Jackie Goldschneider claims that her ex-BFF Margaret Josephs asked her and Jenn Fessler to quit “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” if Teresa Giudice’s husband, Luis “Louie” Ruelas, came back for Season 14.
“Margaret wanted, if Louie was coming back to the show, she didn’t want me and Jenn Fessler to come back to the show,” Goldschneider, 47, recalls in an interview with Page Six’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast.
“She wanted to leave and she wanted all of us to leave together.”
The “Weight of Beautiful” author remembers her and Josephs’ mutual pal Fessler, 53, agreeing to such a plan — which the latter confirmed in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight.
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“What happened was — and I think the first episode, maybe you saw me saying to Margaret, ‘I told you that if you don’t want to be around these people again, neither will I …,’” Fessler told the outlet. “And what I meant by that was, if you’re not gonna go back and do the show again, then I’m not going back and do the show again.”
However, Goldschneider wasn’t down with the alleged request.
“Jenn Fessler said, ‘OK, I will do that for you.’ And I said, ‘I will not do that for you. I love you, but I’m not leaving my job because you don’t like somebody,’” she says, surmising that this exchange was the catalyst for the demise of her friendship with Josephs, 57.
“I think that started everything.”
Ultimately, Ruelas, 49, returned to the show alongside Giudice, 52 — as did Goldschneider, Fessler and Josephs.
Asked to share her thoughts on Josephs’ decision to stay put with Ruelas in the mix, Goldschneider stresses her belief that the Soirée co-founder started thinking of “RHONJ” as a “game” rather than a reality show about a group of friends.
“I think she felt like she could do the show without filming with Teresa. And I think she also was looking at it a little bit as a game, you know, or a competition show,” she observes.
“Less of a friend group and more of a competition show where, ‘If I get enough people onto my side, I’ll win.’ So I think that also contributed to the disconnect this season, unfortunately.”
During 2023’s “RHONJ” Season 13 reunion, Josephs accused Giudice’s spouse, Ruelas, of making a threatening call to her son at work — cementing their status as onscreen foes.
After years of feuding with Giudice, Goldschneider tells us she formed a “really nice friendship with the series OG before cameras picked up for the current installment of the series.
“That definitely contributed to it. But I think there was a level of loyalty expected of me. Friendships should be easy. They should contribute joy and ease and comfort to your life. They shouldn’t be you having to answer for everything and [have] blind loyalty,” Goldschneider says.
“It shouldn’t be like that and I think a lot was expected of me as a friend.”
Josephs has made it no secret that her once-close bond with Goldschneider is beyond repair.
“I feel sad about it. I think it’s sad, but I think it’s weird,” she told us at BravoCon in November 2023. “It’s shocking.”
Josephs also addressed a conversation with Goldschneider about the former lawyer’s memoir, published last fall by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
“I championed her for that book, I wanted her book to be successful. I had my own book with Simon & Schuster [that] did unbelievably well and I want only good things for her,” the “Caviar Dreams, Tuna Fish Budget” author said.
At one point, Goldschneider felt Josephs took credit for her securing a deal to write her own book — which the Macbeth Collection creator doesn’t understand.
“I think she got very offended when I said, ‘I championed you,’ and that didn’t mean anything behind it,” she said. “And I think she was very offended that I said that.”
“The Real Housewives of New Jersey” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.
