Although Real Housewives of New Jersey stars Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga have eased some of their tensions in the past, they seemed to get right back to where they started in Bravo’s latest spinoff, Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip. The two women went head-to-head in the third episode of the new show, in a clip you can see here, rehashing an old feud about how Melissa got a spot on RHONJ.
“Andy [Cohen] called me and said, ‘Your sister-in-law won’t stop DMing me. She wants to get on the show,’” Teresa claimed after their co-star, Real Housewives of New York star Ramona Singer brought up the uncomfortable subject. “I never DMed him,” Melissa snapped back, “That’s what I’m telling you.”
Melissa went on to explain the producers “inboxed her” and “still reach out to all my friends” to look for potential cast additions. She revealed the details of casting producers reaching out to her on social media two seasons after Teresa joined the show in 2009. Teresa explained that her issue was that she allegedly heard the news of her sister-in-law’s casting from Andy vs. from Melissa herself.
“You and I were not friends at all. We weren’t speaking,” Melissa clapped back, referencing her then-estranged relationship with Teresa — an ongoing tension that also caused issues between Teresa and her brother Joe Gorga, to whom Melissa wed in 2004. As Teresa’s stated in the past, she reiterated on RHUGT that she was not originally supportive of her brother and Melissa joining the show for its third season in 2011.
“To tell you the truth, I can’t remember why we weren’t talking — unless they were just mad that I wasn’t putting them on the show,” Teresa said, to which Melissa replied, “We did not want to be on the show that way.” Deflated, Teresa conceded that she and Melissa “will never agree” on the situation and what really went down. “She has her story. I have my story,” she said. “She’s never going to admit it.”
“When they called to interview me, [Bravo] then told you that,” Melissa then said to Teresa, alleging that her sister-in-law was aware of her brushes with casting. “I didn’t know if we were going to do it or not. Of course, we interviewed for the show and of course they wanted us,” Melissa went on. “It’s a family show. Caroline [Manzo] was on the show, Dina [Manzo] was on the show. They want sister-in-laws. That’s what they want.”
Teresa then shared why, at one point, she didn’t care for her brother’s family to be within the RHONJ universe. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to fight with my family.’ To me, family’s everything,” she said, then reminiscing on some of the major brawls that occurred between she and her loved ones on the show. “Look what happened!”