If we’re being honest, The Real Housewives of Orange County would be a very different (and probably a tad boring) show without Kelly Dodd.
Kelly joined the show in season 11, and now in season 14, she’s clashed with just about every cast member who has held up an orange alongside her. Before making good with Shannon Beador—the two started season 14 on a good footing, it’s since gotten nasty—Kelly and Shannon had a rocky start. In season 11, they famously fought at Shannon’s 1970s-themed party, and in season 12 they battled it out at The Quiet Lady. The season 12 fight at The Quiet Lady fight ended with Shannon tossing a plate across the table at Kelly.
“Keep eating,” Kelly said, hitting Shannon on the weight-gain nerve.
“This isn’t my plate, you f—king bitch,” Shannon said as she tossed it.
For Housewives History, Kelly told E! News exactly what was going through her head as she crashed The Quiet Woman dinner between Shannon, Tamra Judge, Lydia McLaughlin and Peggy Sulahian.
“I was on a boat the whole day and I was drinking, and so my girlfriend from Philadelphia—I wasn’t going to go, I was supposed to go, but I said I’m not going. She’s like, ‘Oh my god,’ I go, ‘They’re filming at the Quiet Woman.’ And she was like, ‘Let’s just go and look.’ I wasn’t miced. So, we kind of snuck in there and they’re like ‘Stop!’ I’m like, ‘Well, I have to go the bathroom.’ That’s when they had a boom in there. So, I was like OK, well I’m just gonna go in there and say hey, sit down and talk and I didn’t know that was gonna happen I was just trying to be like, cool. Yeah,” Kelly said at BravoCon.
Kelly and Shannon eventually patched things up, but in season 14 they’re on the outs once again, as is Kelly with the rest of the Tres Amigas, Vicki Gunvalson and Tamra Judge. However, Kelly is tight with costars Emily Simpson and Braunwyn Windham-Burke.
“I don’t think it was coordinated,” she said about the breakdown in friendships with the Tres Amigas. “I don’t think that anything was planned per se, I just think it just happened…We thought friendships were there and I felt like everybody was kind of like underhanded a little bit.”
“When I’m with [Gina Kirschenheiter], Braunwyn and Emily, we have a great time together. Like, we all say—the four of us—we don’t ever have any problems like that, but it just seems like those Tres Amigas, I don’t know—Amoebas or whatever they are—I feel like it just goes down dark road and I don’t’ like it,” Kelly said.
Kelly recently got engaged to Fox News correspondent and the New York City-based Rick Leventhal. Could she put down the orange for a golden apple and join The Real Housewives of New York City?
“I would love to. I would love to do a job transfer,” she said, noting she’s friends with Ramona Singer, Dorinda Medley and Sonja Morgan. “I’m better friends with [The Real Housewives of New York City cast] than I am with—I mean, I am friends with Braunwyn and Emily, very, very close with them—but I really have way more friendships with the New York cast. It’s bizarre.”
The Real Housewives of Orange County airs Tuesdays, 9 p.m. on Bravo.
(E! and Bravo are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)