Brittany Cartwright just went through the hardest year of her life and is asking Bravo fans to give her some grace as she relives it all on TV.
Last summer, the star of The Valley filed for divorce from Jax Taylor after five years of marriage and saw her estranged husband go into a 30-day rehab program and be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Of course, this all happened while she was raising her young son, Cruz, and filming the second season of the reality show, which is currently airing on Bravo.
“[That was] definitely the hardest season I’ve ever filmed. Hard to watch back,” she told friend and former Vanderpump Rules costar (and sometime ‘The Valley’ guest) Lala Kent on this week’s episode of the Give Them Lala podcast.
“I think that I’m definitely showing a different side of me that people aren’t used to. I think I’m showing a lot of growth and strength, and I’m in a much better place now than I was when I was filming this….we filmed over the summer [of 2024], so it’s been a hot minute. But, yeah, I feel like I’ve gotten so much support and I’m so grateful for that.”
Still, Brittany says she has a lot of negativity thrown at her by the show’s viewers.
“But if I do one thing wrong, I feel like people come at me,” she said. “And it’s like, give me a little bit of grace here. I’m literally going through the hardest summer of my entire life and doing it all on TV.”
Brittany admitted to Lala that she knew from the start that filming this season was going to be hard because of the tough state her relationship with Jax was in. She revealed that right before production began, the two had the violent argument that was discussed early this season on ‘The Valley’ and led to Jax entering a treatment center.
“[T]wo days before we even picked up cameras is whenever all the stuff with Jax happened, so I knew that it was going to be bad,” Brittany said. “And before that we had been separated for like six or seven months already. And it wasn’t good our entire separation when he started spiraling and stuff, so it was, like, even worse than normal. So I just knew it was going to be extremely hard.”
During filming, things did escalate, even while Jax was in treatment.
“I was trying to give him some grace while he was doing things and hopefully working on himself, but then you obviously see– because I was already on the show– I was getting rage texts constantly,” she said. “All this stuff was happening, and then there’s more stuff I can’t say yet because it’s on the show, obviously, but even more stuff that hasn’t aired yet that I had to go through,” Brittany said.
Brittany credits her now four-year-old son Cruz with giving her the strength to leave Jax after a turbulent decade together.
“You have to hit your breaking point and I always say having Cruz around with all the fighting and stuff that was going on, that really brought me to my breaking point,” she said. “A lot of people stay in relationships because of their kids and think, ‘We need to stay together, we need to make it through [until the kids go] to college,’ and this and that, and they’re miserable their whole lives. It just got to the point where it was so toxic and so bad and my little, sweet, innocent Cruz having to be around that, it broke my heart, so my mama bear came out and I was like, ‘Nope.’ Like, it just completely opened my eyes.”
Last month, Brittany revealed in an interview with People that Cruz had been diagnosed with autism.
“I was expecting it. I thought we were going to get the diagnosis, but whenever you get it, it makes things a lot more real,” she told Lala. “It didn’t really change anything for me. Because, of course it, like, changes things, but whenever you’re expecting that you’re going to get that anyway, it’s almost a relief because you know what’s going on and you know, ‘OK, I have a plan and I have to start doing this and I have to do this’… I can start, like, advocating and I can start doing different things to help him that maybe I wasn’t sure where I needed to go before.”
In the first season of ‘The Valley’, Cruz was shown working with an occupational therapist due to speech delays. Lala asked how the fighting in the home prior to the separation impacted him.
“Just because he’s nonverbal doesn’t mean he’s not taking things in and feeling all the things, and I just could not allow that to happen,” Brittany said. “I have to be his voice and protect him at all costs, and that really, really was, like, that was 100% my breaking point because [Jax] doesn’t care to yell at me in front of anybody.”
Since filming wrapped, Brittany and Cruz have moved back into the house they once shared with Jax. She told Lala she replaced the lawn he so proudly mowed on ‘The Valley’ with turf and hired a landscaper so her garden looks better than ever.
“I feel like I’m a bad bitch right now,” she said. “I’m taking care of everything. I have the house to myself. It’s great. I don’t need a man for anything.”
That doesn’t mean Brittany’s not open to dating, though.
“It’s been over a year that I’ve been separated and my divorce will be final any day, hopefully, fingers crossed,” she said. “I don’t really like being single. … I think I get lonely, but then I do have a lot of things I need to work on still and I need to heal from things. But, again, people are watching ‘The Valley’ right now, which was [filmed] last summer. I have grown even more since [that] aired. I’m a lot stronger within myself, but I’m having fun. I have a crush, nothing serious, but, yeah, we’ll see where it goes.”
‘The Valley’ airs Tuesdays on Bravo and streams the next day on Peacock.
