Heather Dubrow addressed her drama with newbie Katie Ginella, the return of Alexis Bellino, Shannon Beador’s “rough” season, and allegations surrounding Jenn Pedranti’s boyfriend Ryan Boyajian.
According to a recent Real Housewives of Orange County trailer, castmates constantly shaded Shannon over her DUI crash throughout the new season. On top of that, her ex-boyfriend John Janssen is dating Alexis, who just returned to the group as a ‘friend.’ After the season wrapped, Jenn’s boyfriend Ryan was allegedly linked to a gambling scandal involving the MLB.
In an interview with ET, Heather shaded her newbie castmate Katie. She compared her to season-16 star Noella Bergener, who Heather accused of inventing stories for drama. But in the season 18 trailer, Katie accused Heather of being a liar.
“When you come into a friend group, you should try to make friends,” said Heather of Katie. “Not try to dig stuff up on people, months before you meet them, or look to have problems with people. It’s just all inauthentic. It doesn’t work.”
She called Katie “Noella 1.5.”
Heather said going up against the newbie was like “fighting shadows.”
“When someone comes into our friend group and wants to make a big splash, when someone thinks they’re smarter than the show, you’ve lost,” said Heather. “This is an authentic friend group. I have a history with all these women, and it would have been nice to have Katie come in and just get to know me. And I’m actually– I’m sad that she didn’t, because maybe we would have been friends.”
“[Katie] just gave an interview and said she hated me,” Heather went on, but added that she’s now in a better place with Gina Kirschenheiter, Tamra Judge and Emily Simpson – with whom she had drama last year.
“It was very difficult for me, in general, to walk back into this season,” she explained, remembering season 17’s reunion, where Heather was in conflict with almost every costar. “I really had to make a conscious decision, to move forward with everyone and figure out, here’s how we left off. How do I feel about this friend right now? What box? Are you an acquaintance? Are you someone I’m going to tell things to? Is there a bigger friendship here? … That was not easy to walk back into. I think my vibe this year was very cautiously optimistic, and really trying to keep my eyes open and see who my true friends are.”
She claimed Gina, Tamra and Emily are all true friends.
“Here’s the thing about being on this show: you live it, and then you walk away from it,” said the star. “And you live there, and then you watch it, and then you relive it, and now you see things that you didn’t live, and now you hear other things… and you’re in a different space, and then you figure out at the reunion. I mean, it’s a lot of levels.”
“It’s hard to find people that want to open their lives in a very authentic way, and it’s the authenticity that sells to our audience,” she added. “It’s hard to find people that really want to do that, so I think it’s a lot of turnover and so, you don’t get that tight friend group, and now we have this tight friend group, and you bring some people on, like bringing Alexis Bellino back, who several of us have a ton of history with, so, we’ll see what happens.”
Surprisingly, Heather bought Alexis back as her “friend,” despite their previous drama in previous seasons.
“Isn’t it great that we can all grow up, we can evolve, we can change,” she said, revealing how they reconnected several years ago.
“Our kids were in a theater program together,” she shared. “I remember seeing Alexis in the green room there, and her mom was there, and it was just like sorority sisters, ‘Hi, how are you? Good to see you…’ and then from then on, we really just started to bond.”
“We both have LGBTQIA+ kids, and so that sort of, you know, talking about our children and what was going on in our lives really brought us even closer together and also, she’s great,” she said. “She’s beautiful and she’s funny.”
She called Alexis a “fully cooked egg” who’s more opinionated and empowered than her last stint on the show: “Alexis is strong … She has her convictions.”
“I just want to be incredibly clear that Alexis was in talks to come back to the show way before she was dating [Shannon’s ex] John Janssen, that had nothing to do with anything,” she insisted. “Everyone wanted her back.”
But Alexis’ new relationship with John made things complicated for Heather.
“My thought process was, I mean, honestly, how am I gonna navigate this?” she asked. “Shannon and I didn’t end great after the [season 17] reunion, I didn’t really feel as though I got from her what I needed to, and we hadn’t spoken very much in the interim. … And Alexis and I have become close, but I still consider Shannon a friend. So, in my mind I was thinking, how am I gonna navigate between these two? And honestly, I don’t even know if I did it very well.”
She then addressed Shannon’s claim that she doesn’t care about John and Alexis’ relationship, and she’s glad he’s no longer Shannon’s “problem.”
“No, I don’t believe her,” commented Heather. “I would care. Everyone would care. It’s human nature, you would care. It’s bad enough– look, you break up with someone, you want them to disappear, you want to ghost them, you want them to be gone, you want to erase them from your Instagram, and you never want to see them again. You don’t want to run into them anywhere, you want them to be gone. You do not want them dating someone who is now in your friend group on a TV show, no.”
She then addressed the claim that Shannon’s never had an “easy” or “good” season.
“[Season 18 is] a rough one,” Heather confessed, before alluding to the DUI – and castmates’ claims that Shannon has an alcohol problem. “I mean, three times the legal limit getting tested hours after you leave a bar? I can’t even imagine what it was after she left the bar … That sounds like a problem to me.”
After the accident, Shannon finished a 28-day program, but castmates slammed her for eventually drinking again.
“I definitely see a change in where she is in her life space and who she is striving to become, and I think it’s really admirable,” expressed Heather. “Do I think she’s there yet? No, but are any of us?”
Heather also addressed how cameras returned after the allegations surfaced about Jenn’s boyfriend Ryan.
“So, some of us knew some of this information for some time,” Heather shared. “It’s not a big town, so a lot of people know each other … it’s a bit Peyton Place-y, if you will, and so we knew things. It’s like when [Vicki’s now-ex-boyfriend] Brooks had cancer.”
“You were like, ‘No, is he faking? No one would… no!’ and then you go, ‘Really?'” the star added. “It’s odd, and so we had heard things, some of us, and then you’ll have to see what we heard later.”
