Getty Teresa Giudice and Jacqueline Laurita.
Jacqueline Laurita opened up about her surprise reunion with her former “Real Housewives of New Jersey” co-star, Teresa Giudice. The former co-stars had a years-long estrangement that ended in early 2023 when they met up, along with their husbands, for a long lunch in Las Vegas.
“5 hour lunch! Lots to talk about. Lots of laughs too!” Giudice, 50, captioned an Instagram photo of her and Laurita on February 11, 2023. “Reunited and it feels so good!”
During a May 8, 2023 appearance on the “Behind the Velvet Rope With David Yontef” podcast, Laurita gave an update on her relationship with the RHONJ star.
Jacqueline Laurita Thought She’d Never Hear From Teresa Giudice Again
The former co-stars’ estrangement came amid Giudice and her ex-husband Joe Giudice’s legal woes and jail sentences for bankruptcy fraud charges. When Joe Giudice was deported out of the U.S., his then-wife stayed in New Jersey with their four daughters.
“I don’t understand Teresa’s decision to not stand by her man and keep her family intact,” Laurita told Us Weekly in 2019. “You’d think she would go wherever he goes to keep the family together as a unit. …Her decision seems a little selfish to me.” The Giudices separated that year and divorced in 2020. On RHONJ, Giudice called Laurita “a nasty person” and accused her of not being a loyal friend, per People.
In her interview with Yontef, Laurita admitted she never thought Giudice would reach out to her following years of bad blood.
“No,” she told Yontef. “Because she’s not the type to like make the move…. [And] I had already removed myself from all that, so I wasn’t gonna like, reengage it again,” she said.
Laurita added that she did get a phone call from Giudice years before they reconnected in Las Vegas, although she didn’t talk to her. “I did get a call from her once she was in Vegas for something. Because I saw her picture, she was in Vegas,” Laurita said. “She called me and I saw it ringing and I didn’t answer it because I got like, nervous with it. …Like years ago. I’ve been here four years, so it was probably the first year I moved here. I’m like, maybe it was a butt dial. Because why would she call me? I didn’t even ask her about it. So I don’t, I still don’t know. …No voicemail, nothing, no text, nothing.”
Laurita added that when Giudice did finally get in touch with her, she wasn’t nervous to meet with her.
“I feel like I was a little more excited and curious like, what is she gonna say? Like what is this about?” she revealed. “It was more curiosity for me than nervous. And I was like excited to see her because I was like, yeah, this sounds friendly.”
Laurita admitted that she did wonder if Giudice had another motive, but that their meet-up wasn’t about anything other than catching up. “It wasn’t about Melissa [Gorga], it wasn’t about other things,” she said. “It really felt genuine.”
Laurita confirmed that she and Giudice also bonded over the fact that they have “Nicholases” in their lives who are on the autism spectrum. During a February 14, 2023 appearance on “Watch What Happens Live,” Giudice told host Andy Cohen that she had been thinking about Laurita a lot because they “both have Nicholases.”
“My stepson’s Nicholas and they both have autism,” she said. “So she’s been on my mind a lot and I was going to Vegas to see Bruno Mars.”
According to Page Six, Laurita has a 13-year-old son named Nicholas, while Giudice’s stepson, Nicholas Ruelas, is 21 years old.
Jacqueline Laurita Said She Keeps in Touch With Teresa Giudice & Their Husbands Made Plans to Spend More Time Together
Laurita also told Yontef that she hears from Giudice regularly ever since they met for their long lunch and that her husband, Chris, made plans to meet with Giudice’s husband Louie Ruelas.
“So now we keep in touch,” she said. “We do text. We’ll we’ve talked on the phone a few times. …And actually our husbands are getting together very soon. They’re gonna go golfing together. …And actually his older son and my older son will meet too. They’re gonna, the four of them are going golf together. … The husbands and the sons are gonna go golfing together and then they’re going to a USC fight.”
Laurita added that she was thrilled for the newfound friendship because it’s hard it’s not often to find couples where both the husbands and the wives “mesh.”
“And honestly, we probably would’ve had more, more than a five-hour lunch because what happened was they had to go to dinner because dinner, they were meeting their friends for dinner and a concert. So they had to go, Otherwise, we probably would’ve stayed all night.”
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