RHOSLC’s Heather Gay Explains Not Questioning Jen Shah After Guilty Plea, Shades Whitney’s Lack of Accountability, and Questions Whitney and Lisa’s Friendship

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RHOSLC's Heather Gay Explains Not Questioning Jen After Guilty Plea, Shades Whitney's Lack of Accountability, and Questions Whitney and Lisa's Friendship

Credit: Charles Sykes/Bravo

Heather Gay has gotten backlash for her unwavering support of Jen Shah. And during an interview earlier this month, the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City cast member explained why she didn’t question Jen even after she pled guilty to fraud charges she previously denied.

Before detailing her ongoing feud with Whitney Rose and raising questions about Whitney’s newfound friendship with Lisa Barlow, Heather said that when it comes to her relationship with Jen, she never felt it was her place to question her decision to change her plea from not guilty to guilty.

“It’s been difficult for me to watch her manage all that and to see what she’s facing because I think of Jen as much more than this fascinating person on television,” Heather explained during a December 7 interview with Us Weekly. “She’s a mother. She’s a sister. She’s a daughter. She’s a cousin. She’s very, very integrated in her family and in her community, and her pleading guilty affected… She had to answer to so many other people.”

“The last person on that list should be me,” Heather added.

As Heather maintains her allegiance to Jen, she and Whitney are “digging a deeper, deeper hole to get out of.” And because Heather is “redefining a lot of relationships” and “becoming a different person,” she’s starting to look at her friendship with Whitney much differently.

“I’m starting to value the people that are in my life consistently and that makes it hard for me to look at our friendship and the way it just disappeared overnight,” she explained. “I feel like our friendship just went up in smoke and I’m not sure how to repair it.”

One thing standing in the way of Heather and Whitney’s potential reconciliation, at least from Heather’s perspective, is Whitney’s lack of accountability.

“I have not heard Whitney even acknowledge anything about the things she said about me, and the more I hear her say about me in confessionals and behind my back, the harder it is for me to understand how she ever liked me in the first place,” she shared.

In sneak peeks of the remaining episodes of season three, Heather is seen with a black eye. And while fans will have to wait and see what happened, Heather admitted she didn’t know there were hidden cameras in her room.

“So I am now waiting with the rest of America to see what unfolds,” she revealed. “It’s not the first time I’ve had a black eye, it’s probably not gonna be the last time I’ve had a black eye. You know, you wake up with a black eye, you move on, you make the best of it.”

Looking back at the events of the season, Heather said season three was far harder than her first two.

“This has been my hardest season yet,” she stated. “Season one was fresh and new and everything was just like, overwhelming, but I had Whitney by my side and we were like going through all of it together. And then season two, everything that went down with Jen just made it tumultuous and we didn’t know what was going on. But I really, as sad as it is, I had so much fun season two because once we got over the trauma of the swat team at Beauty + Laser parking lot, we really did just kind of enjoy each other and have a lot of fun.”

Meanwhile, she continued, season three has been hard due to the “breakup of Bad Weather.”

“That was a real friendship and there’s a lot of conflict that’s come from that…It was hard when we were filming and it’s been doubly hard to watch it back,” she confessed, noting that she never anticipated the two of them would suffer a falling out.

“I would say over and over, ‘I’m so glad we have each other,’” she explained. “And I’m really, really tight with Jen but it was like, Jen had everybody but I just had Whitney and it was important to me.”

When Heather was then asked about Whitney’s friendship with Lisa, she claimed that while Whitney may be getting closer to their co-star, she’s not so sure how Lisa feels about her.

“I feel like she wants to choose Lisa over me and she’s trying to choose Lisa, but I don’t know if Lisa’s choosing her back,” Heather shared.

Another ongoing season three feud is that of Lisa and Meredith. And after admitting that she doesn’t go out of her way to spend “as much time as possible with Lisa,” Heather seemed to confirm she’s Team Meredith.

“I have watched Meredith kind of navigate this and Lisa’s apologized several, several times and tried hard to try and get over it and I think there’s going to be a point where they both need to get over it, but that’s not really my call,” she said. “I have never had a friend say those types of devastating things about me, and so for me personally, I think I could get back to a place of cordial friendship, but that trust for me would be gone forever.”

As Heather pointed out, Lisa’s hot mic rant against Meredith crossed a major line.

“I can take a lot of banter and a lot of fighting but not when you attack the core things in my life. When someone says that they f-cking hate me and I’m a piece of sh-t garbage wh-re, that is something I’m going to see and hear every time I look in the mirror,” she explained.

As for her time filming the Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip season three, Heather said Candiace Dillard-Bassett of The Real Housewives of Potomac surprised her the most.

“Candiace in person is not Candiace on Twitter, and now when I watch her on Twitter, I just think, ‘Oh my goodness. I can’t believe how much range this woman has,’” Heather proclaimed.

Heather was also surprised by how good the cast was at “being on all the time” and not sweating.

“I was just a hot mess in Thailand, and I felt like every other woman just looked flawless consistently and so I learned a lot about glam and I learned a lot about standing up for what you believe and how to fight fair,” she revealed.

Also during the interview, Heather was asked if she was surprised that so many of her castmates took issue with her during season three.

“Yeah. Why is everyone so mad at the good-time girl? I’m just trying to show up, have a good time, bring people together,” Heather noted. “I’m not perfect.”

According to Heather, she believes she’s done a pretty good job staying loyal to certain people, especially considering the circumstances.

“I never said I was the perfect friend. I’ve never said I was the model of friendships. I’m just trying to show up, do the best I can, be the best friend I can, in pretty intense circumstances, and it seems like no matter what I do, it’s not landing,” Heather shared. “People are mad at me and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Heather then clarified that when it comes to her relationships with her co-stars, she believes Jen and Meredith have her back.

“Jen always has my side when it comes down to it, it feels like. And Meredith. And you know, Lisa’s not really coming for me that much either,” she added. “It just really feels like the conflict has been mostly just with Whitney and it’s because of that, it’s affected my relationships with everybody.”

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season three airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.


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