Perhaps hindsight is 20/20 but that doesn't excuse repeated bad decisions! Vicki Gunvalson is the OG of the Housewives franchise and has seen the show through its evolution of affluent moms to totally contrived drama!
In a new interview she lets it all out on how she feels about the show and how it has affected her life. It's shockingly candid and a little unhinged – you know, very Vicki!
Vicki insists Real Housewives of Orange County features her "truth" except when that truth concerns toothless Greek "gods" and Brokes Ayers. "I don't script or fake my reality," she informs DigitalSpy. "My family's number one, my insurance business is number two, and the Housewives franchise is a close third. Beyond that, I try to fill in my life with what my truth is. My truth is, I work. I'm not going to give up my career for a reality TV show."
But she will give her marriage to Donn Gunvalson up for a TV show! Vicki blames the show for destroying their union. "I think the show had a lot to do with me getting divorced. I think it was too much pressure on a weak marriage," Vicki confesses.
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"I wonder where Donn and I would be now if we didn't do the show. But we elected to do the show together as a family. Unfortunately, it didn't work out for us," Vicki concedes.
In fact, Vicki says her biggest regret of participating in RHOC is the way it negatively affected her marriage. "There's some really great things that have come from the show. But one of the downsides was that it broke up my family, and that's tough to take," Vicki acknowledges. "I'm not going to look back and say 'coulda, woulda, shoulda'"
As for why she continues doing the show, Vicki admits she isn't exactly sure! #Famewhoring "It's not easy to be judged, to be ridiculed, to be talked down to, to get nasty emails about: 'You're ugly, you're this, you're too old, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're too short'. I mean, the viewers are not typically very nice."
"There's days where I go, 'What the heck am I doing? Why am I doing this?' But you kind of sift out the good and the bad and you hope you have enough good to make it worth it."
"But every single year I have a meeting with myself and my family and we decide if it's worth it or not. There's many years where we've said, 'No, it's not', and something happens that makes us do it again. It's definitely hard. It's not an easy choice."
"I'm not a quitter, and I feel like the viewers still want to see me," Vicki explains. "I feel like I inspire a lot of people. I think that the viewers know after seeing me for nine years, they get a pretty good picture of me. I'm not a liar." OK – that right there is a lie, but whatever!
Vicki also dishes on why certain cast members have left and she insists it wasn't their decision to leave. "Most of the others leaving was not voluntary. The network had a different cast member that they wanted to bring in or the other ones weren't performing up to their level or standard, so they terminate them," Vicki discloses.
VIcki believes her varied and busy life is what keeps her around. Not her insanity? "They haven't terminated me because I'm a businesswoman, and I think they needed the good balance of what it's like to really work and take care of your family and a lot of the other women, that was their only job."
"Most of America doesn't want to see that, they want to see what it's like to juggle and get through all this. So I haven't been fired! I keep going on. I think that's the biggest thing – the other cast members have been fired."
Vicki says she still has much more to share with viewers. "My story's not over, and it never will be over until I'm dead," she remarks. "There'll be a day when the curtain closes. And when that day comes, I'll be sad, but it'll all be okay. At least I have a career and I have a really good one."
Well, errrr… at least Vicki is realistic about the future of Housewives. So there's that! And that's a helluva a lot more than many of these women seem to have. Vicki will be returning for the 9th season of RHOC.
[Photo Credit: FayesVision/WENN.com]
TELL US – DID THE SHOW BREAK UP VICKI'S MARRIAGE? WHY DO YOU THINK BRAVO KEEPS HER AROUND?
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