Credit: Bravo
Teresa Giudice revealed when husband Luis Ruelas reached his tipping point with her brother, Joe Gorga, and sister-in-law, Melissa Gorga, on Tuesday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live.
Following the Real Housewives of New Jersey season 13 finale, Teresa looked back at the culmination of her drama with the Gorgas, noting that she told Luis not to meet with Joe about the cheating rumor regarding Melissa after first explaining her relationship with podcast host Melissa Pfeister and gifting Andy Cohen a pizza oven.
“We talk about life, everything that’s going on in her world and my world,” Teresa said of herself and Melissa P. on the May 16 episode of the WWHL: After Show. “We met at the [Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip] premiere party in L.A. through Cynthia Bailey. She was Cynthia Bailey’s date.”
“I was Cynthia Bailey’s date, and then she passed me off to be with Luis and Teresa,” Melissa, who was serving as the Clubhouse’s guest bartender, confirmed.
Teresa then gave Andy a Skinny Italian pizza oven.
“This is the famous pizza oven. I’m gonna bring this to my new Hamptons house,” Andy replies.
According to Teresa, she wanted to bring frozen pizzas to Andy with the oven but was too busy with her daughter Gia Giudice‘s recent graduation.
“You can put it right in there, and the kids will love them. [It takes] eight minutes. You’re gonna love, love, love it,” Teresa revealed.
At that point, Andy turned to Luis, who was seated in the front row, and asked, “Luis, you got a warehouse full of these?”
“Yes,” he responded.
As RHONJ fans will recall, pizza ovens were a hot topic throughout the 13th season, especially after Luis suddenly pulled out of a would-have-been business with Joe and claimed to have lost $250,000.
On the live broadcast of WWHL, during a game of “Can! You! Defend!?,” Teresa was asked if she felt Luis’ decision not to go through with the partnership was defensible.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
Then, when a fan wanted to know if she intentionally shaded Melissa with her “chosen family” speech, Teresa explained where the phrase came from.
“I went to a communion, my sister-in-law, her partner’s communion, and she said the speech at her kid’s communion,” Teresa revealed on the WWHL: After Show. “She said, ‘Everyone here, there’s a lot of family here, but everyone else is chosen family.’ And Luis and I were there, and I was just so taken back from her speech, and I was like, ‘Oh my God. I love that.’ I said, ‘The next time I have to say a speech, I wanna use that.’”
“That’s really how I got it from,” she continued. “So it was never at a dig at my brother and Melissa. That’s [Margaret Josephs] starting her sh-t.”
Regarding her rough season of RHONJ, Teresa said she couldn’t believe that Joe, her only sibling, would start such drama with her just before she was set to get married.
“I was getting married, my only family member doing this to me right before my wedding. It was so sad,” she admitted.
On the finale episode of RHONJ, Luis called Joe into a secret meeting about a rumor claiming Melissa had been unfaithful. But, according to Teresa, she had nothing to do with it.
“I told him not to do it, but he wanted to because he said, ‘I want him to get ahead of it,’ because I don’t want what happened to him last year to happen to my brother,” she explained, noting that it was never considered that Melissa should’ve been there.
“No. That was all on Luis. I didn’t want to get involved because of what happened when they first got on the show. I got blamed for the whole strippergate thing,” Teresa stated.
Also, on the live broadcast of WWHL, Teresa was asked about Luis’ “tipping point” with the Gorgas.
“I think, um, at [Rachel Fuda] and John Fuda’s house, at the shore house, that was it,” she suspected.
And Luis agreed, saying, “Yes.”
The three-part Real Housewives of New Jersey season 13 reunion airs on Tuesday, May 30.