In case your DVR wasn’t already working hard enough on Sunday nights, it’s time to add another show! The highly anticipated fourth season of Real Housewives of New Jersey premieres tonight, and Bravo has got the press machine in overdrive for its arrival. The video preview, released weeks ago, is very dramatic and shows how different this show is produced versus the other Housewives franchises, who stick to a combination of fights spliced in with fun vacation scenes. On the RHONJ universe, it’s all gloom and doom.
The show is definitely being framed as Teresa Giudice versus everyone else, so intensely, that the producers even allowed Teresa to skip the press activities required of the other women before the season airs. In an interview with HollywoodLife, Teresa insists there was a real reason, “My new book, Fabulicious!: Fast & Fit, is coming out May 15 and I need to do press for it on TV shows, but you can’t get booked for the same shows within a span of three weeks.” She adds, “I really need to go on the shows to promote my cookbook and both our RHONJ network, Bravo and the shows producers are fine with me missing the RHONJ promotions, they understand.”
I’m sure they understand; Teresa’s absence fuels the fire! And if you’re curious if Teresa makes jokes about the precious Manzo boys in her new book, she learned her lesson: “I wasn’t saying anything malicious about Caroline or anyone else in the cookbook, and I’m sincerely sorry that I offended Caroline. I really like her. I was joking in my cookbook.”
We all know if a joke doesn’t end in a punchline about Lauren Manzo‘s weight, Caroline won’t laugh. The humorless matriarch of the Manzo clan turned on Teresa in the last season and brought along her puppet/sister-in-law Jacqueline Laurita with her. Caroline tells the Huffington Post that Teresa was always Dina’s friend, “Teresa was and still is Dina’s friend. The viewers make assumptions that we were best buddies, but no, she was part of a group, an ensemble that we traveled with.”
She goes on, “But the relationship between Teresa and I was never that deep. I did respect her as human being and as a person…” That respect is now probably totally gone. HuffPo asks Caroline if her relationship with Teresa is salvageable and she gives a vague, Bravo, “watch what happens” answer:
“You can never say something’s never salvageable, but when you’re sorry you have to mean it. You have to be genuine in what you say. And if you’re not genuine in what you say then don’t waste your words… So right now, where I am, is pretty much where you saw me last, but you’ll see the story play out in the season and who knows where we’ll wind up.”
Of her relationship with Dina Manzo, from whom she is currently estranged, she is confident that they “will end” and that “Dina will be back.”
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Also upset with Teresa is Jacqueline, who famously skipped out on the season three reunion and had a corresponding Twitter meltdown to go along with it. Rumors abound that Jac was fired because of this little incident, but we’ll just have to see how it all pans out. Jac tells Wetpaint that she flaked on the reunion because of something terrible that happened during the filming of season 4, which she wasn’t allowed to discuss:
There had been a build up of things and then the night before the reunion it all came to a head and I was so overwhelmed. I was fed up and frustrated and sad. I was depressed. I had so much going on. I had been up all night.
Had I gone, I wouldn’t have been able to express what I was feeling — at least in terms of Teresa. I wouldn’t have been able to talk about it because — in terms of what the viewers know — it hadn’t happened yet. I couldn’t discuss it because it hadn’t been shown. Everyone would have known though. They would have been able to sense my animosity, but I wouldn’t have been able to talk about why I was so angry and upset. It would have been too frustrating to me.
Depressed, frustrated, and sleep deprived sounds like perfect drama creating reunion conditions to me! The producers must have been livid when she didn’t show up. I heard a rumor that they sent a car to go get her and the car waited for hours outside of the Laurita house and she just never emerged.
Jacqueline also says that she’ll “never say never” on reconciling with Teresa, but it would also take a “real apology.” She says the two haven’t been in touch but that Jac has reached out to her because she is bored with tweeting (I added that last part in). She says:
I have reached out to her. I reached out to her after the reunion a couple of times. Not to be friends, but to put an end to certain things. She had been calling some of my friends, and I just wanted it all to stop.
I do understand where she’s coming from and why she’s upset. But she’s misunderstood a lot of things. There are things she’s upset about and things I’m upset about. Like I said, it would take a lot to get our relationship back to the way it used to be.
And now the best news of the upcoming season: less Ashley Holmes! Is there any kid on this franchise more irritating than Ashley? She finally moved out of Jac’s house and is apparently doing well in Los Angeles. Jacqueline tells WetPaint things between her and her daughter are “really good.”
Jacqueline says her daughter will disappear after a while, “You’ll see a couple of episodes with her but then she’s gone.” Sounds good to me!
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