Credit: Instagram/Rachel Fuda
Rachel Fuda, one of two newbies featured full-time on the 13th season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey (with the other being Danielle Cabral), hosted a Q&A session on her Instagram Story earlier this year during which she addressed swirling rumors about her.
In addition to dishing on her plastic surgery, what made her “most nervous” about joining the Bravo reality show, and her years-long friendship with Frank Catania‘s girlfriend, Rachel clapped back at claims of buying her way onto RHONJ by bribing longtime star Melissa Gorga.
“Is it true you told Melissa you will give her free tile/granite if she got [you] on the show?” a fan asked Rachel, giving a nod to Melissa’s use of Fuda Tile & Marble, which she mentioned in a series of posts shared to her Instagram page in recent weeks, in her and Joe Gorga‘s new home.
“This is the sh-t right here,” Rachel replied, asking, “Is this what I’m gonna have to deal with? No, no.”
“It also doesn’t work like that either you’re a fit or not,” she added.
When another fan said they loved her nose and asked if she had it done, Rachel confirmed she had gone under the knife and said “there’s nothing that I’m not willing to talk about.”
“Yes, I had my nose done. No, I don’t like it but guess what? I’m not doing it again so you’re just going to have to put up with looking at my sh-tty nose job,” she declared.
“What were you most nervous about joining RHONJ?” wondered a third fan.
“I was most nervous about being able to juggle it all. I think as moms, it’s always our worry. Obviously, my husband and my kids are my priority so that was really what I was mostly nervous for,” she explained. “You’re going into something most people never experience.”
As for her relationship with Frank’s girlfriend, Brittany Mattessic, Rachel, who Jackie Goldschneider allegedly lost her full-time role to amid production on season 13, said the two of them met “at the gym over 10 years ago.”
“We’ve been through a lot of sh-t together,” Rachel revealed. “She’s been my friend for a very long time and no matter what, we always come back to each other and I love her. She’s a lifelong friend for me.”
Someone else asked, “Are [you] a [RHONJ] fan? Like have [you] watched since the beginning?”
“I watched the show from start to finish during covid,” Rachel explained. “I had watched random episodes. I’m not a huge TV person. Even the other franchises, I like them. I enjoy them. But I have like TV show commitment issues. So did I like the show? Yeah. I don’t know if I would consider myself a fan but I watched it.”
Rachel also reacted to a fan who questioned her about how she was chosen for the show.
“I received a direct message from a casting producer … I was getting a pedicure… and I just remember sitting there being like, ‘This can’t be real.’ So I responded and she was like, ‘Can we chat?’ … We just chatted and whatever and then she’s like, ‘Do you mind if I pass you onto my colleague and you can move on to the next part of the casting process?’” Rachel revealed.
And after the woman passed Rachel on to her colleague, she took part in a four-and-half-hour Zoom call before meeting with the network in person.
“They came to my house. No pressure. I had just had my daughter Julianna, who’s 10 months old today. I think she was eight days old when they came to my house. We just chatted. I told them about myself and they obviously met my family because they were in my house and that was it. It was pretty organic,” she noted.
Rachel then said that when it comes to the “hate and scrutiny” she will potentially face on RHONJ, she’s armed with weekly appointments with her therapist.
“I have a wonderful therapist that I see every Thursday,” she shared.
Also during the Q&A, Rachel reacted to a fan who wanted to know if it was hard filming the show with a newborn at home.
“You have no idea. Julianna was seven-and-a-half-weeks-old when we started filming the season. I was in the pits of postpartum. The pits,” Rachel admitted. “I also have a 16-year-old. So I have a 16-year-old, a two-and-a-half-year-old, and now, a 10-month-old. And that was hard. It was hard because I had just given birth and there was a lot of adjustment and change going on.”
The Real Housewives of New Jersey is currently on hiatus following the airing of season 13 on Bravo.