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Fans of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” reacted to a revelation that a canceled season 14 cast trip to the Berkshires didn’t go down exactly as presented on the show.
In a RHONJ season 14 scene, veteran cast member Dolores Catania told co-star Jennifer Aydin that she found “the perfect house in the Berkshires” for a girls trip for the fracture cast. “Seven bedrooms with a guest house with two bedrooms,” she said.
On the penultimate RHONJ season 14 episode, titled “Don’t Trial This At Home,” it was revealed that the Great Barrington, Massachusetts rental house the cast was supposed to stay at burned to the ground in a raging fire days before they were set to arrive there.
But in July 2024, internet sleuths found that the house itself reportedly didn’t burn at all.
A Detached Garage On the Rental Property Was Destroyed, But the House Remained Intact
The 14th season of RHONJ was especially volatile, and a final trip to calm the feuding cast never came to fruition. In the “Don’t Trial This At Home” episode Catania told her boyfriend Paul Connell that the girls trip she set up would have to be canceled after she received disturbing news.
“Well, the house that we were going to go to, for the girls trip I planned just burned down last night,” she told Connell. Catania noted that the cause of the fire was something electrical. “Could you imagine if we were in it?” she added. “That house was perfect. It took me forever to find it. It had a separate house off the ground, so we had enough for everyone and for two people to be separate, which is just what I needed.”
Catania added, “It was unbelievable how perfect it was.” But she also admitted that the house fire could be seen as an “omen” for the fractured RHONJ cast.
At a group gathering at Teresa Giudice’s house, Catania shared the dire news that they would not be going away after all. “The house we were going to burned to the ground,” she told her co-stars. “Like five-alarm fire, burnt to the studs.”
“If that’s not a [expletive] sign I don’t know what is!” Giudice declared.
Jennifer Aydin described the fire as “divine intervention.”
But on July 20, 2024, the @facereality16 fan account posted screenshots from an October 2023 story from The Berkshire Eagle. In the article, it was revealed that fire destroyed a wooden garage on a “sprawling” $6 million Airbnb property. The property matched the description of Catania’s girls trip rental. The detached rental house was untouched, as seen in photos shared by the fan account. There were also no injuries in the fire.
“Not to ruin Dolores’ dramatic delivery but it was the garage of the property that burned down and not the actual house they were going to be staying in,” the @facereality16 account posted. “It’s still terrifying and, of course, understandable that they had to cancel the trip.”
In the comment section, some fans laughed about the fact that the garage was nowhere near the actual house.
“Lmao wait the garage wasn’t attached 😩,” one commenter wrote.
“The garage is nowhere near the house so why can’t they still stay at the house??? The whole story was misleading unless it was just an excuse, so the trip had to be cancelled,” another wrote.
“Typical exaggeration by a housewife. 🙄 the truth would’ve been just as ‘dramatic’,” a third commenter added.
But another fan noted, “It is very possible that there was a great deal of smoke damage to the main house as well.”
Even Andy Cohen Got the Story About the Fire Wrong
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The story about the scrapped RHONJ trip has been going around since the fire occurred in October 2023. At the time, “Real Housewives” producer Andy Cohen spoke on his Sirius XM Show, “Andy Cohen Live,” to reveal that while visiting the Berkshires, the RHONJ cast was supposed to pay a visit to former “Real Housewives of New York City” star Dorinda Medley. Medley famously also owns a home in the area, which she named Blue Stone Manor.
“They were gonna film at Dorinda’s house,” Cohen said in October 2023. “I’m just saying this, and the place that they were staying burned down. So the trip got, I mean, literally [canceled], like, the day before they were leaving to go.”
Cohen reiterated that the trip “was canceled because the house burned down” and for no other reason. “The house literally burned down,” he said again.
In lieu of the cast trip, Catania arranged a cast dinner at Rails Steakhouse in Towaco, New Jersey. The upscale eatery was the scene for the explosive season 14 finale that will air on August 5 on Bravo.
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