Not-so pleasant. While Elizabeth Lyn Vargas once described her time on The Real Housewives of Orange County as a “beautiful” experience, it seems things have changed.
“I was going through a major divorce, in a sexless relationship and miserable and then I get this gig on the Housewives and I’m like, ‘I must be perfect for them because like this can’t get any worse.’** So, to have them film me during that devastating time was very hard,” Elizabeth, 47, said on the Thursday, October 13, episode of Us Weekly’s “Getting Real with the Housewives” podcast. “There’s a lot of haters and trolls and I never experienced such negativity. I think a lot of people when you’re down, they like to kick you even harder, and so having the ladies kick me harder on the show was just even worse because I thought, I get this gig working with these amazing women and then they’re just smashing me left and right, so, that was devastating.”
The former Bravo star was fired in 2021 after just one season on the show, during which she opened up about her difficult divorce and painful past growing up in a Missouri cult.
Elizabeth’s firing, which was announced alongside Kelly Dodd and Braunwyn-Windham Burke’s departure, came as a “complete shock” to the reality star since she was initially told she was set to return for season 16.
“[I was] completely shocked. I was told the Friday before by my manager that I had the gig again and then the day of my announcement they announced Heather [Dubrow] instead, which is fine, whatever,” Elizabeth explained to Us. “I didn’t even get to show people who I really was and who I could be after such a devastating experience. I wanted to show people like, ‘Look, you can come out of this. I’m completely smashed, hit run over by a truck, but okay, I’m here again and now let’s see what I can do by staying positive,’ and I didn’t get to do any of that.”
Following her exit, Elizabeth said she was “embarrassed to go out for a while” because “the drama that they brought out on the show was really devastating.” The Missouri native feels as if her heavy story line which included her revealing that she was abused by “many men” in her church growing up, was one of the reasons she was let go.
“I believe this with all my heart, that one of the cast members brought up such negativity and drama in my personal life from my past that should never have been on a housewife show,” Elizabeth, alluding to Braunwyn, 44, hiring a private investigator to dig into her past, explained. “In hindsight, I’m glad it came out because a lot of women reached out to me and said that I was brave for talking about it, but there’s really nothing I could have done. I couldn’t deny it, I can’t lie and so I just had to let it all out.”
She added, “I think that that negativity was something that the producers were kind of like, ‘That’s heavy.’ This is supposed to be a show about a bunch of drunk women going on boats and yachts and jets and getting wasted at bars with tequila and spanks that are coming off and so I think the negativity of that season and being filmed during COVID was such a negative experience for a lot of the women that the vibe was just bad, and they needed to revive it.”
Despite the decision hurting her feelings, the Vargas Vodka owner would welcome the opportunity to come back to RHOC and “redeem” herself, but for now, she is featured on an episode of Reality of Love with celebrity relationship coach Nicole Moore, which is available weekly on BspokeTV.
“Nicole has a unique gift. I’d like to say she can foresee the future in relationships before they even end or begin,” Elizabeth told Us. “I’ve been intrigued about her type of practice for a while now, and so I’m not really into believing in the whole ‘somebody who can understand someone’s relationship that’s not really in it,’ but she has a track record. She knows what she’s doing, she’s professional.”
