'The Real Housewives of New Jersey's Jackie Goldschneider breaks down her on and off-show drama with her castmates.
Despite what the internet might believe, Jackie Goldschneider is not currently beefing with her The Real Housewives of New Jersey co-star, Dolores Catania.
On a recent episode of the RHONJ After-Show, Dolores came at Jackie for questioning new Housewife Danielle Cabral's explanation of being estranged from her brother. The two stopped speaking after Danielle blocked him on Instagram during the pandemic and, as far as Danielle knows, that's the only reason for their divide. Jackie doesn't buy it, though, telling her co-stars there must be more to the story.
"Do we know her whole story about her sister?" Dolores asked, referencing Jackie's own strained sibling relationship. "Do we? Do we?! Do we even know a f**king quarter of it?"
"Can I explain that for a second?" Jackie asks of ET. "I'm gonna be totally honest here, and if you ask Dolores she'll tell you the same thing: Dolores and I got into a fight, like an argument, OK? We got into an argument on a Thursday and ... she did her after-show four days later, on a Monday, and then the following Saturday we made up with a big, huge hug and, 'I love you...' and blah, blah, blah!"
"She was-- we were pissed at each other, and she was really pissy," she adds, "and when Dolores is really pissy, she does not hold back, and so she did that after-show during the one week that we were in a fight, and that's why it came out so nasty."
Jackie doesn't share what the two briefly fell out over, noting that "regardless of why she was so nasty," Jackie does not agree with Dolores' sentiment.
"I'm sorry, but if you're gonna go on a reality show, you have to be OK with people asking questions, right?" she notes. "I don't think there's anything wrong with asking questions about a story that doesn't seem to make sense and also, please ask me whatever you want about my sister! I have told it a million times, and you'll never see me go, 'Stop f**king asking about my sister!' You know? Like, I don't mind the questions about my sister, because the truth is the truth."
"For Dolores to say that I should worry about my own sister and not ask Danielle questions well, first of all, that's what we're on the show for," Jackie continues. "I mean, we're supposed to ask questions to get more of the story. ... I don't know what she's trying to say there, that, like we shouldn't be talking about our lives in-depth on a reality show? I don't know what her point was, but I do know that Dolores was mad at me that day, and so that's why I think she was so aggressive."
Jackie first opened up about not being close with her sister in her first season, season 9, including a taped phone call between the two. In the wake of Dolores' after-show commentary, though, some fans have questioned the authenticity of that call, alleging Jackie faked it for the cameras because her sister's voice was not recorded.
"Nope," Jackie declares. "My sister said, 'I will have this call with you, but I don't want...' -- 'cause I texted her first; I said, 'OK, if I call you, will you pick up?' She said, 'Yes, but I don't want my voice on the air..."
"I have no reason to fake it," she adds. "I have enough going on in my life. If my sister didn't want that part of that story in my season, then I would have picked something else. I've got 85 million stories that I could use as a storyline. No, no, no -- we had that conversation and then we actually followed up and made plans, and that summer I went to her house for July 4th and then it fell off again."
"We don't, like, hate each other," she notes. "If I called my sister right now and needed something, she'd be there in a minute. I know that."
Danielle also took issue with Jackie poking at her story, calling her and the other women out for talking behind her back instead of bringing their questions to her face.
"Why would I go to Danielle with anything?" Jackie asks. "Danielle cut me out of the first cast event for absolutely no reason. ... She excluded one out of nine people from a cast event, which I thought was so mean -- show or no show, that is so mean -- and once that happened, I really lost any respect for her. I would never go to her with any concern or anything because I wouldn't be well received, and I wouldn't be respected."
Danielle hosted a mozzarella-making party at her home early on in season 13, excluding just Jackie from the backyard bash after she felt "bad vibes" from her castmate. She pointed to a moment at Margaret Josephs' house, in which Jackie gave Danielle an up-down once-over while she was wearing an outfit Jackie would later describe as pulled out of a hamper.
"Danielle does not have eyes in the back of her head, she didn't know that I looked at her outfit," Jackie fires back, referencing a clip the show's pulled out to prove Danielle's point, but which Jackie says proves hers.
"I was so friendly to her at the roller skating party, which was the first thing, the first time we met, and then the second time at Margaret's, yes, I looked at her outfit," Jackie says. "I looked from head to toe behind her, OK? I just wanted to see it. I like looking at people's outfit, and it was a particular outfit, so I looked at it ... [but] she didn't see it. I was behind her. I was behind her."
Optics-wise, Jackie's friction with Danielle comes across like she was fighting her "replacement." Danielle secured a full-time Housewife spot, while Jackie is a "friend of" the cast for the first time since joining in 2018.
"Me being mean to Danielle is not going to, like, midseason, once Bravo made their decision, gonna get me my full-time role back," Jackie says, shutting down the speculation. "That's absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I knew that coming into this season, I was a friend. I knew that it was decided, so me not being welcoming to Danielle wouldn't get me anywhere. That would just be stupid."
"Plus, you have to be a part of the group in order to even stay on this show, so I'd be biting off my own nose to spite my face, you know?" she continues. "Danielle is not my competition. Honestly, if the show wanted 10 Housewives, they would have 10 Housewives. I know they love me, and I know the reasons why I couldn't be full-time this season and I have already discussed them. Danielle had absolutely nothing do with that. It was decided before Danielle even came on the scene."
"If it was me or Danielle, and I had to destroy somebody in order to come back, like, I would say goodbye," she says. "It doesn't work like that for me."
Per Jackie, her taking a step back was a bit of a mutual decision with the network. She wanted to focus on her eating disorder recovery without the pressure of documenting it all for TV.
"I had a very transformative year," she shares. "I went through a lot of recovery therapy, and ... interestingly, the recovery therapy had to do a lot with not just food, but the way I think of myself, and value myself, and external means of validation -- and all of that is related to weight, but it's also related to the way you identify yourself worth with a job, right?"
"A lot of the work that I did to really love and value myself, regardless of what I weigh, or what the scale says, or what I look like, that helped me to really become OK with, no matter what my role is on this show, I'm valuable," she adds. "I'm grateful to still be on the show, whatever they want to call me, they call me. I still went in the same way and did my same job."
While RHONJ cameras didn't capture every step of Jackie's journey, she's documented it all in a forthcoming memoir, The Weight of Beautiful, available Sept. 26.
"I absolutely loved writing this book," she gushes. "Writing the book was so therapeutic. I think when it comes out, there'll be some hard parts, because I think that there's some stuff in there that is really personal, and a little bit embarrassing, but it's important to tell this story."
Before the book hits shelves, though, there's a lot more of RHONJ season 13 to watch. Jackie says the dynamics within the group really start to shift with Tuesday night's episode.
"It started feeling really divided, like this is getting bad and it's only gotten worse," she reveals. "Right now, it is so divided that we can't even be in the same room together. I am so grateful that I will not be at the reunion for more than a part-time role."
The season is building up to a finale fight that finally fractured Teresa Giudice and sister-in-law Melissa Gorga's already rocky relationship, seemingly for good. The two haven't been in the same room since filming wrapped in August of last year; they'll have to be together for the reunion taping, set to happen later this spring.
"I know that last year was so contentious and it is has nothing on this year," Jackie admits. "I cannot imagine what's going to happen this year. It's so bad. We are so divided. We couldn't even be in the same room at BravoCon! We had separate panels, so I just, I think it's really sad. I think it's sad. I think it's terrible and I don't know how we all come back without it all being the same thing again, you know?"
"I don't know how we could do this again next season," she says. "We are at such an impasse. That being said, I don't have a problem, personally, with most of the cast. I don't know if, like, I am lumped in with Margaret, Melissa and that's why I am like on this side, but really, I feel like I am pretty good with almost everyone. Hear that, Dolores? Good with everyone!"
While most of the cast has played coy about the future of the friend group, Jackie seems to believe there's only room for Teresa or Melissa moving forward. She's just not sure how that will work, either.
"The problem is, yes they could [film together again], but we'd have all of the same scenes next season," she offers. "So, I don't see how that's possible, I don't."
"Teresa's been on it since day one, so you can't really imagine the show without," she professes, "but then again, Melissa is also, I feel like this year she was so strong. She's always great, she's so strong. But the men play a really important role in Jersey, too, and Joe Gorga's the leader of the pack, you know? He wrangles the guys, he gets everything going. He's the life of the party, so I can't-- I think if he wasn't there, I don't see the men being an important entity in New Jersey anymore, so I can't imagine it without either of them. I really can't."
Fans have weeks to go until the finale plays out, but they got a more in-depth look at what goes down in the midseason teaser, released Monday. The sneak peek includes a showdown between Margaret and Danielle, after Margaret declares the newcomer a "s**t-starter" for repeating cheating allegations about Melissa that Margaret's former friend spilled to Teresa and Jennifer Aydin ahead of the season, claiming Margaret kept them in an "arsenal" to one day use against Melissa if she ever crossed her.
"I don't wanna give it away; I will just say that nobody beats Margaret," Jackie offers as her review of the Margaret vs. Danielle matchup.
Margaret's denied being the source of the rumors, and Melissa's denied any infidelity, but the discussion around her supposed secret rendezvous contributed to her and Joe's decision to skip out on attending his sister Teresa's wedding to Louie Ruelas.
"There's so much speculation, I want for Melissa's sake -- 'cause she's one of my dear friends -- for everyone to know why she did not go to Teresa's wedding," Jackie says. "I want everyone to really understand that."
This all comes on the heels of Jennifer and Teresa warning Danielle and her fellow new 'Wife, Rachel Fuda, about Margaret, telling the women she makes "a better friend than an enemy" and a "master manipulator."
"I think I started that last year when I said, 'You don't want Margaret to be your enemy...'" Jackie surmises, calling back to a comment she made in season 12, as she and Dolores watched Margaret and Teresa go at one another during a ropes course outing. She says, her words were meant as a compliment, though.
"I was coming from a place of, Margaret, she's smart. She knows stuff," Jackie says. "Like, don't mess with her, because she doesn't mess around. If you go for her, she's gonna come back for you."
"I was almost, like, complimenting how ... good of a combatant she is," she continues. "Like, you don't wanna mess with her. [Teresa and Jennifer] were saying it as an insult, sort of like, Margaret is sneaky and she's a bad person, so don't mess with her, 'cause she'll destroy you. That's totally opposite from what I was saying. I was just saying that she's a very worthy opponent. It's not gonna be good if you go for her. She won't just let it pass."
The Real Housewives of New Jersey airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Bravo.
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