Jackie Goldschneider is opening up about the drama-filled 12th season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, which premiered on Bravo earlier this month.
Ahead of her heated encounter with Dolores Catania, Jackie offered an update on her relationship with Teresa Giudice, recounted Teresa’s fight with Margaret Josephs, and revealed how she and Evan Goldschneider coped with Teresa’s cheating rumor against him on season 11.
“During the course of the season, we have ups and downs but I think you’ll see that we were in a much better place than we were last year,” Jackie revealed to Us Weekly on February 12. “I think the important thing was that even if weren’t completely seeing eye to eye, Teresa and I both wanted to put last year in the past and find a way to move forward.”
As Jackie and Teresa attempted to mend their relationship, Teresa’s feud with Margaret intensified with an intense fight at a restaurant over comments Margaret made about Teresa’s now-fiancé, Luis Ruelas.
“That fight was wild,” Jackie admitted, looking back. “Some people might think that Margaret maybe pushed too hard but I think that you can’t have that kind of double-standard. Teresa took my husband’s name and whole reputation and took a rumor… and just spread it to every single person she could… People are allowed to question it just like you questioned everybody else’s past.”
“He does get questioned a lot [and] I think that given the amount of things that were out in the press, it was justified,” she continued.
Although Jackie and Evan were both extremely hurt by the cheating rumor Teresa spread about him amid season 11, Jackie acknowledged that there was never a question in her mind about whether or not it was true. Instead, the challenges she and Evan faced were based around the guilt they both felt about the false report.
“I felt bad that I put him in that position, he felt bad that he was even being questioned and I think that we had to learn to let go of a lot of blaming ourselves and I think we just realized how strong we are,” she explained.
Jackie certainly had the hardest time navigating the 11th season of RHONJ, but when it comes to season 12, it is Jennifer Aydin who has the biggest struggles. And while Jackie previously wrote Jennifer off as a friend after watching her get “profound joy out of [her] marital problems” last year, she decided to be a friend to her as she coped with husband Bill Aydin‘s cheating scandal of season 12.
“I chose to be a friend to Jennifer because she really did need somebody and I understood what she was going through… [But] there’s some hiccups along the way, certain things that I find out that she did to me that I didn’t know about and then I had to question whether or not this is a person I wanted to be friends with,” she teased, noting that she was surprised to see Jennifer throw “Bill under the bus” after Margaret mentioned his past infidelity on the premiere episode.
“I feel like if she denied it… [she] wouldn’t have had the problems that she ended up having,” Jackie noted.
As for her friendship with Dolores, Jackie described it as an authentic “love-hate relationship” before admitting that they nearly came to blows amid production.
“Dolores and I are the same in the fact of like, if you get in my face and you rub me the wrong way, we’re just going to explode and that came to a head this season and it wasn’t a good scene. We had to be pulled apart,” she shared.
That said, Jackie said there’s more love than hate between them today, and she added that she’s “dying to meet” Dolores’ new boyfriend, Paul Connell.
RHONJ Live Viewing – This is also the live viewing thread for tonight’s new episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey season 12. Share your thoughts below as the episode airs at 8/7c on Bravo.