'The Real Housewives of Orange County' star Tamra Judge wants to change the narrative castmate Shannon Beador's helped put out there.
Tamra Judge is adamant she's "the best friend Shannon Beador ever had."
"That's the problem," the Real Housewives of Orange County star tells ET, as the pair's most recent falling out plays out on season 18 of the Bravo hit, airing Thursdays and streaming on Peacock.
"She knows that I know so much, and she's so afraid, like, I'm just gonna discredit her and make her look bad, which is horrible. It's absolutely horrible," Tamra says. "You know, she wants to tell lies about me to make me look bad. I had to tell lies about her to make her look good for so many years."
The pair's friendship took a sharp turn nearly a year ago, after Shannon's arrest for DUI in September. Shannon's since pleaded no contest and is serving three years probation for the incident, in which she slammed her car into the side of a residential building while said to be three times the legal limit. While they put on a united front as the "Tres Amigas" alongside Vicki Gunvalson at BravoCon in Las Vegas in November, cracks were deepening behind the scenes.
"Going into this season, we were absolutely not speaking anymore," Tamra explains. "It's hard for the viewers to see .... [because] I was by Shannon's side ... I was crying on the phone with her. I was having hard conversations with her saying, 'This is a wake up call...'"
Tamra, Shannon and Vicki had a stage show together at the time of Shannon's arrest, with a date scheduled just weeks after the DUI made headlines. Tamra wanted to cancel the gig, seeing as much of the show's humor revolved around alcohol. She didn't think it was a good look in the wake of what happened.
"I thought that maybe Shannon needed some professional help, and that she should take a beat from just being on tour, and all that pressure with everything that was coming her way at that time," she says. It's worth noting, Shannon did complete a 28-day program for alcohol before BravoCon.
Tamra ultimately agreed to continue with the show, seeing as they were committed to a contract. It wound up being the final Tres Amigas outing on stage, which was not a total shock to Tamra, who realized mixing business with friendship was going to be tough, long before Shannon's arrest.
"I found out after the first time we did our show in Irvine that [Shannon], that night, got drunk and started saying horrible things about me to somebody I know, and I kind of let it slide," she reveals. "And then, I had told her, I said, 'Listen, I am not going to tell you what was said, but some things were said and I don't appreciate it. If you continue to talk about me like this, I don't want to be involved in this. I don't need to do this show. You need to do this show. So, figure it out. if there is something wrong, tell me. Tell me if you have a problem with me,' and once again, she did it again."
"I just, I can't do this anymore," Tamra continues. "Here I am, helping you. I have been by your side. Nobody knows you better than I do, for the past 10 years. I am trying to help you through this, and you are talking behind my back?"
Shannon's denied talking behind Tamra's back, suggesting Tamra exaggerated comments she did make about small frustrations surrounding Tamra's schedule making it difficult to do their stage show.
"You have to be careful with that Shannon Beador," Tamra warns. "She's very good with her soundbites, and persuading the audience and the viewers into thinking something's happening that isn't."
Tamra points to what she sees as a revisionist history Shannon is writing through this season of RHOC, claiming Tamra abandoned her just after the DUI. Tamra was actually in Scotland, filming season 2 of Peacock's The Traitors, when the whole thing played out back home in Orange County.
"I was by Shannon's side, I mean, when she was at BravoCon, she was doing interviews on the red carpet saying that me and Vicki are the only ones that have been there for her and been there the whole way," she notes. "I was keeping [her continued drinking] a secret. She had called me many times after the DUI so drunk, often times calling me, going off on something, hanging up and calling me again, and doing the exact same conversation. Not remembering it!"
Shannon's owned up to being scared in the immediate aftermath of her arrest, and drinking more in the days that followed to cope with the stress. However, she's also shared that she stopped drinking for a period of time, and now maintains a two-drink maximum when she does imbibe. Shannon's made it clear she does not believe she has a drinking problem.
"I just can't do it anymore," Tamra laments. "I thought for sure after this DUI she was going to get help, and I know she is telling people her story is changing all the time. 'I haven't had a drink...'"
Tamra hits back at Shannon's supporters who don't think she has any sympathy for her former friend.
"I do," she says. "I think that people have to understand, if you were in my shoes and here you are trying to help somebody, and all that has gone on in the past 10 years that I had to deal with with this woman was very toxic and exhausting, and then when she got the DUI, I thought-- I was always worried something like this was gonna happen."
"I was worried she was gonna fall down her stairs, get in an accident, something like that," she adds, "and when this happened, I told her, I said, 'This is a wake-up call, you need to get help...' and she goes, 'OK, I know! I know!' And then, went to one of our mutual friends and just laid into me, 'Who the eff does she think she is?!' And I'm like, 'I'm a friend that cares is what I am!' I'm a friend that wants you to get better. You're always sad. You're always depressed. You're always crying. Is this the way you want to live the last half of your life? It's time to make changes."
Tamra's biggest frustration with Shannon's situation is that she doesn't feel like she's taking accountability, nor facing the reality of her relationship with alcohol.
"I think she needs to go to rehab," she declares. "When she got the DUI, she told me, personally, that she is going to therapy to figure out why she is dating the wrong men."
That would seemingly include Shannon's most recent ex, John Janssen, who is now dating Alexis Bellino, the one-time Housewife who returned to RHOC for the first time in a decade as a "friend of" the cast this season. It's the first time Alexis and Shannon have ever been on the show together, jumping straight into a heated confrontation in the premiere.
"I always thought that it would be better to have Alexis come in maybe second or third episode," Tamra reflects. "That way, we can get through all this DUI stuff and what is going on, but now, it's being over shadowed by John Janssen, and everybody is like-- she is the only person I know that can crash her car into a house, three times the legal limit and people are saying, 'I am so sorry this happened to you.'"
"You know, if that happened to me, I would be getting eaten alive!" Tamra says. "Everybody is like, 'Oh, poor Shannon! Oh, poor Shannon! Oh, poor Shannon!' and, let's be honest, if she had a super power, you know what it would be? The victim. She is very good at playing the victim."
The Alexis factor only allows Shannon to do that more than ever this season, at least in Tamra's eyes. Tamra claims Shannon has had it out for Alexis for years, including the night of her arrest, when they were both at the same bar. Shannon's said her issues with Alexis are born out of a lawsuit she and Tamra found themselves embroiled in with Alexis' ex-husband, Jim Bellino, through which both women lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Alexis maintains she had no part in the court battle, seeing as she and Jim were divorced at the time it all started.
"The actual night of her DUI, she had text me from the restaurant -- and I knew she was drunk. I could tell by the way she was texting -- and she went off, because Alexis had walked in the door," Tamra shares. "She goes, 'I am going to go after her!' and I am like, 'Just be nice just be nice. Alexis is not a mean girl. Be nice.'"
At the time, Tamra says no one knew Alexis was even in the running to return to the show. She also hadn't started seeing John, who was still involved with Shannon at the time of her arrest. Alexis and John wouldn't meet until late 2023, and did not immediately start dating.
"[Alexis] was photographed with John at [RHOC famous bar] The Quiet Woman, the not-so-Quiet Woman, and I sent her a text, I'm like, 'What is going on here? You're not dating him are you?' And she's like, Oh, no, no, no! I just met him for the first time,'" Tamra rattles off. "So, I was at my podcast and I was always defending her. I'm like, 'No, they're not. They're just friends.They just met, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah...' and then at one point, she called me and said, 'I thank you for defending me, and I just want to say that we are dating...' and I just went, oh my god!"
Once she knew Alexis and John were officially an item, Tamra says she reached out to Shannon. It's the text exchange shown, in part, on episode 2.
"I say, 'I know we're not in a good place, but I know this has to feel horrible to you and I'm so sorry...'" Tamra summarizes. "It was right around the holidays, so it's not that I hate Shannon. It's not I don't want her to get better. I want her to get better, but what she does is, when somebody isn't aligned with her or agree with her decisions ... she wants to destroy that person. She got mad at John, she tried to destroy his reputation. She gets mad at me, she tries to destroy my reputation to make herself look better."
Shannon's teased that the world doesn't know the truth about John, and painted him out to be a bit of a fame-seeking moocher. Alexis has defended John as the complete opposite.
"Shannon has called him every name in the book and has said things to go after his character," Tamra reiterates. "If he was that bad, then why did she stay with him for four years?"
Shannon and John are currently in a legal battle over $75K he says he loaned her for plastic surgery. Shannon says it was not a formal agreement, and that he refused her initial offer to repay him.
"I knew John with Shannon, didn't spend a ton of time with them, but the time that I did spend, he was always very nice to her," Tamra says. "Very nice, and then she would tell me differently."
"Now, Alexis dating him, I mean, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy," she continues. "I see them together, not a lot. Maybe I have seen them together twice. They seem very happy. I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen. Who knows? But they seem very happy, and I have never seen him smile so big in my entire life. The guy totally had like a glow up."
While Tamra's learned to never say never in the world of Housewives, she doesn't see her friendship with Shannon bouncing back from season 18.
"I'm just moving forward," she says. "I don't like to be around toxic people that just talk behind everybody's back all the time."
Her friendship with Vicki is also seemingly over now. Vicki and Shannon have continued the stage show under a different name since Tamra's exit from their group.
"I didn't know that Vicki and I had an issue," she admits. "I didn't know we had a problem. Evidently, she has been saying a ton of horrible things about me. You will see, she is on the show this season. We have a ton of fun. I mean, she had her [and Shannon's] audience chant 'Eff Tamra!' and I was like, we were just texting the week before! What are you doing?"
Tamra's "sad" and "disappointed" to see Vicki turn on her, especially because she says they share, or shared, similar concerns about Shannon.
"You want to stay by Shannon's side, that's fine, but you personally have told me, 'Yeah, she has a drinking problem...'" Tamra claims. "I said, 'If you want to enable her, go right ahead, but I am not doing it anymore.'"
"There's a lot of cattiness that goes on in the show, and a lot of talking behind people's back on the show, but this is this is real life," she says. "This is friendships that have been for decades, and you're gonna do that to me, when all I've ever done is be there for you. In fact, when I left the show, when I was let go, [Shannon] stopped talking to me for two years, did the same thing to Vicki."
Tamra says Shannon likes to make her the scapegoat for her own issues with others, and she's done letting her get away with it.
"This season, we're gonna hear she wasn't friends with [Gina Kirschenheiter] because of me, she wasn't friends with [Heather Dubrow] because of me," Tamra offers as examples. "Let me just put something out there: I wasn't talking to Heather prior to going on the show last year. We were not speaking, so what information would I know that Heather would tell me, that I told Shannon? The only thing I told Shannon was what happened on the show. That's it! And then, when she says that, I'm just like, name 'em. Name 'em. C'mon. Name 'em, because there's nothing out there. And you can tell when Shannon lies. She looks to the left and does this little voice and I'm like, ugh, she's lying again."
The Real Housewives of Orange County airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo. Episode stream next day on Peacock.
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