While The Real Housewives of Salt Like City season 5 will not feature Monica Garcia, OG star Whitney Rose thinks a new villain might emerge.
“People were concerned when Mary [Cosby] didn’t come back, people were concerned when Jen [Shah] didn’t come back and look at us now! Every season gets better and better and better,” Whitney, 37, asserted during the Thursday, February 1, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “I promise you, Salt Lake City, it is a gem. People don’t need to be concerned.”
Host Nick Viall then asked whether Bravo would bestow a snowflake onto another newcomer to fill the void created by Monica’s absence. (It was announced in January that Monica, 40, would not return to RHOSLC after she confessed to being part of the Reality Von Tease Instagram account.)
“Nick, we already have her replacement. She’s been here for four years. I guess, it’s not her replacement. We already have that person: Lisa Barlow,” Whitney said. “Lisa’s always been the villain! You’re an iconic villain, Lisa. You’re a Salt Lake icon.”
She continued, “She really is, like, at BravoCon and stuff, she’s always on the ‘icon’ panel, so she represents Salt Lake City. I don’t think we need a Monica because we have enough personalities as it is.”
Whitney, however, does think that RHOSLC season 5 — which hasn’t officially been announced by Bravo — would continue to introduce new “friends.”
“I mean, we always bring on friends,” Whitney said on Thursday’s episode, noting that previous guest star Danna Bui-Negrete would be fun to bring back if she wasn’t close with Monica. “She’s still my friend, so I don’t know.”
Whitney, Lisa, 49, Meredith Marks and Heather Gay have starred on RHOSLC since season 1. Monica joined in 2023 for season 4, and she quickly caused a stir. During last month’s bombshell finale, Heather, 49, found out and confronted Monica after learning of her involvement with the Instagram troll account that had been bashing the Utah Housewives for several years.
“For me, [I found out] on the beach in the moment,” Whitney recalled on Thursday of Heather’s revelation. “We made a pact on that beach when we found out, like, ‘OK, we may all have our differences and fight [from] time to time, but we’re a sisterhood.’ That moment was so hard, but it bonded us on a level that we never bonded on before.”
Heather had gathered “receipts, proof and timelines” about Monica’s social media activity, and Whitney has a theory regarding where it came from.
“Meredith has a formula, and I love her for it because she’s so in denial that she can’t see it. It is, ‘I will dig up’ — because she’s an attorney, [but] I don’t think she practices — so she loves documents, she loves files,” Whitney claimed of Meredith, 52. “So, where do you think Heather got all the information? Where do you think everyone got all the information? Meredith digs it up and gives it to everyone else to bring it on camera that way she can say, ‘I never said it,’ because in the reality TV world, all you’re accountable for is who said it on camera.”
Whitney, however, did point out that she “[doesn’t] know” if Meredith actually sent Heather the receipts about Reality Von Tease. “I do know that Meredith has brought a lot of documents,” she said. “I know the game and I know how Meredith plays it, and it’s very respectful because she keeps her hands clean.”
Along with what was written about the RHOSLC ladies on Reality Von Tease, Monica made scathing comments in her “burn book,” a nod to Mean Girls. She brought the book to the reunion, which aired in three parts last month.
“I saw my pages,” Whitney said. “In the beginning, [it was] poking fun at herself, she was trying to victimize herself in a way, and then at the end, it was all of the receipts of the Reality Von Tease page. … Everything in that book that they were posting [was] about our husbands, our children, our businesses, like, you don’t mess around with that.”
Whitney, who called Monica “dangerous” on Thursday, has since cut ties with her former costar.
“I unfollowed [Monica] this last week,” Whitney revealed. “There’s some kind of gratification of unfollowing and blocking someone, like, face-to-face. But, she doesn’t feel bad [about her actions].”
Whitney was even “open” to Monica remaining on RHOSLC if she was “willing to take accountability.” She noted, “I was willing to hear her out but really it’s in the action that follows. Someone can say, ‘I’m sorry,’ but then show up the same the next month. Then, goodbye. But the fact that she couldn’t even sit there [at the reunion] and say anything at all … hence the unfollow.”
