americans to South Beach and making it a destination spot for this demographic. His ultimate goal now is to build 25 barOne Tapas Lounges across the country, building off the success of the first barOne in Atlanta.
“My community needs an upscale place to have a drink, to socialize and to have intelligent conversation centered around quality lifestyle entertainment,” Thomas said. “There’s nothing like that out here for us.”
Thomas plans to open his upscale sports bar, SportsOne, in Charlotte, North Carolina before the end of summer. He partnered with former NFL quarterback Kordell Stewart, the ex-husband of fellow RHOA cast member Porsha Williams, on this venture.
In the meantime, Thomas remains on the grind and is looking forward to expanding his brand to not only include growing the barOne franchise and possibly doing a spin-off that follows the barOne expansion, but also by launching his Peter’s Brew coffee venture.
“Coffee is the number two commodity is the world behind oil and there are not many people of color in the business who are roasting their own beans and packaging their own coffee products,” Thomas said. “It’s a lucrative business and one that can make a lot of money. We’ve done a very small soft launch online and sales of the Jamaican Rum flavored coffee have been steady. A much larger launch is coming and people are going to be quite impressed with the brand.”
Peter Thomas has always had an acute ability to recognize a good opportunity and to spin that into something successful. He’s nobody’s bitch. He’s a businessman with plans to take the Peter Thomas brand to the next level. He says there is a lot more to come.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people who have been on a reality show have absolutely nothing once the show is over or their no longer on it,” Thomas says. “Peter Thomas and Cynthia Bailey are doing exactly what we were doing before this reality show and will be doing the same thing after, only bigger because we have bigger numbers and bigger ambitions.”