Braunwyn Windham-Burke opens about getting fired from The Real Housewives of Orange County — and explains why Andy Cohen’s reaction “hurt the most.”
“It still sucks. I was really looking forward to showing the other side,” Windham-Burke told Us Weekly on Friday, June 18, after revealing she was “fired” from RHOC. “You know, I got very raw this last year with sobriety and I think everyone could tell I was struggling and how hard it was.”
The mother-of-seven noted that she was six months sober when they stopped filming season 15.
“So, I was really looking forward to showing the other side of it. You know, the light at the end of the tunnel. Sobriety is fun. Sobriety is beautiful,” she continued. “It’s very hard getting sober and that’s all you saw last year was the getting, not the being. I really do wish that people could see, ‘Yes, it takes work. Yes, it’s hard.’ But once you get to the other side, it’s beautiful.”
News broke on Tuesday, June 15, that Windham-Burke along with Elizabeth Lyn Vargas and Kelly Dodd were axed from the show. Heather Dubrow, however, will be returning to the series after her 2016 exit.
Andy Cohen recently revealed why Windham-Burke was let go. “Listening to [Braunwyn] at the reunion made [us] feel like, maybe at this moment in time, being on TV wasn’t the healthiest spot for she and her family,” he explained during an appearance on the “Heather Dubrow’s World” podcast. “I think she was dealing with some real stuff with herself, with her marriage, with her children. It was a lot.”
Braunwyn, for her part, reveals that she was hurt by Cohen’s explanation. “I haven’t spoken to him. I think that’s what hurt me so much,” she said. “I was not in the healthiest place at the reunion. I was less than a year sober. I was still struggling a lot. There was a lot of tension with my cast. I knew what I was getting into and it wasn’t hard.”
Windham-Burke admitted that she wishes “someone had reached out” to her a few months ago in regard to her willingness to appear on more episodes of the show.
“Although I wasn’t in a great place [then], I’ve gotten so much better by doing the work. And I think we all go through moments in our life that are tough. We’ve all had, you know, mental breakdowns or times in our life where we’re not OK, but we get better,” she continued. “We do the work. And then we heal. And I wish someone had just said, ‘Hey, what’s going on now? How are you healing? How are you doing?’ Because where I was six months ago and where I am now are so different. So that did hurt just because no one took the time to call.”
Meanwhile, Kelly Dodd, who is no stranger to controversy, chimed in by sharing a link of Us Weekly's article where Braunwyn revealed that she has not heard from Andy following her RHOC exit.
Dodd threw some shade at Braunwyn, by revealed that Cohen reached out to her after they were let go from the Bravo hit reality series.
She tweeted, “Awe that sucks. [Andy Cohen] CALLED ME !!”
Photo Credit: Bravo Media/NBCUniversal (3)
