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Ariana Biermann grew up on reality television as the daughter of Kim Zolciak, of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, and then found herself onscreen again on her family show, Don’t Be Tardy. So, when she appeared on Bravo’s Next Gen NYC, she knew in many ways what she was getting into — but there were also a lot of surprises.
“It was definitely a little nerve-racking, walking into a place and it's like, I don't know any of these people and I don't know how they feel about me,” Biermann told Teen Vogue when we met her at BravoCon in Las Vegas. The first few times around, Biermann was filming with her family and her mom was the star. Now, though, Biermann and her friends are the main focus, which means a totally different TV experience.
Now, as she and the cast film season two, Biermann has found herself in many new experiences, including navigating her new NYC home, figuring out the single life after breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, and figuring out how to make the world laugh.
Ariana Biermann: I think it's definitely a different experience. When you film with your family, it's kind of like, yeah, there's family drama, whatever, [but] it's nothing crazy. But when you come on to a show where, for me in season one, I'm the newbie [to the friend group]. I don't really know very many people. Me and Riley are kind of rekindling our friendship. It's definitely different, but it's great and it's allowed me to broaden out myself and grow within myself and learn a new way of filming reality TV compared to what I'm used to.
AB: It was so much fun. It can be mentally draining at times, which, as is everything, but it's great. And I get to film with my best friends.
AB: [At] the very beginning, it was a little bit rough. Right when I walked into my first thing meeting everybody, it was like, “Who the f*ck is this?” And you could feel that they didn't want me there. Then I think we kind of all eventually learned to come together and it was like, nobody cares who our parents are. We're all just here living in New York, trying to figure it out the same way.
I think I dealt with a lot of that growing up, too, and people just having a lot of preconceived notions regarding me and who I am based off of my mom being on TV, or the snippets that they see of our life on TV. I feel like usually when people meet me and we get the chance to interact, they think I'm a lot different than they had presumed I was going to be. At least I hope!
AB: My mom is my best friend. She's always been my best friend. A lot of people like to blame this whole situation on my mom. It was definitely a joint effort between my mom and my dad, and they wouldn't have done that unless they had to, unless there was no other option. They just needed to keep a roof over the kids' heads and they come first no matter what. So it was easy for me to get over.
God blesses me to be able to make money in other aspects of my life. My mom set me up with this career. I wouldn't be here without [my parents], and family is so much more important to me than money was.
AB: You know, I'm really focusing on me, and I have been for a while. Hudson and I have been going through this for quite some time, and I think choosing me was really the best decision I've ever made for myself. I’m focusing on making money and furthering my career and being healthy.
We're filming season two of Next Gen. I've been blessed with the opportunity to work with some of my favorite brands that I love. I have a big brand deal coming up with one of my favorite hair care brands. And living in New York has also drastically changed my life as far as making money and just paying for a lot of stuff, too, because it's f*cking so expensive there. But it's just been really great filming and working on this show and working with my friends.
AB: New York can be very lonely. Even though there's so many people, I was really lonely and I felt really alone last year and kind of going into this year as well. At certain times, everyone is traveling and has things going on and I think that that was challenging. [I’m] just navigating my way and trying to find friends outside of the people that I work with. I'm finally finding some [friends] at the gym, but people don't always like to talk.
AB: A big goal of mine in the world is just to help people. Being in the public eye more and people paying attention to more of what I do gives me an opportunity to spread more things that I want to share with the world, to just help people.
A lot of people love that I believe in Jesus, and a lot of people recognize that I post it all the time and stuff like that. And right now, I just want to help people laugh. I feel like the world gets so dark sometimes, so I can help people laugh or like, I do my recipes, my protein recipes to help people eat healthier. Like, how can we make this banana bread healthy and [have] protein and be clever? different ways like that and making sure to like, show people like the real authentic sh*t. It's okay to be going through it and crashing out. We all have our moments and Instagram is just a highlight reel, so I try to make sure that I also show the other parts.
A few months ago I posted and was like, “You guys, I'm crashing out.” I've been crashing out for months and nobody knows. And then I broke up with Hudson and everyone's like, “Well, this might have been part of the reason you were crashing out.”
AB: You have all these big dreams when you move to New York, and I definitely still have a dream of doing a clothing line one day. [But] I don’t think I can produce the most amazing clothing line ever right now with where I'm at. It's also incredibly expensive, and I'm not in a place financially where I need to be taking the risk, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on myself. I want to learn more, and if I want to put something out there and spend that money, I want to be really f*cking great at it and make something that people really love and that I'm proud of. I don't think that I could do that where I'm at.
I just want to help people feel beautiful, in whatever way I can find to do that.
