Credit: Casey Durkin/Bravo, Hulu
The Real Housewives of Orange County cast reflected on the drama surrounding Tamra Judge and an unnamed boy band singer after Thursday’s episode of season 19 saw Slade Smiley discussing the supposed affair and an alleged clip of the encounter.
As Gretchen Rossi, 46, accused Emily Simpson, 49, and Heather Dubrow, 56, of “salivating” over the potential reveal of the audio, compared Tamra’s vocals to that of a “drowning rat,” and defended Slade’s involvement in the storyline, Emily recalled Slade, 51, being “so excited” to share the backstory and Tamra explained her relationship with the boy bander.
“This whole thing started with Gretchen bringing up the whole [rumor] thing then talking about some recording that she had supposedly made and sang,” Emily shared on the September 25 episode of the RHOC: After Show.
After learning of Tamra’s song, Heather said she and Emily wanted to do a TikTok of the clip. However, Gretchen claimed Slade had it, not her.
“Both Emily and Heather wanted to hear that recording of her singing so badly … they were salivating at the mouth,” Gretchen noted, suggesting that, “in a weird way,” she was almost “protecting Tamra.”
“I was the one that said, ‘No, I’m not gonna play it,'” she noted. “Tamra has gone out so many times … and said ‘housewives should not sing.’ And so it’s just always made me kind of giggle because I’ve always known about this song that she went into the studio and tried to sing herself where she sounded like a drowning rat.”
While Gretchen was far from impressed with Tamra’s vocals, Tamra didn’t think she had “any ground to stand on to talk about [her],” giving a nod to her co-star’s own past tracks.
After Heather and Emily went back to her place to try and get Slade to play them the song, Emily described him as “so excited to be involved.”
“Then he starts giving other information,” she recalled of Slade’s audio hookup claims. “[So] she woke up the next day in LA and knew she messed up … She was doing everything possible to get me not to say anything.”
“I was just like, ‘Oh, for the love of God, did you have to go into all that?’” Gretchen admitted. “I could sense that it went from super fun and silly … to a different place. I realized in that moment that it was probably gonna be a big deal because Heather was like, ‘No, I don’t want to be a part of that.’ And I was kind of mad at Slade because I wanted it to be about the song. I didn’t want it to be about the story that was talked about back in 2010.”
According to Heather, Gretchen said the ordeal was her and Emily’s fault.
“If Tamra had done that, and I said this to Gretchen, if the roles had been completely reversed, everyone would have said that was calculating,” she explained.
“So did we ever get this recording?” Gina Kirschenheiter, 41, wondered as Emily confirmed they did not.
“Does it bother you that he has this recording?” Gina then asked Tamra.
“No,” Tamra replied. “I don’t even have it.”
Speaking of her relationship with the boy bander, Tamra said he was a neighbor.
“It was when NOH8 was doing all those campaigns. The ‘boy bander’ was with his now-wife. It was [his] idea, ‘Hey, why don’t you do a song that people can donate money, or the money can be donated to the NOH8 foundation?’” she revealed.
“If I wanted to hook up with him, I could’ve,” Tamra continued. “Not that it was being asked, but we didn’t have that relationship. Our kids went to school together. [And] I am to this day friends [with him].”
While Gretchen has spoken of Tamra’s alleged affair on a number of occasions, she claimed on the RHOC: After Show that she “didn’t care” whether they hooked up or not.
“If Tamra wants to go have a thing with a boy band guy, I don’t care. It doesn’t affect my life. I really don’t care. I wasn’t trying to out her on something,” she insisted.
Then, after Heather said that it was Gretchen who was part of the cast, “not you, Slade,” Gretchen defended her longtime fiancé.
“Slade gets involved when he’s asked to get involved. So when the girls are begging and saying, ‘Call Slade, call Slade, call Slade,’ and then finally they call Slade, he’s involved,” she stated. “It’s not brain surgery.”
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 19 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on Bravo.