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Jacqueline Laurita offered an update on her friendship with Teresa Giudice while appearing on a podcast on Monday.
Months after the Real Housewives of New Jersey friends reunited in Las Vegas after a years-long estrangement, Jacqueline confirmed if they’re still in touch while also shading Melissa Gorga, revealing if she’d join The Real Housewives of Orange County, and explaining why she feels Danielle Staub is “dangerous.”
“Danielle has a tendency to make up stories about people and then spread them around as the truth,” Jacqueline revealed on the May 8 episode of Behind the Velvet Rope With David Yontef. “She’ll get other people to spread the lies with her… She had recruited some of her followers on social media to attack me, say lies, put lies out there, write lies about us through the press… That, to me, is a dangerous person.”
Because her experience on RHONJ “felt like it was giving [her] cancer” and provided a “constant stress,” Jacqueline said she has “no interest in going back” to Bravo, whether by RHONJ or RHOC.
“I don’t live in New Jersey. I’m not going to go be on the Housewives of OC. I’m at a different stage in my life,” she shared. “I would love to do [Peacock’s Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip]. It’s a week of my life. Right now, realistically, I can’t do it. I don’t have someone to watch my son for a week while I’m off on an island somewhere … Maybe one day.”
“My life is so much more peaceful … I don’t know how I lived in that world,” she continued.
After leaving New Jersey in 2019, Jacqueline and her husband, Chris Laurita, moved to Las Vegas. And now, as she confirmed earlier this year, they’re looking for a new home in Southern California.
Speaking of her marriage, Jacqueline said that while she and Chris have spats at times, their challenges have made them “stronger.”
“We know when to pull away and when to push and when to be supportive … We like to joke with each other, and I don’t know. And sex. Lots of sex. Lots of sex,” she explained of what makes their relationship work.
During her time on RHONJ, Jacqueline often found herself in the middle of Teresa and Melissa’s family feud, especially after producers encouraged her and Teresa to mend their relationship.
“[Melissa] started getting weird … Melissa was telling me how much she hated me, but yet Teresa was nice to my face … I didn’t know what was true and what was not,” she recalled. “She’s like, ‘Jacqueline, don’t trust it. She hates your guts.'”
Although many believed Jacqueline was jealous of the sisters-in-law during their short-lived moments of getting along, Jacqueline said it was Melissa who was envious.
“She was the one jealous that producers were trying to push a friendship between Teresa and I, but she went on and tried to change the narrative on camera, which was upsetting,” she noted.
Not only was Jacqueline not jealous of Teresa’s other relationships, but she was also trying to help them maintain a united front.
“I always told Teresa, and I always told Melissa to fake it on camera for them for their family’s sake. I always said, ‘Listen, fake it till you make it. Don’t fight with each other on camera,'” she shared.
And according to Jacqueline, Teresa did her best.
“The night before the christening, when obviously she was angry at them for joining the show behind her back… she went up to them and tried to pretend like everything’s fine on camera. Put her arms around them. ‘How’s it going?'” she recalled. “Melissa said, ‘We’re not coming on to come after Teresa. We have no ill intentions towards Teresa.’ Then why the very first scene when Teresa tried to pretend like everything was fine, you call her out?”
“They always wanted to be famous,” Jacqueline explained. “They act for the cameras. They’re very aware of the cameras.”
Although Jacqueline wasn’t close to Teresa or Melissa when she left RHONJ, there was no love lost between her and Melissa.
“I met [Melissa] on the show. I don’t give two sh-ts about her. I don’t want her in my life,” she admitted. “I have no interest in being friendly with her. She’s an actress … She plays the camera.”
Meanwhile, she and Teresa had known one another for seven years before appearing on-screen together.
“We’ve been through terrible sh-t. And that’s what happens when you, when you hurt deeply, when when you’ve been friends with someone for so long, and then you’re hurt deeply, and then it just turns ugly,” she reasoned. “You’re gonna say ugly things together. It’s just [happens].”
Regarding her and Teresa’s lunch meeting in Vegas, Jacqueline said she never expected to hear from her former castmate.
“She’s not the type to, like, make the move. She was putting it out there, maybe hoping I would reach out, but like, I had already removed myself from all that, so I wasn’t gonna like, reengage it again,” Jacqueline shared, giving a nod to the public comments Teresa had made about their potential reconciliation.
In fact, Jacqueline was so hesitant to engage with Teresa that she ignored a call she received from her a few years back.
“I did get a call from her once [when] she was in Vegas for something,” Jacqueline confessed. “She was in Vegas. She called me, and I saw it ringing, and I didn’t answer it cuz I got like … nervous … I think it was … Like years ago … It was probably the first year I moved here.”
“I’m like, maybe it was a butt dial. Cuz why would she call me?” Jacqueline continued. “She was with one of our old producers at one of the pools. So maybe he took her phone and did it.”
Once Jacqueline decided she was open to reuniting with Teresa, she was excited and didn’t feel nervous, although she had concerns about her possible ulterior motives.
“In my head, I was like, ‘Does she have another motive?’ But then, when I sat with her, she didn’t have another motive there. It wasn’t about Melissa… So I was like… ‘This is like genuine,'” she recalled.
Even when Jacqueline attempted to bring up their old drama, Teresa refused, preferring to move forward instead. And ultimately, Jacqueline agreed.
“What good is it gonna do to go back and talk about all this stuff? We both said sh-tty things,” she stated. “It was a toxic time in our lives. The show does a lot of damage to friendships.”
Rather than rehashing the past, Jacqueline and Teresa spoke of their future, briefly addressing Teresa’s feud with Melissa and Joe Gorga.
“We didn’t talk about Melissa … She was like, ‘I’m done fighting with them. I’m totally done fighting with them. I’m not fighting with them anymore. I’m not giving it to ’em. I don’t care. I’m done.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, they both suck.’ And that was basically it,” Jacqueline detailed.
After then describing Teresa’s husband, Luis Ruelas, as “lovely,” “positive,” and “upbeat,” Jacqueline said she and Teresa have kept in touch since their Vegas outing — and revealed their husbands have as well.
“We keep in touch. We do text … We’ve talked on the phone a few times,” she shared. “And actually, our husbands are getting together very soon … They’re gonna go golfing together.”
The Real Housewives of New Jersey season 13 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
