Heather Dubrow and Noella Bergener are still at odds over a Pride-themed card game Noella gave to Heather’s bisexual daughter, Max Dubrow, when she was just 17.
After Heather was seen confronting her Real Housewives of Orange County castmate about what she deemed to be pornography during their girls’ trip to Mexico, she looked back on their dispute, saying that when it comes to Noella, she has a hard time admitting to any wrongdoing.
“There are people in this world that think they are empirically right, they are just always right and there’s always an explanation for it,” Heather explained on the February 9 episode of the RHOC: After Show. “It would have been nice for Noella to just take a breath, listen, [and say], ‘You know what, I didn’t realize, I didn’t even think about the fact that it could be inappropriate. I just saw Pride Pack… Sorry.’ And I would have been like, ‘Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks.’”
But that isn’t how things went down. Instead, after Heather told Noella, “You gave my kid an inappropriate gift,” she “went nuclear.” And even as Heather attempted to agree that she didn’t realize what the card game entailed, Noella wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise.
“She had a little clip of ‘Okay, I’m sorry’ and then went back into her spiel, which then led everybody to get up from the table except her and I,” Dr. Jen Armstrong recalled. “She was just going on and on and nobody could make any sense of what she was saying.”
According to Noella, she believes Heather went around to the ladies of the RHOC cast rather than approach her woman-to-woman because she wanted to hurt her — even though she knew she had no bad intention.
“If somebody gave something sexually explicit or suggestive to my child, I would be at their door within 20 minutes. I would be on the phone, I would reach out to them and say, ‘Hey excuse me. What are you doing?’ I wouldn’t then go around town telling all the ladies. All of that is ick to me,” she stated. “You don’t do that. You don’t say that, if you genuinely think that. Unless maybe you are trying to put something salacious out there to hurt the gift-giver. But she knew my intention.”
Emily Simpson also knew Noella’s intention, saying that she could have made the same mistake herself.
“I nowhere feel that Noella did anything intentional,” she admitted. “I think it was just negligence on her part… [But] I think Heather getting upset about the context of the cards I think was completely reasonable.”
While Gina Kirschenheiter feuded with Noella in Mexico as well, she felt that her reaction to Heather’s reading of the racy cards proved she did not expect such vulgarity.
“When Heather finally read some of the cards, even Noella was like, ‘Oh my God,’ Because she didn’t realize how bad it was and she definitely had a normal response,” Gina noted. “So I do think she ultimately understood but the fact that she just wants to defend, defend, defend without trying to hear what Heather’s saying, when we’re all like, ‘Just listen what Heather has to say,’ she starts attacking us.”
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 16 airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.