Heather Dubrow came back to Real Housewives of Orange County this season to just as much drama as when she left in Season 11.
Fans will remember Heather has tried to dismiss several castmates in heated moments, including current Housewife Shannon Beador and Kelly Dodd, who famously called her a puppet master.
Well, technically, Kelly said, “she’s the puppet and everyone else is the master,” but you get the idea!
Apparently, her reputation for being bossy has followed her back to the OC, with rumors circulating that she’s even tried to have co-stars removed outright from the Bravo roster. She sets the record straight in a new interview.
Did Heather try to get Noella and Nicole fired?
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, she gets candid about the gossip. “There are these rumors that I tried to get Noella [Bergener] fired before the show started, and that I called everyone to tell them not to film with her. That never happened,” Heather said. “I love how powerful everyone thinks I am, though.”
Last month, Instagram sleuth Bravo_Boo reported that Heather allegedly tried to get Noella and Nicole fired from RHOC before the cameras even started rolling for Season 16.
“I have it on good authority that Heather tried to get Noella off the Housewives of Orange County before filming even started,” a source told Bravo_Boo. “Allegedly, she single-handedly called and instructed each RHOC to tell producers that they did not want to film with Noella, including Nicole James Weiss.”
Heather also denies having anything to do with Nicole unexpectedly stopping filming the show after only five episodes. She elaborated, “Let’s debunk this. So, I’ve seen rumors online that I had Nicole taken off the show, and nothing could be farther from the truth.”
She continued: “Honestly, I brought her on the show, and I tried to get her to stay on the show. I thought she was great. And she’s an incredibly nice girl and beautiful and fun and great lifestyle. Like all of it. I tried to get her to stay on the show.”
“It really felt like a betrayal,” Heather said. “I mean, it was like, ‘Hey, come back to the show. This is going to be great. We need the lifestyle back and the this and the that, and we want a more connected community, and blah, blah, blah, blah…’ And we’re like, ‘All right, great.’ We talked about it in a family meeting, ‘We’re in.’ And then, ka-pow. Whoa, thanks.”
Heather feels badly about the lawsuit storyline
Early in the season, a twenty-two-year-old malpractice lawsuit Nicole filed came out against Terry Dubrow, which Heather has described as a set-up.
Terry admitted that he had totally forgotten about the lawsuit. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I was pretty upset that that happened,” he added. “This is something from my past, that was 22 years ago that I had completely forgotten, and I didn’t even know she was the same girl. So, I thought, ‘Wow, why? Why would you want to bring that on the show?’ And so, I was upset about that component of it.”
Terry continued by saying, “At the end of the day, I felt bad– I felt bad for Nicole. I felt bad that she had had a complication from high-risk revisional plastic surgery that I did on her, which I mean, hello, I have a TV show about it. It’s called Botched. … So, I felt bad for her, and I felt bad we had to talk about it.”
For now, Nicole James has not revealed why she decided to quit filming. Stories circulated that she refused to get the Covid-19 vaccine before the cast trip to Mexico.
The Real Housewives of Orange County airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.