The cast and crew of Real Housewives of Potomac were rocked in Sept. of 2018 when Ashley Darby’s restaurateur and real estate developer husband Michael was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and improper sexual contact after allegedly groping a cameraman on the show. Prosecutors dismissed the case a month later due to insufficient evidence, but RHOP star Monique Samuels tells HollywoodLife.com EXCLUSIVELY that the incident really “took a toll” on everyone involved with the show who were “caught off guard’ by his arrest.
“That whole situation was so crazy. Thank god the charges were dropped. I know Michael does joke around and play a lot. So, I never once thought that it was something that would be assault. So when I heard that, that is I guess the part that was really shocking and scary, because that’s serious. It’s no longer just a reality TV show, this is real life. So, it definitely caught everyone off guard,” Monique, 35, tells us.
“And, you had some people on the cast that was like, ‘oh he definitely did it, he was guilty.’ Then, you had others that were trying to see the other side of it and what it possibly could have been. And, being that my husband was a professional athlete, I know how it is to be a target,” she continues. Her husband Chris Samuels, 41, spent ten years playing as an offensive tackle in the NFL.
“So, my stance on it was, you never know, could it have been a situation where he was being targeted because of his past history, or did he actually do it, or was he playing and it was a joke that was taken out of hand and made the person uncomfortable? There’s so many different questions that all of us had, and it was just one of those things where it’s like, you really don’t know. The charges were dropped, so you can only hope that if something did happen, that he could have learned from this whole incident and you know, keep your hands to yourself,” Monique explains.
The arrest did divide the cast for a time according to Monique. “I think it definitely for a second, maybe longer, because to be honest, I was pregnant. I got pregnancy brain, I was kind of staying in my own lane at the time. But, I can definitely tell it’s taken a toll on Ashley and some of her friends she thought would be riding for her weren’t, and I don’t think she received all of the support from everybody that she thought she would,” Monique, who gave birth to son Chase Omari Samuels in Nov. of 2018 continues.
“But, I think she received some support and then the people she was expecting to receive support from, they showed the opposite. So, it was definitely something that just made everybody show their true colors and what they really thought about her and her situation and her marriage. So, that was a really stressful time for her, as anyone could imagine it would be,” Monique adds.