Credit: Instagram, Bravo
Vicki Gunvalson revealed that her daughter Briana Culberson told Andy Cohen to “lose my number,” as he tried to get her to film on the new season of Real Housewives of Orange County. The star also shared that the show “killed” her marriage to Donn Gulvalson, and she addressed her past firing.
On a recent episode, Vicki’s son Michael Wolfsmith admitted that he hadn’t seen his sister Briana in eight years. In a social media comment, he later hinted that it has something to do with her husband Ryan Culberson, though he didn’t give any details.
“My daughter wants nothing to do with [the show],” said Vicki in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter. “[In a past season] her husband just got back from the Marine Corps — six tours overseas — and he’s got some PTSD, and they really showed a bad light of him.”
“She just was like, ‘Mom, I want nothing to do with it.’ I’m like, ‘Can you do a cameo? Can you come on for a little bit?'” she went on. “Andy even called her for this season and she was like, ‘Please lose my number.’ What the show did to their family was not good.”
As for her first season on RHOC, Vicki shared what she was told about the project.
“Scott Dunlop [RHOC creator] told me it was going to be a social experiment: Pull back the gates of Coto de Caza and ask what it was like to live there as a working woman when 99 percent of the women didn’t work,” said Vicki. “I said, ‘What do they do all day?'”
“He said, ‘They play golf, play tennis and go to the doctor for Botox,'” Vicki added. “I said, ‘I do all of that, plus work — and I’m the breadwinner.’ He said, ‘Oh. We’ve got a TV show.’ This was just a pilot. None of us thought it would ever be made. So when Scott called to say it was a go, I panicked. I had no desire to be on TV.”
She said the show “killed” her marriage to Donn.
“When Scott approached me and Donn at the time about doing this pilot, Donn’s like, ‘There’s no way we’re doing this in our family. … Anybody that goes on TV is going to get divorced,'” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘We’re not going to get divorced. We’re fine.’ And obviously, fast-forward, we got divorced.”
“I do [regret that],” she said. “My family was more important than the show, and it broke apart. … If the marriage is weak, it’s going to fall apart [on the show]. … But sometimes [the husbands] realize the woman they see on TV isn’t the woman they married.”
Though Vicki said she never plays a role on TV, she thinks Housewives can sometimes “accentuate” their personalities. Later on, Vicki was asked if the show has changed when it comes to politics.
“Back in the day we never talked about race, religion, who we’re voting for,” she said. “You want to be where the conversation is. But we still have to be very careful not to offend anybody.”
At one point, Vicki addressed her past firing.
“I needed a reset. I was burned out. I wanted to focus on my business and my children. Then Tamra Judge came back and I didn’t,” she said. “I called Andy. ‘Why is she on and not me? I started before her.’ They took me back. It was like a humble pie was served to me.”
According to Vicki, talking about castmates’ businesses is off-limits.