Riley Burruss Is All About Balance

Riley Burruss walks into the West Village hot spot Dante with a pep in her step, knowing brunch awaits. It’s the same day the Season 2 finale of her Bravo series Next Gen NYC airs, and although she's excited for fans to see what happens, she's also happy to get a break from being on-screen.

“I think relieved would be a good answer,” she tells me when I ask how she’s feeling about this season ending. Burruss settles in at our table, wearing a black minidress and a bedazzled Gucci bag, then orders a pineapple juice. “Seeing yourself on TV can be stressful at times, but knowing that everything's out there feels pretty good.” This season alone, the 24-year-old navigated family drama, a feud with a friend that made headlines, coming-of-age career dilemmas, and her first romantic relationship in the spotlight.

Burruss grew up as the daughter of Grammy winner Kandi Burruss, who became one of the longest-running Housewives, appearing in 14 seasons of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, and even earning a Wifetime Achievement Award (Bravo’s equivalent of an Oscar). As a child, she didn’t know life without cameras, which eventually took its toll. “I definitely got sick of it when I was in high school,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘This is getting to be too much. I'm going through puberty, I'm trying to figure out my life, this is crazy being on TV.’”

At that time, her mom let Burruss stop filming, but she still felt the urge to leave town to carve her own path. “Growing up in Atlanta with my mom being such a prominent person there, I was always her daughter, and I really wanted to make my own name for myself,” she says. Like every good coming-of-age protagonist, Burruss made her way to New York, getting to know the city during a summer internship at a law firm before deciding to attend NYU to study marketing.

As graduation approached, reality TV reentered her life. Her friend Brooks Marks, son of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City icon Meredith Marks, was approached in 2024 about doing a show with his friend group, and Burruss was one of his first calls. “There were definitely hesitations because I knew how it affected my family growing up, but I said in my 20s, I want to try so many things to see what I really connect with,” she says. When more of her friends also joined, she knew it was the right move. “I don't really think there was that much casting in Season 1,” she says. “We genuinely were all hanging out way before then.”

The result was Next Gen NYC, which also follows Emira D’Spain, Ava Dash, Charlie Zakkour, Georgia McCann, Shai Fruchter, and fellow Bravo kids Gia Giudice and Ariana Biermann, with Burruss and Marks serving as the glue between the Housewives’ spawn and their New York friends. But even with their shared TV connection, Burruss had to develop new friendships with Giudice and Biermann. “Everyone expects you to know all the Bravo kids and that we have this big group chat or something, but there are so many people,” she says. “It’s hard to keep up.”

Her reconnection with Biermann was particularly healing, as the two were childhood friends when their moms were Housewives, but lost touch once their parents started feuding. “It's so weird relearning someone you knew when we were children because you never know if you're going to click or be completely different,” she says. It didn’t take long for them to grow closer than ever, with Burruss even becoming something of an NYC tour guide for new transplant Biermann. “I did drag her out a lot,” she says. “We would go to Public Rooftop, Little Sister, The Box, anywhere and everywhere.”

After the show’s first season broke Bravo ratings records in 2025, the friend group became a lot closer, which was a relief for Burruss — even if it means having to deal with more zero-warning FaceTime sessions. “I'm more of a texter. But Brooks will randomly call me. Charlie and Ava will randomly do a group FaceTime. Shai will, too. It's like that, and I don't like it,” she says. “Ariana has my location, so if I'm near her, she'll be like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I'm like, ‘Why are you stalking me?’”

People can be a little harsh online, but I knew I was going to have to take it on the chin.

Despite all this closeness and success, Burruss considered leaving the show ahead of its second season, as she navigated some family strife away from the spotlight. “Being in the public eye is kind of stressful for me,” she says. “At the time, I was going through a lot with my family; there were a lot of shifts in my life. But I was like, ‘These are my friends, and I hang out with them all the time anyways.’”

To say the transition into Season 2 went smoothly would be a lie. During her first group outing of the season, Burruss got into an alcohol-fueled exchange with McCann, where she brought up rumors involving ketamine use, mocked her for not being able to afford a Birkin (despite not having one herself at the time), and was stopped from throwing a drink at her.

The incident went viral the next day, and Burruss apologized to McCann for her actions, but she knew backlash would hit once the show aired. After a bite of her huevos rancheros, Burruss takes a moment to consider her words, noting she got a “different type of hate” than she was used to.

“I was really stressed for months after that,” she says. “I still look back and I'm in shock and embarrassed. I knew how wrong the whole situation was. People can be a little harsh online, but I knew I was going to have to take it on the chin. My mom just didn't want me to lie. She said, ‘You're going to mess up at times, but don't lie because they will roll the cameras back.’”

Later during filming, it came out that her mom and stepfather were getting divorced. In that light, her emotionally-charged behavior made more sense. “Maybe if I was more communicative with everyone about the space I was in, things wouldn’t have been out of turn, but I was kind of a brick wall at that time trying to figure out my own life,” she says. “It was just me not being smart at the moment. One thing about me is that I’m going to make mistakes. Everyone does. But as long as you take accountability and learn from it, you can move forward and really grow to your new potential.”

I joke with him all the time. He’s like, ‘Oh, you're the main character. You can have that.’”

Burruss stuck true to her promise, using the rest of the season to focus on her own growth. After considering a DJ career, she’s now applying to law schools, hoping to work in the entertainment industry like her mom, but on the business side. “Growing up, I learned the development process for artists, which a lot of people don't do much anymore,” she says. “We've gotten to a point where she'll text me and ask for advice, so I'm like, ‘Oh wow, we're getting somewhere.’”

It also helps that she’s one of the few cast members who doesn’t have to navigate dating drama, unlike her friend Biermann, whose love life got particularly messy by the end of Season 2 thanks to a fling with her once-frenemy Zakkour. “I was really confused, because we went from [not touching him with] a 10-foot pole to switching seats to hanging out at each other's houses,” Burruss says. “But I was like, ‘You're a grown woman. No one else should have an opinion on what you did.’ If you move to New York, you need time to be single.”

Burruss has been dating her boyfriend Christian Harvey for over a year. Viewers got a glimpse at their relationship in Season 2, but don’t expect much more. “He’s not a TV person. He likes being behind the scenes, so he was like, ‘Uhhh…,’” she says about his one scene. “But he wants to support me always. It’s hard to balance sometimes, because we signed up for this; they didn't. But being a part of our circle, you have to give a little bit of leeway.”

That said, Burruss doesn’t see his hesitancy to film as a burden, as many fellow Bravo stars might. “I feel like everyone else is very relationship-focused, and I really wanted to make this show about me and what’s going on in my life,” she says. “He's a part of that, but he isn't the entire thing. I joke with him all the time. He’s like, ‘Oh, you're the main character. You can have that.’”

The public is starting to feel the same way. “I see that people recognize me more as Riley from Next Gen than ‘Oh, that's Kandi’s daughter,’” she says, smiling. “So that's cool.”