Season 18 of The Real Housewives of Orange County is in full swing. Though new, Katie Ginella was recently at the center of the drama after alleging that Heather Dubrow called the paparazzi on herself. This led to Heather calling her “Noella 1.5.” Now, Katie is responding to the shade and saying she had no intention of hurting Heather.
Fans of RHOC will know that Heather calling Katie Noella is a reference to Noella Bergener. Noella was a one-season wonder from season 16 who went up against Heather. This was Heather’s way of saying that Katie might not last long on the show.
Recently, Katie spoke to Entertainment Tonight about the drama with Heather. She starts by saying, “I actually didn’t really know Noella; I only knew some of the things the women told me about Noella, and so, when she said that, I had to kind of Google it. “
She continues, “I think it was meant to be a dig, but I took it as I don’t know? A compliment. Noella’s gorgeous, she’s funny, she’s smart. She owns her business, so I loved it. I embraced it. I called myself ‘Noella 1.5’ in a post.”
Katie goes on to say that she gets called another name later in the season.
“I love it, and Noella’s hot. There’s one name that I get called in the season, but I kind of think it’s funny. You’ll hear it. It goes on for a couple of weeks, and I kind of love that.”
Katie adds, “But, yeah, so far that Noella 1.5 … and Noella and I have a mutual friend right now trying to get us together for lunch. So we can get a ‘Noella 1 and 1.5’ photo, it’ll be great.”
Katie then explains where she first heard rumors of Heather calling the paparazzi on herself. According to her, “Before I even knew any of these women, I was scrolling TikTok, as one does at night with no kids, and a TikTok came up from GeorgioSays. He was talking about how Heather allegedly called the paparazzi, so I thought it was funny.”
She continues, “I screenshot it, sent it to a friend of mine who is in charge of a lot of the paparazzi operations, and … I said, ‘Is this true?’ Like, ‘Settle this for me.’ I thought it was funny because him and I have such a deep relationship — we’re really good friends, we talk about a lot of celebrities that call him — so it’s just banter, and he responded, ‘Yes,’ and then called me and was like, ‘Why do you want to know this?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know, I thought it was funny,’ ’cause we talk about this a lot.”
She insists that she was not trying to unearth intel on Heather.
“I wasn’t looking for something. I didn’t come in with ill intent to hurt Heather or look for information on Heather. I’m not jealous of her. I’m not obsessed with her. I’m not coming for her. It all just happened, and it was confusing to me all these things that were domino-ing.”
Katie then says she regrets how this came out and that she didn’t get to have a conversation with Heather. She says, “I regret how it was brought up. I wanted to have a conversation with her like, ‘Look, I found out this information. I’m so sorry but heads up, I kinda told a couple of people…’ and instead, it did not go that way.”
She goes on, “I was hoping we would both laugh it off, ’cause it’s silly! I mean, a lot of celebrities call paparazzi, tell them where they’re gonna be, what they’re wearing or whatever it is, and not knowing Heather, I thought it was gonna be a silly, funny thing. Gina and I discussed it ahead of time, and we both thought it was silly and funny. So I thought that’s how she would take it… but I don’t know Heather very well. She did not take it to be silly and funny.”
Still, she does believe the rumors.
“From what I hear from the other women, she doesn’t like to be caught off-guard, so I think that me catching her in this lie was more than she could handle. Let me just say, if you’re not guilty of something, why are you making it such a big deal? If it’s not a big deal and it’s not … valid, you would just brush it off and be like, ‘That’s just not true. I’m not gonna talk about it with you.’”
However, Katie doesn’t think she and Heather can ever be truly close. She says, “I don’t think Heather and I can care for each other, but we respect one another in a group setting. She was kind enough for Mother’s Day to invite us all to a Mother’s Day brunch, all of us — the whole cast, really — and I went and, although it can be a little tense, we co-exist OK.”
She continues, “I’m not sure if I [want a friendship.] There’s a lot of things said, names called. I don’t know if we ever will have a friendship. I mean, hopefully, down the line we would.”
She also talks about Heather accidentally tagging Katie in a post on Instagram. According to her, “This is the craziest part: she posted the photo on her birthday, I liked it. She looked beautiful in the photo, and I woke up the next day and the tag, the timestamp, was 12 hours after she posted the photo. Why’d you tag me? What? … To do that, you have to be following somebody or you had to have looked them up.”
The Real Housewives of Orange County airs on Thursday nights on Bravo.