Ep. 331: Behind the Bravo Edit: Timothy Hedden on Dead Housewives of Philadelphia

What happens when a Real Housewives editor decides to kill off the Housewives himself? Timothy Hedden has spent 25 years behind the scenes of reality TV, cutting Real Housewives of Atlanta, New Jersey, and Potomac, plus Mob Wives. Now he's channeled all of it into his debut novel, Dead Housewives of Philadelphia, a campy, dark-comedy murder mystery out today. And this is his very first podcast interview.

Timothy's path to the edit bay was anything but direct: a would-be actor kicked off the set of Law & Order, a fur salesman at Saks Fifth Avenue, a stand-up comic, and a 38-year-old production assistant at the Food Network before working his way from audience coordinator to editor. He opens up to Zach about meeting the Housewives, why the shows have become so formulaic, and why the women on screen are far more than the characters they play.

He also shares, with remarkable candor, his life as a long-term HIV survivor: diagnosed in 1988, a drug trial that saved his life, the moment he told his mother, and why a run-in with a young guy at Pride pushed him to write his award-winning essay The AIDS Dinosaur.

In this episode:

25 years in reality TV and meeting Kenya Moore, Phaedra, Teresa, Dolores, and more

Why Dolores is the inspiration for one of the book's characters

Mob Wives, Big Ang, and the night Timothy and his husband ended up on camera

From Food Network PA to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to Housewives editor

The prime-time shoot that made him quit producing

Meeting his husband of 20 years after a dramatic gym transformation

Writing as a dyslexic author, and his first novel that almost got published

Living with HIV since the '80s and the life insurance policy he bought to cover his own funeral