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With “The Real Housewives of Orange County” gearing up to begin production on its history-making 20th season — a landmark for the Bravo franchise that changed popular culture as we know it — its cast is taking shape, and Gretchen Rossi will not be in the ensemble, Variety has learned.
Season 20 is set to begin filming soon, and minus Rossi, the rest of the 19th season’s cast is expected to remain intact, minus one other: On Jan. 9, Katie Ginella posted on Instagram to say that she’d been fired, writing, “After two seasons as a cast member on RHOC, the network has decided to move forward with Season 20 without me.” Ginella’s ouster was not unexpected, after a disastrous season in which she was caught in a number of lies — about having made an illicit recording of fellow castmate Shannon Beador the previous season, and appearing to have spread information about the show and the cast to Bravo content creators. After failing a lie detector test on camera, Ginella more or less stopped filming, seemingly at the producers’ insistence. Ginella was the first Asian American woman to be cast on “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”
Rossi had returned to “The Real Housewives of Orange County” with some fanfare, as a “friend” of the cast, seemingly being brought in as a foil to her arch-nemesis Tamra Judge. Rossi was a full-time cast member from Seasons 4-8, and had always clashed with Judge: a situation that had grown worse in Rossi’s years off the show as the two of them continued to feud off-camera. Their enmity did continue to play out throughout Season 19, but Judge — who had a horrendous season for personal reasons, and quit the show several times while being filmed — gained the upper hand in the finale when her vessel Gina Kirschenheiter brought up an infamous Twitter thread from 2023 that catalogued screenshots of Rossi’s transphobic, anti-abortion and anti-vaccine posts on social media. Rossi’s reaction to the sudden introduction of this topic at the cast’s final dinner in Amsterdam was bizarre, and she gave the impression she was in a fugue state — and sort of denied liking the posts, but not really. During the show’s reunion episodes, she put up more of a fight, and tried to turn the tables on Judge by saying she’d hired a cyber analyst who tied something on social media (it wasn’t clear) to Judge, but she didn’t produce any receipts either during the reunion or later on Instagram, and her allegations didn’t stick.
And Judge will return for Season 20, despite her behavior as the previous season filmed: She’s been saved because of the storyline potential that comes from reuniting the now-splintered “tres amigas,” which consisted of Judge, Beador and Vicki Gunvalson. “Real Housewives” executive producer Andy Cohen offered Gunvalson, the “OG of the OC,” an orange on stage at BravoCon in November, fittingly making her the first cast member of Season 20. It seems that the trio of former besties — who exist in various states of conflict, always — must be allowed to enact their psychodramas on camera.
As for the rest of the cast, despite speculation in the Bravosphere about a more major overhaul, the remaining Season 19 group will be back, with (a newly engaged) Kirschenheiter, Emily Simpson, Heather Dubrow and Jennifer Pedranti alll returning for Bravo’s milestone 20th season.
English (US) ·