Gallery Girls’ Liz Margulies on Her “Phony” Co-Stars, Upcoming Feuds, and Her Bad Girl Past - Exclusive

If Gallery Girls on Bravo is your newest guilty TV pleasure, you'll be as excited as we are for an inside look at the show (about 20-somethings in the New York art world) from its queen bee, Liz Margulies.

Wetpaint Entertainment spoke to Liz in an exclusive interview, and the tall blonde dished on upcoming feuds between the girls, the pros and cons of having a connected father, and what she really thinks of the End of Century girls.

Wetpaint Entertainment: On the last episode, you and Amy Poliakoff had a clash of personalities. Are you two in a good place now?
Liz Margulies: No. She’s extremely phony and I can’t have a relationship with somebody that I don’t trust and don’t really know who they are.

Are you still friends with Maggie Schaffer?
No, I actually don’t speak to Maggie.

Why not?
You’ll see on the show, it’s coming up in a couple episodes. I just don’t agree with a lot of the... I don’t agree with how she handles situations.

What was it like filming with Amy, who you already knew?
She pretty much was acting the entire time, except for the drunken parts. But every other scene where she’s having a conversation or bringing cupcakes, it’s all an act. It’s all completely fake, phony, you can hear her voice changes. She has ten different voice pitches because she’s always trying to be someone she’s not.

Who is the real Amy?
I don’t know. I really don’t know.

You seem very comfortable talking about your past as a bad girl, and sharing intimate details about your family life and drug abuse.
It was hard talking about it, but as far as letting people know about the drug problems and stuff, I kind of wanted to share that, because I signed up for a reality show. So I knew going into it that I just wanted to be myself completely, so everything that goes along with that needed to be talked about. I also wanted people to know that you can get through that, even if you’re not in a good place, you can overcome it. And then a lot of people have issues with their families and stuff, so I kind of just wanted to put that out there too. And I’ve been getting a lot of tweets and stuff that people really enjoyed that situation and it helped them with certain things. So if I can help one person then that’s great.

Is there anything they’re not showing that you wish they did on the show?
Yes. Everybody thinks that I don’t like Amy and that I’m being too hard on Amy because she drank twice or once at an event. Obviously I’m not going to hate someone because they got drunk one time, there’s obviously more to the story than that. It has to do with filming and wearing microphones and lying and different situations. And it’s basically being put out there that I attacked the girl for no reason. And I had every reason to say what I said to her.

Are you still with the same boyfriend?
Umm… yes.

You hesitated.
Well if I were in a Facebook relationship, it would say “It’s complicated.” [Laughs] We’re hanging out, I guess we’re kind of together.

What are the pros and cons of having a well-known dad [Liz’s father is the art collector Marty Margulies] in the art world with lots of connections?
The pros are definitely being able to get jobs and meeting people that I wouldn’t normally meet. And he pays for my education and everything, so that’s obviously a pro as well. I’d say the cons are probably just having a lot of pressure to succeed because he went to a very good school and he made a lot of money for himself so it’s kind of like I’m under a lot of pressure to follow in his footsteps. And then some people are really judgmental and they think that they know my situation and they think that I just have my dad’s credit card and do whatever I want, and that’s just not the case. People just assume things and that’s annoying.

Are you still friends with any of your co-stars?
Kerri [Lisa] and I are really good friends, we hang out all the time. And Claudia [Martinez Reardon] I hang out with sometimes too. I’m cool with Chantal, Claudia, Angela [Pham], and Kerri. I’m not best friends with the others, but I hang out with Kerri a lot.

What do you think about Chantal Chadwick?
I don’t really know Chantal that well, so I don’t really know. She’s kind of quiet, she comes off as being really hard, but once you actually have a conversation with her, I actually like talking to her. She’s very intelligent, she has her cute little style.

What are the differences between the Upper East Side artsy girls like Amy, and the Lower East Side artsy girls?
Downtown’s definitely more trendy, artsy. I live in Gramercy because it’s a block from my school. If I could, my dad has an apartment in Tribeca, I would be living there or somewhere close to there but this was convenient for me. I feel like downtown is a little bit more cultured, you have more diversity down there, trendier, cooler spots. But I know that Amy lives uptown because her parents own a place up there. So I’m not really sure why they chose to live in that specific area. I know Maggie lives in Murray Hill, that’s definitely one of the cheaper areas of New York. I used to live there too when I first moved here.

Would you do Gallery Girls Season 2 if they ask you?
I don’t know. There would probably need to be more art involved in the show if I were to do it again. There’s a lot of art coming up in the next episodes, we go to Art Basel and stuff, but I just feel like there probably could have been some more art involved. It’s kind of too catty sometimes. There needs to be some more positive stuff going on, we went to all these art fairs and we did all these things, we went to galleries, and we’ve seen a little bit of that but barely anything.

What can we look forward to in the next few episodes?
You can look forward to seeing why Maggie is not my friend anymore. It definitely gets exciting when we go to Miami. 

Gallery Girls airs every Monday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo. 

Molly Friedman is an editor at Wetpaint Entertainment. Follow her on Twitter @MollyFriedman.

Get your daily TV and pop-culture fix from Wetpaint Entertainment: Like us on Facebook, or Follow us on Twitter!