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Gina Kirschenheiter offered an update on her relationship with her boyfriend, Travis Mullen, while appearing on Watch What Happens Live on Thursday.
Following the latest episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Gina, 40, addressed her reaction to Shannon Beador‘s DUI arrest, her rental drama with Jennifer Pedranti, 47, and Katie Ginella‘s tension with Heather Dubrow, 55, as she also spoke of Shannon’s falling out with Tamra Judge, 56, and confirmed her “bad year” with Travis.
“It’s good. It’s really good,” Gina shared of her current relationship with Travis on the July 25 episode of WWHL. “We had a bad year, and we’re still not through all of it, but we’re handling it well.”
During the premiere episode earlier this month, Gina expressed interest in living separately from Travis, which many suspected was the beginning of the end for the two of them.
“I understand that it didn’t make sense for everybody at first … [But] I can’t worry about everybody’s opinions,” Gina noted.
Although Shannon, 60, gave Gina a hard time about her DUI throughout the 17th season of RHOC, Gina offered grace to Shannon after she saw the same fate last September.
“I care about Shannon. We’ve known each other for seven years. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her and my heart goes out to her,” she explained, admitting she “was shocked” when Shannon apologized for her past comments.
“I didn’t have any expectation for her to do that there. She was dealing with a lot already, just being there and existing with [Alexis Bellino] so I was, it meant more to me that she chose to carve out a space for that there.”
Moving on to her encounter with Jennifer, who fell back on rent payments after Gina vouched for her to get a home amid her divorce, Gina said she “of course” felt that she was a bit “too hard” on Jennifer after watching the scene play out.
“I am not proud of that moment … I’m embarrassed,” she stated. “I do feel bad. I’ve apologized to Jen and told her I don’t think she’s stupid even though I said that multiple times. It was a lot, but I was very… I’m a New Yorker. We run hot. I think she had a tendency to bury her head a lot. We’ve both been separated from our exes about the same time, and we’ve had a very different way of handling it.”
Continuing on, Gina admitted she was harder on Jennifer since she’d been in a similar situation.
“And because, it’s just because it collided with me trying to take care of me and mine,” she added. “I would love to see Jen be the hero of her own story, and I think that every woman should be so regardless of [Ryan Boyajian‘s legal drama with the MLB gambling scandal] … And I think she is starting to do that, so I’m proud of her.”
Gina then answered a question from a fan, who wanted to know how much she told Heather about Katie.
“I told Heather a lot about Katie, like how much I loved her and how fun I thought she was, but I didn’t, like, show her pictures of her or anything. I told her to go on Instagram,” she revealed. “[But] if Heather saw Katie in that Monet, she would’ve went up to Katie and said, ‘Oh my God, I heard about you from Gina.’”
Also on the live broadcast, Gina admitted that when it comes to the biggest perk of her friendship with Sutton Stracke, 52, “it’s just being around her.”
“[She] is entertaining. Her presence is the present,” she declared.
Later, on the WWHL: After Show, Gina reacted to the falling out between Shannon and Tamra, saying it was “really sad.”
“I have seen this cycle. They cycle, Shannon and Tamra, but this time it does feel that it’s more permanent, and I know that Shannon also feels like [that] at this point,” Gina explained. “It’s been too much too long. It’s a lot … [And] it was kind of hard to watch honestly.”
“There really is [a lot of sisterhood coming up this season], and we had a lot of fun, so that was tough to go through this year with them so divided,” she continued. “I would love to see them work on that friendship. I understand both sides of it, but it’s hard.”
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18 airs Thursdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
