'RHONJ' Alum Jacqueline Laurita Explains How She Moved Past Feud With Teresa Giudice
The former costars reconciled in February after years of feuding.
After years of feuding on Real Housewives of New Jersey, Teresa Giudice and Jacqueline Laurita have repaired their friendship.
On the March 15 episode of Giudice's podcast Namaste B$tches, Laurita explained how being off the show has helped her maintain a strong bond with Giudice after reconciling.
"I hate that I wasted so many years, like, feuding with Teresa. I think now with the show behind us and the toxicity is gone and people are not—like, now, we can maintain our real friendship and not be pressured on the show for things," Laurita explained.
She continued, "[On the show], you start to not trust each other because you're hearing stuff. I'm just glad it's behind [us] and that's where I want to keep it."
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Laurita also shared that she initially wanted to leave RHONJ because it was difficult to deal with the drama of the show and did not want to draw attention to her family while they waited for her son's autism diagnosis.
"I was going through that and fighting with them—there's a lot going on—fighting with my daughter. It was like a bad look for my daughter. There was so much going on that I just wanted [to be] away from the show," she explained. "I hated what they were doing, how the producers were bringing up…it was getting ugly with everything I didn't like the direction the show was going in."
Laurita recalled that she was so desperate to be off the show that she "literally had a meltdown." She said she skipped the fifth season's reunion because she thought she was done with the show, but had to return the next season.
But after the end of the sixth season, she needed the money.
"I really came back in the seventh season for the money," Laurita admitted. "That's the only reason I came back."
Unfortunately, Laurita got demoted to a part-time role on the Bravo series. She felt that it was not worth being roped back into her cast mates' drama for "part-time money."
She was told by producers that if she went in to film and they saw her getting along with her costars with her storyline coming together, she had the potential to be promoted back to full-time.
Laurita felt it wasn't worth it, and decided to permanently end her time on the show. In 2019, she moved from New Jersey to Las Vegas to be close to her family, who live in Nevada.