Credit: Milla Cochran/startraksphoto.com, Bravo
Meghan King infamously exposed Brooks Ayers‘ lies about his supposed stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis during the 10th season of The Real Housewives of Orange County and she is now dishing on what Bravo didn’t air about the scandal.
In new book, Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of The Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It, Meghan and her RHOC castmates looked back on the cancer scheme as Andy Cohen admitted that when it came to Vicki Gunvalson‘s exit from the show, her departure was a long time coming.
“First I called Brooks’s doctor’s office and I said, ‘I have cancer, I was referred by a friend. I heard he administers this treatment using resveratrol.’ And they said, ‘This doctor does not deal with cancer at all.’ I also reached out to one of Brooks’s exes, who had written on a blog that he had faked cancer in the past. And then I called Newport Imaging, the place where he said he got his PET/CT scan, and they said, ‘We don’t do PET/CT scans,'” Meghan recalled in the book.
Throughout the season, Meghan was taking notes of what Brooks was claiming and after following up on a number of those statements, she learned Brooks was lying. However, despite doing what she believed was a good deed, especially after learning Brooks was pushing an alleged miracle juice to actual cancer patients, it was she who received a letter of cease and desist from Brooks, who hoped to silence her claims against him.
“Brooks actually sent me a cease and desist letter the day before the reunion. I ripped it off on camera. They didn’t show that,” Meghan revealed.
As Meghan uncovered Brooks’ mistruths, Heather Dubrow was also suspicious. And, in the book, she remembered the exact moment when she knew “it was all a bunch of bulls-t.”
“Brooks sat us all down one day to tell us he was stopping chemo, and brought up this doctor who claimed he had cured his own cancer by injecting himself with antioxidants. This doctor was putting Brooks on high doses of resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine,” she explained. “Well, it turns out, I did know the doctor and had gone to him–not for cancer, but for cellulite.”
Shannon Beador noticed inconsistencies as well.
“At one point, Brooks said, ‘Okay, here’s a chemotherapy bill.’ No one ever saw this, but it was hilarious,” Shannon shared. “Because what he did was he went on Google and he searched ‘chemotherapy bill’ and basically copied the first one that came up. It was an inflated chemotherapy bill, with every single number on his exactly as the one on Google.”
Also in the book, Andy said that while there were rumors that suggested Vicki was demoted to a “friend” role ahead of RHOC season 14 because she had made drug allegations against Kelly Dodd at the season 13 reunion, he and his fellow producers had actually been considering her departure for years.
“Over the years, there were times when we knew viewers were not connecting with Vicki, but we felt like it would be too dramatic to take her off the show,” he said as Alex Baskin said she “didn’t have enough personal story left.”
Because Vicki was so “embarrassed” by the reduced role, especially because it meant she wouldn’t be holding an orange in the opening credits, she became increasingly tense as the season went on and ultimately, she suffered what Alex referred to as an “epic meltdown backstage” at the reunion.
“It was a meltdown that came as close to The Comeback as anything I’ve seen in fifteen years. It was a reality star who hated the cameras but seemingly couldn’t survive without them,” Andy stated.