Shannon Beador isn’t so sure her friendship with Tamra Judge was ever authentic.
While looking back at the events of The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18, Shannon, 60, slammed Tamra, 56, for publicly proclaiming that she was supportive of her after her DUI arrest and admitted that their relationship was unhealthy as Gina Kirschenheiter, 40, and Jennifer Pedranti, 47, weighed in on the drama between them.
“Tamra decided to exit from the Tres Amigas and as we’re almost a year of that happening, it’s better. [Vicki Gunvalson] and I are actually doing a show together, a live show. I think as Vicki and I get older and we have less tolerance for a lot of the noise, we’re realizing maybe the friendship wasn’t as authentic as we thought it was with Tamra,” Shannon admitted to Bravo HQ.
According to Shannon, Tamra left town to film The Traitors in Scotland the day after her arrest, and when she returned, she didn’t have the reaction she expected.
“I expected Tamra to say, ‘How are you doing? What have you done?’ Because I completed a 30-day wellness program with an alcohol component to it,” she explained. “She proclaims publicly that she was there for me, and Tamra doesn’t know anything about what I’ve been doing in the last year … She has no idea, but yet she seems to act like an authority.”
During Thursday’s episode of RHOC, Tamra lashed out at Shannon for ordering a drink, deeming her an alcoholic amid a cast dinner.
“I think ever since she came back to the show, she claims that I ghosted her for two years, I have 153 screenshots to show that I didn’t — and in a 2-month period — so I think her coming back to the show, we never go back to the way things truly were,” Shannon admitted. “It just was not a healthy friendship.”
While Gina wasn’t in agreement with the aggressive way in which Tamra targeted Shannon amid the episode, she noted that she was “valid” in her feelings.
“I understand that Tamra struggled with that relationship with Shannon for a long time. And I understand that there were pain points there for the need for her to say, ‘Either you’re not drinking anymore or I can’t do this anymore,’ I think that is valid and I get that,” Gina shared. “Where I don’t get it is you’re not just stepping away. You’re now coming down on Shannon on a regular basis and that’s a very different thing.”
“Maybe it’s misdirected anger or stuff coming up from the past but there’s a way that we have to communicate with each other and I don’t think that was it,” she added.
Meanwhile, Jennifer confirmed she was not surprised by Shannon and Tamra’s issues, stating that drama with friends seemed to be something Tamra had a lot of.
“It kinda seems like a pattern to me, honestly, it feels like you get really close with Tamra and then something happens and it’s like a big, hard fallout,” she reasoned. “[And] I think Shannon has done it longer than I have.”
As for Tamra’s exit from the Tres Amigas, Jennifer said that from what she understood, Tamra had quit the show after hearing that Shannon and Vicki had been talking about her behind her back.
“[But] if you sit down with Shannon and Vicki, they have a very different side. I don’t really know the true story. I just know that they’re not together anymore, and Shannon and Vicki are killing it,” she explained.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18 airs Thursdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
