Jacqueline Laurita shared insider details about how the producers of The Real Housewives of New Jersey work with each cast member while appearing on a podcast earlier this week.
As she also looked back at the good and bad edits Teresa Giudice, 52, received over the course of her 14 seasons with the Bravo reality series and explained why the Manzos, including Caroline Manzo, 63, didn’t like her, Jacqueline, 54, revealed what it’s like working behind-the-scenes.
“With the producers, they’re each assigned to a cast member and their job is to get close to whoever they’re assigned to and make them feel like they’re on your side. They build your trust so you let down your guard,” Jacqueline revealed on the AllAboutTRH podcast. “They become friends with you then all the producers get together and they share all the information with each other that they’ve gathered from the cast like — you think they’re being close to you but they’re really just getting you to let your guard down so they could take all the info and share it with the other producers — and then they decide which narrative to follow and kind of how to guide the show because they got the inside [information] from each person.”
Although Jacqueline said that generally, no cast members receive special treatment when it comes to the editing, she recalled one time in which Teresa did get an ideal portrayal.
“The only time they that I’ve heard of them purposely giving someone a good edit is when I was told by a producer that they needed to clean up Teresa’s image after her indictment and prison sentence to make her more likable again to the viewers,” she revealed. “You know, because it created such a huge outrage and like disturbance for the network and probably for their advertisers too because prior to that Teresa had always been their Golden Child.”
“She was their money maker and I think they wanted to preserve that so we all kind of knew going into season seven whoever went up against Teresa was probably gonna not get a great edit because that was her Namaste season,” Jacqueline continued, adding that producers wanted to “clean her up a little bit.”
Overall, however, Jacqueline said that Teresa has gotten some “great edits” and some “horrible edits.”
“But I think, I mean, to be fair, I feel like everybody’s sort of had that. I mean [Melissa Gorga]’s been called a stripper, she’s been called a cheater you know everybody’s kind of had their moment where they look bad and they look good I think the whole goal is like, let’s tell a story,” she explained. “The viewers would find interesting so that’s what they look for.”
As for why the Manzos didn’t like Teresa, Jacqueline suspected they were offended by the things she allegedly said about their family.
“I don’t think they were ever in it to hurt Teresa. I think they just felt jaded and offended by some of the things Teresa was supposedly saying about them and her books and articles and stuff that were coming out,” she noted. “I think they found that offensive but like I said, I think later, we realized it was like the handlers doing most of that … which is why she just [seemed] so like kind of clueless when we [would] confront her and [she would] deny it and stuff.”
The Real Housewives of New Jersey is currently on pause ahead of its 15th season.