Alexia Echevarria appeared on Wednesday’s Watch What Happens Live, where she addressed claims of Luis Ruelas trying to date her before he struck up a romance with Teresa Giudice.
In addition to discussing her potential reconciliation with Adriana De Moura, 57, looking back on their drama with Thierry, and admitting she’s afraid of the Real Housewives divorce curse, the Real Housewives of Miami star, 56, addressed the change in dynamics amid season six and revealed who she’s still in touch with from Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip.
“With [Heather Gay] and with [Whitney Rose],” Alexia revealed on the November 1 episode of WWHL.
While Alexia left season five at odds with several of her castmates, including Dr. Nicole Martin, 38, she said that when it came to season six, she went in with a different mindset.
“Once we see ourselves on TV and we see those scenes, we are not happy with the person that we see and we try to make changes, and truthfully, I was good with all the girls. I just don’t know how I ended up there,” Alexia admitted. “I think that I’m very passionate when I speak or when I’m trying to defend myself, and we may say things that we don’t mean and it continues to get uglier. And that’s what happened but I’ve been with the girls for so many years already and then new girls that came into the show are wonderful. They all have so much to offer so I was like, this season, I’m not gonna do that.”
“I want all the girls to be together and I’m gonna bring all the girls together,” she added.
As for the odd demeanor of Guerdy Abraira, 45, who later confirmed she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, on Wednesday’s RHOM, Alexia said she and her co-stars didn’t yet know what was wrong.
“At that moment, I just knew that emotionally, she was very unstable. But I didn’t know what was bothering her. I knew it had to be something but we just didn’t know what it was,” she shared.
She then confessed that she is afraid of the Housewives curse.
“I’m so scared. I’m like about to quit the show because all the ladies get divorced. It’s crazy,” she noted.
During a game of “Do! You! Regret It!?,” Alexia said she does regret insinuating that all Russian women are sex workers, which was a point of contention between her and Julia Lemigova, 51, during season five, and admitted she does not regret trying to meet with late ex-husband Herman Echevarria‘s male lover on camera.
As for not reading Adriana’s season five love interest’s full divorce document, which revealed Thierry was not still married, as she previously suspected, Alexia surprisingly had no regrets, explaining, “It came from a good place.”
Also on the live broadcast, Alexia revealed what it will take for her and Adriana to reconcile.
“I think it would take her kind of like standing up to who she is and wanting that friendship. She has to earn it back, but we’ve always cared for each other, so I’m sure we’ll get there,” she noted. “I feel like she has to want it just like I do, but we were never friends that way so when we get there, we get there.”
Later, during the WWHL: After Show, Alexia was asked if Luis tried to date her before Teresa, as Melissa suggested at the RHONJ season 12 reunion earlier this year.
“No, absolutely not,” Alexia confirmed, proceeding to explain their pre-Teresa interactions.
“We saw each other in Barcelona, but I was with [husband Todd Nepola] before he was with Teresa. He knew who I was, of course, [from RHOM],” she recalled. “We were staying in the same hotel and he was just being like nice, and friendly … He has an autistic son so he can relate to my journey so he came to me to speak to me and say what a great mom I was.”
But that wasn’t the only run-in they had.
“We met there for the first time, and then for whatever reason we saw each other again in some other country that we were traveling at the same time,” she shared, prompting fellow guest Garcelle Beauvais, 56, to ask, “Again?!”
“Yes, we were traveling somewhere else. I was with Todd the entire time so Todd saw the whole thing so it wasn’t like he was hitting on me. He was just talking to me,” Alexia insisted.
But Garcelle wasn’t so sure, noting that Luis’ behavior was “a little sus.”
“I guess,” Alexia replied, before insisting, “I don’t know why anybody thinks anything of it because I didn’t. I meet a lot of nice people and fans and I don’t think anything of it.”
At that point, Andy Cohen, 55, got involved, asking, “[Nice people] that then show up in another country and then wind up marrying… ?”
Still, Alexia wasn’t convinced that Luis’ intentions were impure.
“He’s from Jersey so I don’t know why anybody thinks anything. I don’t get it,” she stated. “Why does anybody want to make it more than what it is? It’s nothing, but people [suspect] he had an agenda, and he knew who she was and the same way that he met Alexia before but Alexia was in a relationship with Todd, maybe I’ll move into Teresa. But I don’t think that way.”
“I think that he of course knew who [Teresa] was. Everybody knows who we are. So yeah, he ended up with Teresa and now we’re all friends and everything’s great,” she added.
The Real Housewives of Miami season six airs on Bravo on Wednesdays at 9/8c and streams the next day on Peacock.
