Credit: Instagram
Katie Ginella appeared to throw some major shade at Emily Simpson on Instagram as she enjoyed a lunch date with a “real lawyer” on Sunday at Javier’s restaurant in Newport Beach, California.
Ahead of production on the upcoming 20th season of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Katie, 41, posted a photo of herself and another woman on social media and seemingly targeted Emily’s career as an attorney.
“Lunch with a real lawyer,” she wrote in the caption of her December 28 post with immigration attorney Kathleen Martinez, who is also followed by Tamra Judge, 58, and Gina Kirschenheiter, 41.
As RHOC fans will recall, Katie’s drama with Emily, 49, began back in season 18, when Katie’s daughter claimed that Emily’s kids, whom she babysat, had suggested their mother had spoken ill of Heather Dubrow, 56. Then, amid season 19, their tension reached a new level as Emily hired someone to give the cast, including Katie, a lie detector test and questioned Katie about what she’d been told about the roofie rumor regarding Gretchen Rossi, 47. While Katie failed the test, she and others pulled its legitimacy into question and accused Emily of a setup.
Following the sharing of the post, Katie’s fans and followers took her caption as a slight against Emily.
“Watch out. Emily might see this and exploit her son some more,” one person wrote, signaling Emily’s comments about the health struggles of her son Luke.
Others left messages like “faves” and “this energy,” and praised Kathleen’s designer bag.
“Emily plays one on TV,” said someone else.
As RHOC fans may have seen, Emily recently mentioned Katie on Page Six’s Virtual Reali-Tea, accusing her castmate of defamation and lies after the airing of the season 19 reunion.
“I think she went in having the expectation that all of us are supposed to apologize to her, but I don’t feel as if that was reciprocated in any way, because I do feel like there are a lot of things that she should also apologize for,” she stated. “She’s made it a mission to defame all of us offline and to perpetuate false stories about us. I mean, there’s a lot of things … that we didn’t bring up because we just didn’t want to bring them up, but we’re aware, and we know about it.”
“It’s hard to forge a path forward with someone when they didn’t take the time or effort to try to build any type of friendship from the get-go,” she continued.
Although an official cast for season 20 has not yet been confirmed, Katie revealed in a comment shared on Instagram weeks ago that she was open to returning and denied having exited the series, either via a firing or her own decision.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 20 is expected to go into production sometime in early 2026.