It’s starting to get real on the Real Housewives of New York. The revamped cast was enthusiastically welcomed for their light-hearted and very hilarious banter. It’s just the right amount of drama, without getting too heavy.
But on the most recent episode, two of the ladies opened up about challenges in their childhoods. Sai De Silva and Jenna Lyons spoke about their past with the group.
Both RHONY stars recalled complex relationships with their mothers
After co-star Brynn Whitfield quipped, “You give us gifts instead of connecting,” Jenna started to open up.
“Yeah I’m f*cking guarded,” Jenna explained. “I have been f*cked so many times and that has nothing to do with you guys. And like, if that comes off as not wanting to participate or not wanting to try or not wanting to be a friend, I apologize. That’s not my intention at all.”
The former creative director at J. Crew explained how her mother, Barbara’s, diagnosis stunted her while growing up. Visibly emotional, Jenna continued, “I think this concept of like, opening up. It’s not easy for me. I grew up in a very quiet house. My mom had really severe Asperger’s, which means there was no noise in our house so we weren’t allowed to talk.”
The noise ban from the piano teacher meant that Jenna and her brother, “couldn’t have the television on,” and she “had to go to my room and just be quiet after school.”
In a confessional, Jenna revealed that she only came to know about Barbara’s Aspergers until later in life.
“I didn’t know she had Asperger’s and I didn’t really know what was going on until I was 44,” she said, before adding, “one of the things that is a side effect of my mother’s disorder is like there’s zero emotion — zero. There is just [blank]. When I was a kid, I didn’t know anything else.”
This was all a revelation to the group. But finally, as Brynn said, they started to “understand why you do things,” rather than being, “an ass out of assuming.”
“I understand but don’t assume, then just ask. How about not assume? How about give me the benefit of the doubt first. People are just broken, we’re all just f*cking broken,” Jenna concluded.
Sai gets real
After giving that space to Jenna, Sai opened up the next morning about her mother’s alcoholism.
“My mom loved me and that’s one thing I would never take away from her,” she started. “My mother was an alcoholic for a long period of time. Growing up and watching her morph into someone that I don’t even know, it was very hard for me.”
The reality TV star “really saw a difference” in her mother’s decline at the age of 16. Sai did “everything” to “take care of” her mother, but ultimately the disease was too strong.
“She would wake up and drink and she would drink all day and she’s just became this person who was no longer my mother,” the influence recalled.
Sai continued: “She wasn’t the person that I grew up with. She was just someone who was completely different.”
Sai teared up as she described what happened next, “anyway, fast forward, she died. She had a heart attack in a park by herself.”
In one final gesture of love, the RHONY star drew eyebrows on her mother as she lay in a hospital on “breathing tubes.” Sai recalled how her mother looked “super scary” from using black liner on her brows and decided, “you can’t go out like this with no eyebrows.”
Sai had each family member recall a favorite memory with her mother. She danced to salsa music in a final tribute. Then, her mother was taken off the tubes.
“It’s a constant battle,” she said of the disease that took her mother so tragically. “It’s a part of me, but at the end of the day, I also just want to remind people that my mother was not a bad person.”
Catch the Real Housewives of New York Sundays at 9/8c on Bravo.
TELL US – WHAT IS YOUR REACTION TO JENNA AND SAI’S HISTORY? DO THEIR STORIES CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION OF THEM ON THE SHOW?
