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Former RHOC stars Vicki Gunvalson and Meghan King are weighting in on Andy Cohen’s legal drama with Real Housewives of New York alum Leah McSweeney.
As Real Housewives fans know, Leah is suing Bravo and Andy Cohen for intentionally preying on her alcohol addiction so they could hit the ratings jackpot. In her court filing the former RHONY star also claims that the Watch What Happens Live host “snorts cocaine” with his favorite Real Housewives.
When it comes to Leah’s lawsuit, RHOC OG Vicki Gunvalson says she’s taking Andy’s side.
“I don’t know much other than she is suing Andy, which is crazy to me,” the OG of the OC told Us Weekly on Sunday, March 10. “Why she is waiting now for everybody else and bringing our bosses down, I don’t know because I wasn’t there.”
The RHOC OG noted that she loves and respects Andy, adding, “He has always been professional with me, we have a very big relationship.”
She went on to call Leah’s lawsuit “dirty” and admitted she thinks the RHONY alum is “trying to get deep pockets from it.”
Meghan King, on the other hand, has mixed feelings about Leah’s lawsuit against Andy and Bravo.
“I just know that when I signed my contract to be on the Real Housewives, and I think it’s a pretty standard contract amongst all the franchises, it said very explicitly, ‘We can take whatever footage you give us and we can manipulate it, and we can splice it and do whatever the hell we want to do with it,’” the 39-year-old for RHOC star told Us Weekly. “And you have to sign your life away or you don’t sign it at all. And does that make it a fair contract? That’s a different conversation.”
The RHOC alum shared that when she and her co-stars signed their contracts they “understood” what they signing up for by entering the world of reality TV. While she believes reality TV should stay fun, she admits there needs to be a conversation that focus on the bigger picture of what happens behind the scenes on unscripted programming.
“It shouldn’t be about Andy Cohen. It shouldn’t be about Bravo. It shouldn’t be about the Real Housewives,” she explained. “It should just be about the ethics of reality TV and what does that do for our psyche long term or royalties or whatever.”
According to Meghan the pressure to drink on reality TV doesn’t come from producers and instead is nothing more than the “typical societal and peer pressure.”
“If I’m going to go to a happy hour with girlfriends to celebrate a birthday, I’m going to feel like I should have a drink. Is anybody telling me to, does anybody care if I do? Absolutely not,” she continued. “But that’s what I’m doing. That’s how I’m showing up. So I think that’s a personal willpower type of thing.”
However, she notes that for those struggling with addiction their decision to abstain from drinking should be “respected and honored” and should get help if they ask for it. Yet she doesn’t believe that the responsibility to get help sits solely on the production team’s shoulders.
She adds that Andy has always been “very supportive” towards her and has witness him make sure Housewives who don’t drink are comfortable when appearing on Watch Watch Happens Live and playing its infamous “Shot Ski” drinking game.
Meghan appeared on WWHL with RHOC star Gina Kirschenheiter, who doesn’t drink, so Andy made sure that when they did the “Shot Ski” Gina was provided a non-alcoholic shot.
“And then during [the] commercial, he gets on the production assistants [saying,] ‘You cannot do this. This could compromise her sobriety. This is really important. It’s not funny that this happened,’” the 39-year-old recalled. “So what I saw is Andy defending standing up for a sober person on one of his shows. It’s [the] complete opposite of what I read.”
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