On stage at BravoCon in Las Vegas on Friday night, “Real Housewives” executive producer Andy Cohen offered Vicki Gunvalson to return to her job for the upcoming “Real Housewives of Orange County” Season 20. During a taping of BravoCon’s biennial awards show, “The Bravos,” which airs on Nov. 16, Cohen told Gunvalson that he wanted her to be a full-time cast member for the show’s historic season 20. The Real Housewives of Orange County premiered on Bravo on March 21, 2006 and became the first series in a series that changed the face of Bravo and popular culture. big.
Gunvalson seemed surprised when Cohen handed her the show’s iconic orange and immediately said yes to the offer.
Gunvalson, whose season 10 tagline iconically proclaimed, “I’m the OG of the OC, everyone else is just a copy,” helped create the template for “Real Housewives” cast members. The owner of a successful insurance company in Orange County, she is a professional woman with two children and an incredibly turbulent personal life.
Season 19 of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” is scheduled to end on Nov. 20 with a third reunion episode. Bravo is expected to plan celebrations around the monument, as the “Real Housewives” show will be the first to celebrate its 20th season, a milestone rarely achieved by any TV show. “RHOC” is expected to shake up its lineup after an inwardly focused 19th season in which the cast excessively discussed off-screen events, including illicit conversations with Bravo’s “bloggers.”
Enter, Vicki Gunvalson. At the start of “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” Gunvalson was married to Don Gunvalson (her second husband), but they separated and divorced in 2014 after Don Gunvalson said her “love tank was empty” (because there was no romantic pretense).
Gunvalson’s divorce set the stage for RHOC Season 10, one of the best Real Housewives seasons of all time, and showed that the series could evolve from a documentary about women’s lives to a riveting full-on crime thriller. Gunvalson’s boyfriend, Brooks Ayers, lied about his cancer diagnosis, and a village of women, led by Detective Meghan King, helped expose Brooks, including Officer Shannon Beador, Judge Tamra, and Vicki’s biological daughter Brianna Culberson (who disliked Brooks the most).
As the season reaches its climax, the truth behind a false diagnosis of stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (including falsifying medical records and bills) is revealed, and a mystery as convincing as this has rarely been seen on television. But Gunvalson never gave in, never divulged what she knew exactly when she knew it. As an alternate reality “Dirty John” story, Brooks’ cancer-cheating work forever expanded the fun of what “Real Housewives” could do.
Gunvalson remained a full-time cast member until season 13, but was demoted to “friend” status the following season after Cohen said he wanted to “refresh” the show. Since then, she and Beador have had a close relationship and have appeared occasionally (although the former “Tres Amigas” – Beador, Judge, and Gunvalson are no longer present).
BravoCon, the fourth annual NBCUniversal Network fan convention, will be held in Las Vegas from November 14th to 16th.
