Heather Dubrow‘s new podcast, Heather Dubrow’s World, went live today. Seeing as how her first two guests were Shannon Beador and Tamra Judge, it should not come as a surprise that the drama surrounding Vicki Gunvalson and Brooks Ayers, which dominated this season of the Real Housewives of Orange County, was a hot topic.
“I have always been a really big supporter of Vicki and Brooks – Terry and I both have been,” says Heather. “I’ve been getting a few comments about why am I betraying her or ganging up on her, and I don’t feel that’s so. I feel like I’ve tried to give her every opportunity to be a supportive person for her. This all started because Vicki went on Watch What Happens Live a few weeks ago and said to Andy that none of the cast has reached out to her since she broke up with Brooks. I know she’s spoken to Tamra. For me, I texted her that day and I said, ‘Have fun in New York. Break a leg tonight.’ Even though I’m not happy with what the situation is, we’re cast members, I have feelings for her, we have a relationship, and I just wanted to reach out. She wrote me back a really nice text. I thought we were good. Then she said no one‘s reached out to her.”
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Heather explains her relationship with Vicki.
“Last year when Terry and I really were not being shown in our best light and times were kind of dark, Vicki jumped on the bandwagon,” laments Heather. “She called us disgusting. She said really unkind things about the two of us which I thought were unwarranted and didn’t give us the benefit of the doubt at all when we had been so supportive of her and so supportive of Brooks. This year after the Napa trip, when Vicki couldn’t make it to the trip because she was getting an insurance award, I took her out to lunch, I bought her a gift as congratulations for her award. I was always trying to be a friend to her. We’ve never been super close. I am not someone she’d call for a hug. She has a very close family and great friends. That’s not my role in her life but I feel I’ve always been supportive of her.”
Heather points out that it was Vicki and Brooks who dragged her and Terry into their story. First, with their IV story, “Which Vicki then says on the reunion that she fabricated. She lied.”
Second, with the Dr. Cellulite messiness, “I had been to this doctor right after the twins were born to get this crazy cellulite treatment … Then Brooks went to that doctor, who is not an oncologist, and he was giving him some ‘treatment.’ This doctor told Brooks I was a patient, told him what I had done, when I had it done, and totally violated my HIPAA rights, which is illegal. This doctor is now on probation. Vicki and Brooks called Tamra and told her that I had been to this doctor. They were spreading my medical… Look, I’m an open book. I’ll tell you what I’m doing. But what if I didn’t want people to know I had cellulite treatments? What if I thought that was embarrassing? It was okay for them to talk about me but it wasn’t okay for us to talk about what’s going on with Brooks when they brought us into the story?”
Heather continues, “My lawyer had to write a letter to that doctor, like a cease and desist, then he wrote something back and said he never treated Brooks. None of the stories ever matched up. I just want to say for the record, Terry and I wanted no part of this story. I have always been supportive of them. Vicki and Brooks brought us into this story, violated my HIPAA rights, and Brooks chose to tell Tamra about my personal medical information. So, do I feel I had a right to get involved, then? Yeah, I do.”
Tamra and Shannon join Heather now. (this is only their chat about Vicki and Brooks, stay tuned for the rest)
Heather asks, “What did you hope was talked about more or portrayed better at the reunion?” Heather says she had hoped Vicki would express remorse, or at the very least come up with an excuse, for the remark she made at Tamra‘s sex party about Tamra losing custody of her kids.
Tamra points out that she never lost custody of any of her kids, and she refers to Vicki‘s comments as nasty and vile.
Heather shares, “I was freaked out when she said it,” to which Tamra says, “You cried. You came up to me in the middle of the sex party and you had tears in your eyes.”
Tamra goes on to explain that Heather wouldn’t tell her why she was so upset. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you had been drinking,” says Heather. “If I told you, you would have gone crazy and then it would have become a story line, which is what we were trying not to happen.”
“I’ve never made my issue that I had a story line,” says Tamra. “In fact, when I came back on the show, one of the deals was that I can’t talk about it. It’s too hurtful. I didn’t want to talk about it. It was too fresh. It was too new. It was hurtful. It was still a legal problem.” Heather adds, “And I think you were being a good mom. You were protecting her.”
Shannon says, “The thing that bothers me so much about episode two of the reunion is that Vicki laughs when she says it. It’s not a joke. I don’t believe the fact that she was laughing and making a joke out of it was stressed enough in the reunion. It wasn’t emphasized.”
Heather agrees, adding, “I said, ‘You were laughing.’ She said, ‘I wasn’t laughing.’ I said, ‘My memory is, you were laughing. You made a joke.’ Vicki said, ‘Oh no no no, I was worried for her.’ You could see in the clip she was laughing.”
“Why would she be worried?” asks Tamra. “I am at a sex party that I am having with adults. It’s not kids were sitting around watching. It was a funny joke. It was just all fun. For her to say something like that was just nasty and vile. I think what her issue is, when she’s in the hot seat, she wants somebody else to look bad.”
Shannon adds, “Deflection. It’s going to be the word of the hour for me.”
Heather stresses that “a bash Vicki segment” is not the intent of her podcast, but explains, “I feel like I was pulled into this fake cancer story line where I didn’t want to live and I didn’t want to be. I feel like we have all been pawns in this story, so we are a part of it, we have to talk about it.”
“Where things got complicated is, the viewers really thought Brooks suddenly became a housewife and this was all about Brooks,” surmises Tamra. “Between us – and I don’t think that it was portrayed [on the show] this way – it was more about our relationship with Vicki and is Vicki lying to us.”
Heather questions Vicki‘s non-answers at the reunion, “Was it the Xanax?” Shannon says, “In episode one, she says and makes a joke, ‘I’ve had nothing but water and coffee.’ That wasn’t what we were told multiple times throughout the day.”
“She told us all she took Xanax,” agrees Heather. “She was worried and she was nervous. When you have the truth, you are not nervous.”
Tamra claims Vicki took four Xanax the day of the reunion, Shannon says Vicki’s eyes kept rolling back into her head, and Heather shares that Vicki complained of a dry mouth all day, adding, “She was impaired.”
Tamra: “I was in pretty bad shape last season. I remember not wanting to go to the reunion show. I had so much in my life going on at that time. I couldn’t take it. I knew I was going to get beat up. I couldn’t tell everybody what was truly going on and why I was an asshole. But I went.”
Shannon: “Did you take Xanax?”
Tamra: “No. I didn’t.”
Heather: “Did you wanna?”
Tamra: “No. I wanted to get my point across, and when you are on Xanax, you can’t do that.”
Heather brings attention to the fact that Vicki‘s story had changed since the reunion, “At the end of the reunion, she said she was scared of Brooks, she said she doesn’t know if he does or he doesn’t have cancer, she bought him the binder but didn’t fill the binder. When the show ended, all I saw on Twitter was, she got talked into things, he has cancer, she believes him.”
Shannon adds, “They backed me into a corner, is what she’s saying.”
Heather: “Here’s the moment of truth – Does Brooks have cancer?”
Tamra: “No.”
Shannon: “No.”
Heather: “No.”
Shannon: “The issue is, when did Vicki know? That’s my problem.”
Tamra: “That is the huge question. The one story that I think pinpoints to her knowing before we even started filming was the story about Terry because that story went out in October. We started filming in January.”
Heather theorizes that Vicki told the IV story to Briana because she needed Briana to believe Brooks‘ cancer was real – but she never counted on the story getting back to Heather and Terry.
“Knowing his first date of chemotherapy, I texted her,” shares Shannon. “She said he was up all night sick, which then prompted me to call her, and that’s when I was told the Terry story. Heather and I weren’t really talking at the time so I just believed it to be true. In my book, on October 24th or October 25th, the day that I talked to her, is when she knew that he didn’t have cancer. Before I was on the show, no one seemed to like him, but, my God, aren’t people gonna like you when you come on a show and you have cancer?”
Heather points out that Brooks‘ cancer “conveniently” popped up right after Vicki caught him with a prostitute in Vegas. “I think at the reunion the year before, we had heard that he had faked cancer with two other girls, but I didn’t believe it,” shares Heather. “I just went,’Oh, that’s silly, who would do that?’ But, like, how many times does someone have to do something before you actually believe it? What’s weird is that she brought the story line on the show.”
Shannon: “Here she is at the reunion, and we say, ‘Vicki, you lied. You lied a month and a half before we started filming.” She says, ‘Yeah, I did, because I wanted Brooks to have sympathy.’ By who?! We weren’t even filming! She had the plot in her head back then!”
Tamra: “So it was premeditated fake reality.”
Heather: “It certainly seems that way.”
Shannon: “Something that I recall you bringing up at the reunion over and over again which I thought was so on point was, you said, you cannot lay next to someone in a bed and not know whether or not they have cancer.”
Heather: “It’s more than laying in a bed with him – there’s medicine on the shelves, there’s appointments.”
Heather continues, “At the Aries party, one of your friends, Shannon, said to Brooks, ‘I haven’t seen you at…’ (some bar) Brooks said, ‘Oh yeah, I don’t go there anymore because that’s where I was when I found out I have cancer, so it’s got bad memories for me.’ That was one. Then, two, he told in an interview for the show, when asked where he was when he found out that he had cancer, he said he was at the office. Then, three, he told Vicki, ‘Oh, you can’t be mad about me about the prostitute thing because I’m in the ER and I was just diagnosed with cancer.’ Forget about the three different stories, you don’t get diagnosed in the ER. If they saw a mass, they would send you to an oncologist or a specialist, and they would delve into it further. They would not diagnose you in the ER. But, three separate stories, and one of them was off camera. It’s like the con of the century.”
Shannon stresses, “It’s not just him. It’s the both of them. Vicki will tell her a story, she’ll tell me a completely different story, she’ll tell you a third story. It’s like, which one is the true story? She can’t keep them straight.”
Heather denies the report which stated that Heather, Tamra, Shannon, and Meghan told producers they refuse to film with Vicki next season. “That has not happened,” she insists. “But let’s talk about it.”
“Coming from my perspective and sharing what I did this season on the show, when someone comes into a reality show fabricating their reality, it damages my authenticity and my credibility and it basically damages the whole concept of reality television,” laments Shannon. “I have a huge problem returning and filming with someone who isn’t truthful at all.”
Heather says Brooks lied (shocker) when he said producers threatened to demote Vicki (for season ten) if she didn’t share Brooks’ cancer with the viewers. “That is not accurate,” she insists. “They did tell her that she had to film with Brooks because she was hiding him. At the beginning of the season, she was filming with us and then leaving and having a whole other life with Brooks. That was not her reality. It wasn’t her reality and that is why she was given that directive – not to bring cancer on the show, to bring her real life on the show.”
Tamra: “I’ve known Vicki the longest. Right now I’m not talking to her.”
Heather: “You blocked her on all social media, didn’t you?”
Tamra: “I did. I’m just over it. For three years, she bashed me. Every new girl that came in – you, Heather; you, Shannon; Lizzie – she took aside and said, ‘Watch her, she’s going to stab you in the back.’ She gave me that reputation. ‘She’s going to stab you, she’s going to stab you…’ she likes throwing out those sound bites. All I was doing, the same as Briana, was just trying to protect her and tell her, ‘Look, this guys is no good.'”
“I am very disappointed,” concludes Heather. “Terry and I both were big supporters of Vicki and Brooks. But I think where this show was so good this season was that it was authentic relationships and true story lines. I don’t want to be on a show that’s anything less than authentic, because it hurts us all. As far as I’m concerned right now, I have no interest in filming with her. I don’t feel like she has come clean – it’s still stories, stories, stories, fabrications. Use any euphemism you want, it’s a lie. I’m not interested in doing that.”
As for the rest of the podcast, Heather explains how she ended up on the Real Housewives of Orange County, and Heather, Shannon, and Tamra talk season ten’s ratings, Shannon vs. Meghan, Meghan‘s addition to the RHOC cast, Shannon vs. Nicole, and more. Stay tuned.
TELL US – YOUR THOUGHTS ON HEATHER’S PODCAST? DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING NEW ABOUT THE BROOKS STORY?
Photo Credit: Heather’s Instagram
