Melissa Gorga and her husband, Joe Gorga, appeared on Tuesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live. And during their appearance, they revealed how their daughter Antonia is handling his ongoing feud with her cousins.
After Joe was seen going head-to-head with Gia Giudice over past comments he made about her father, Joe Giudice, the Real Housewives of New Jersey couple admitted that Antonia has been impacted by the family feud and said that the drama has been “very difficult.”
“I see it affecting her a little bit now. She really doesn’t get involved. [But] she’s starting to get annoyed,” Joe said on the March 1 episode of the WWHL: After Show. “She’s getting old enough and she’s getting offended. She loves her cousins.”
“[She] loves them… [They’re] so close,” Melissa added. “I think she gets a little disappointed.”
During the live broadcast of WWHL, Joe continued to discuss his issues with his nieces after a fan wanted to know why he didn’t pick up the phone and call them amid the drama.
“Because the way they spoke to me through texts, I just didn’t want to deal with it,” he explained. “I’m not about conflict. I just don’t want to argue and I wasn’t ready because they spoke to me in a way I wasn’t happy with. Honestly, I’m not happy about it. It hurts because I love them so much. The whole situation is very difficult. We’ve been through so much as a family so I’m hurt.”
According to Joe, his public disputes with Giudice have nearly all been prompted by statements made by Teresa Giudice‘s ex-husband, including the explosion we saw from him on last year’s 11th season of RHONJ.
“I never really speak about Joe Giudice, ever, and there’s a ton of articles about me with him, about my wife, and I wonder if they ever yell at him for anything,” Joe stated. “Before that day, my sister’s telling me, they’re going through a divorce, and she was telling me all these things he was saying to her. So I’m sitting there and I’m thinking about all this and then we had that episode a couple days later. So I explode. That’s my sister. I’m trying to protect her.”
“People forget sometimes that we also have three kids that don’t want to read anything that he writes about our children either,” Melissa noted.
Although Melissa and Joe have been hard at work on a new home in Franklin Lakes, which they purchased after moving out of their $2.5 million Montville estate, for the past several months, Melissa said the COVID pandemic has “delayed” the process as Joe noted that it is less than “50 percent” done.
“We’re waiting on some stuff,” he shared.
Another fan wanted to know if anything had gone down between Dolores Catania and Joe when they were little. And while Melissa hinted that it had, telling her husband, “You can tell the truth. I’m not jealous,” Joe confirmed that “nothing happened” between them (as Dolores also said last month).
Following his discussion about Giudice and their drama, Joe was questioned by a virtual fan about Giudice reportedly offering consulting services to people accused of white-collar crimes. And rather than answer the question, he confirmed he’s not allowed to talk about his ex-brother-in-law.
“I didn’t hear about it. No comment. I’m not allowed to comment on anything. No comment,” he declared.
Also on WWHL, Joe appeared to stir up some drama with Bill Aydin.
Although Joe admitted he had empathy for the cheating scandal Bill and Jennifer Aydin went through amid season 12, saying it’s “hard” to rehash hurtful events, he joked about Bill wanting Melissa to hurt his wife after being asked if it was a red flag that he did not intervene during their encounter.
“Definitely not… Bill was like, ‘Please… kill her. Beat her,’” Joe stated, before clarifying, “It was a joke! I’m a comedian.”
The Real Housewives of New Jersey season 12 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
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