Bravo/Getty "Real Housewives of New Jersey" alum Jacqueline Laurita
Jacqueline Laurita opened up about her time on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” The former reality star was an OG on the Bravo reality show and appeared in its first seven seasons. Laurita left RHONJ for good in 2016 – and has zero interest in going back.
During a May 8, 2023 appearance on the “Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef” podcast, Laurita revealed some of the reasons why the Housewives life isn’t for her, and she spilled on some of the stunts producers pulled during filming.
Jacqueline Laurita Said Producers Made Her Talk About Certain Things
GettyJacqueline Laurita in 2010.
While speaking with Yontef, Laurita admitted she got “sucked into” staying on RHONJ because the money was good, but that at the end of every season she wanted to quit.
“Then you get a temporary amnesia during the time you’re not filming and then you’re like, all right, it’s good money. I’ll jump back in and do it,” she said. “Then you get reminded why you don’t want to do it.”
Laurita added that her life away from Real Housewives is “so much more peaceful” and that she’s not sure how she ever lived in that world. “It’s constant stress,” she said. “You’re constantly looking over your shoulder. …You’re trying to talk about your life and they’re like, ‘We’re not following that. Tell us about this or talk about this.’”
“That tap on the shoulder from the producers,” she continued. “Like, ‘You need to bring this up. You need to talk about this.’ In real life, you wouldn’t bring up certain things or talk about certain things, or you wouldn’t hang out with people you don’t like. When you’re on the show, you’re forced to be put these uncomfortable situations around people you don’t like, people that you know are coming at you.”
“The whole thing felt like it was giving me cancer,” she added. “I felt very stressed out.”
During Laurita’s time on the show, her youngest son, Nicholas, was diagnosed with autism, according to BravoTV.com. But as she tried to focus on her son’s needs, she was pulled in other directions by producers.
“My son was regressing on the show and I tried to kind of hide that from the producers a little bit because I didn’t want to be a big thing until he got the actual diagnosis,” she said. “So I’m dealing with, I have this beautiful baby boy and now I see him regressing before my eyes. I’m like trying to hide it from the producers. I’m dealing with all this. In the middle of all that, it’s like, ‘Can you say about Teresa, about blah, blah.’ And you’re just like, ‘Who gives a s*** about any of that stuff?’ But you have to, you know, you’re filming.”
Laurita revealed that she tried to quit the show after season four but she had one full year left on her contract so she was forced to stay. “I was like, this show is disgusting,” she said, in reference to the “Strippergate” storyline involving her co-star Melissa Gorga, in which she was also implicated. “I can’t believe where they’re going with this. You know, this is awful. Like, I don’t want to be part of this anymore. It was just a stressful time. I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”
Jacqueline Laurita Said She Has No Interest in Retuning to the Real Housewives
Getty ImagesJacqueline Laurita.
There has been a lot of buzz about Laurita returning to the Real Housewives, but she moved to Las Vegas several years ago. Even if she did live in a Housewives city – she has plans to move to Orange County, California — she has said she has no interest in returning to the Bravo franchise.
“I have no interest in going back on the Housewives,” she told Yontef. “I don’t live in New Jersey. I’m not going to go be on the Housewives of OC. I’m at a different stage in my life.”
She added that even a “Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip,” which only films for a week or so, is also out of the question for her right now. “I don’t have someone to watch my son for a week straight while I’m off on an island somewhere,” she said. “It’s a very hard thing for me to pull off. Maybe one day I’ll have somebody that can, I can trust to leave for a week. …I can’t do it right now.”
In February 2023, Laurita met up with her former co-star Teresa Giudice following a years-long estrangement stemming back to their RHONJ days together. But Laurita was quick to explain that the five-hour lunch had nothing to do with her potentially returning to the Bravo reality show.
“NO, I don’t want back on RHONJ!” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “I live in Las Vegas and moving to Orange County in CA this summer! Although the Ultimate Girls trip sounds fun, I don’t have a sitter for that long to care for Nicholas to be able to do it right now1”
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