The Real Housewives of Orange County’s Vicki Gunvalson saw some similarities between her ex Brooks Ayers and costar Jennifer Pedranti’s boyfriend Ryan Boyajian.
“A lot of people were telling me about Brooks early on. Tamara said, ‘I told you so,’ type of thing. And I don’t want her to go through what I did,” Gunvalson, 61, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, September 13, while discussing the latest episode of RHOC. “Five years of hoping that everybody was wrong. And when other people see things that you don’t see, you can fall into a defense mode, which is what I did.”
Gunvalson shared that when she was dating Ayers, 54, she was “all about him” and ended up “defending” him despite her friends pointing out his red flags. Throughout the course of their off-and-on romance, the reality star’s friends and family accused Ayers of dating her for fame and money. However, Gunvalson broke things off with Ayers in 2015 after he lied to her about being diagnosed with cancer.
In the Wednesday episode, she noticed that history was seemingly repeating itself for Pedranti and Boyajian, both 46. (The couple have navigated cheating speculation throughout Pedranti’s first season of the Bravo series.)
“I see a little bit of a pattern like that. Her maybe seeing some red flags and I don’t know enough about their relationship,” she shared. “I like Jenn, I do as a person, I like her. I don’t want her to go through what I went through.”
In the episode, the housewives were on a girls’ trip to Mexico, where Gunvalson made a surprise appearance. As the women gathered around to play a game of Truth or Dare, Pedranti told the group to ask Gunvalson a good “truth” to share since she did not know her that well.
“I think you and I have a situation where we love a man that may not be the right person for us and you know it in your gut but you don’t want to make a change,” Gunvalson said.
Pedranti was shocked by Gunvalson’s candid response and scoffed.
“The truth always comes up,” Gunvalson continued. “You can see it now, you can see it a year from now, you can see it three years from now, you may never see it.”
In a confessional, Pedranti claimed that Gunvalson didn’t know anything about her relationship and was just hearing stories from costar Tamra Judge.
“I want Jen to be happy first and foremost,” Gunvalson reflected to Us. “They are still together and we finished filming almost a year ago. So I mean that has to show for something. So time will tell.”
Pedranti, for her part, opened up to Us in July about her relationship with Boyajian and the challenges they have faced.
“We have had a lot of conversations about it. You know, it’s taken up a lot of headspace for us because we don’t understand it,” Jennifer exclusively told Us. “I’m so grateful Ryan manages it the way that he does. I can just head spin about it. Like, ‘This doesn’t make sense. I don’t know this, I don’t know.’ But he keeps me a little bit more grounded with it, and he sees it for what it is. And we, thank God, are just in a great space. Everybody says ‘the [Housewives] curse,’ you know? And we think that’s not gonna happen.”
