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Tamra Judge addressed Gina Kirschenheiter‘s claims about her friendship with Emily Simpson following last Thursday’s episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County.
After Gina, 40, suggested that Emily, 48, was “up [Tamra’s] a**” amid an argument, Tamra, 56, defended their friendship and accused Gina of being “horrible” to her in cast confessionals as Emily discussed her sister-like relationship with Gina.
“I don’t know how she’s up my a**. I’m very insulted by that comment,” Tamra stated on the August 22 episode of Bravo HQ. “Me and Emily aren’t talking about like, ‘Let’s high-five each other and be mean.’ That’s not the case at all. I was very insulted because I’ve always been very kind to Gina, we’ve always had a relatively great friendship.”
Although Tamra and Gina have been friendly in the past, Tamra believes Gina gets mean in her confessionals.
“[She] says horrible things. She’s done this for years about me. What is Gina’s excuse? She was horrible to [Jennifer Pedranti] and went after Jenn and everybody else,” Tamra noted. “She goes after [Heather Dubrow] this year for nothing. In fact, I sat down with [Jennifer] and I said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with Gina. Maybe something’s going on that we don’t know.’ I don’t know. What makes her mean? If she’s allergic to a**holes, then she’s allergic to herself.”
In her own segment, Gina admitted that she didn’t consider how Emily was impacted by her friendship with Heather, 55, when Heather returned to the show and they formed a close-knit relationship.
“I don’t think I ever really realized that, thought about that, or was cued up to that until she started to bond with Tamra, and then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t like this,’” she admitted.
According to Gina, she felt a bit “jealous” and “insecure” as Tamra and Emily grew closer, which led to their heated spat on last week’s episode.
“Friends are going to fight. But real friends, when you fight, it brings you closer,” she noted.
Despite the tension they faced amid season 18, Gina said that Emily is like a sister to her.
“She really is … and Emily will never shift. There will never be a shift. Emily is one of my best friends in the whole world. I just put her in a different bucket. Emily and I are sisters, we’re family, we’re ride or dies,” she declared.
Also speaking to Bravo HQ, Emily opened up about her closeness to Gina.
“Gina and I are so close. Like, I always say, I equate Gina with a sister, not just a friend,” she shared. “There’s never any long-time toxicity in our relationship. We’re so important to one another that we both have the mentality that we always want to move forward and we always want to make it right.”
“We have such a solid foundation and such a solid ground as a friendship that even when we’re mad and we’re yelling at each other, it’s emotional. It’s like we’re yelling, but we’re still crying at the same time, so I think it’s easy for us to come back around,” she continued.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18 airs Thursdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
