Last week during Part 1 of the Real Housewives of New Jersey Season 12 reunion Joe Gorga stormed off stage and announced that he was quitting the show after an intense verbal fight with his sister Teresa Giudice. Is he really not coming back?
What set Joe Gorga off?
Joe Gorga was upset that his sister Teresa didn’t defend him against Jennifer Aydin calling him a “b!tch boy” because he stands up for his wife Melissa on the show. They also insulted Joe for being such a large part of the show, insinuating that men who get themselves involved in the same kind of drama that they participate in are “less than” in some way.
Teresa also compared Joe to her ex Joe Giudice being on the show by claiming that Joe Giudice didn’t get involved with “girl sh*t.”
“Let me tell you what makes a man, Honey,” Joe said at the reunion, addressing Jennifer Aydin. “Gets up at 5 o’clock in the morning and works construction and makes f**king money, but loves their woman and puts them on a pedestal.”
Jennifer doubled down that his behavior was like a “b!tch boy” when he defended Melissa during an altercation at Jennifer’s beach home.
“I’m done. F–k you people,” Joe Giudice said at the very end of the show. “You know what? I quit.”
Joe later spoke at length about his thoughts and feelings about this situation on his wife’s podcast Melissa Gorga: On Display. On the podcast, he mentioned that he found Teresa to be hypocritical because he sees her fiancé Luis Ruelas doing similar things to what she’s accusing him of doing.
“He comes on the show and he gets ripped apart because of his past and then he talks to Margaret and he comes on the show and he does all this stuff to make my sister happy and he belittles himself in a way but he’s not a b-tch for doing this on national TV?” Joe asked on the podcast.
The Real Housewives of New Jersey has largely featured male partners of the show in recent years to the point where they even tape together regularly without the women. Now other franchises like Real Housewives of Atlanta are following suit. It’s a bit misogynistic to say that only women have drama, and only women can be petty. Having men more heavily featured on these types of shows more fully captures a real human social dynamic that goes beyond making “men-versus-women” distinctions.
Joe Gorga often posts quotes of inspiration and wisdom on his Instagram. Many of them seem to be thinly veiled messages to his sister.
What’s Teresa’s side of the story?
“Andy Cohen asked me a question and I gave my answer,” Teresa told Us Weekly about what happened with the walk-off. “So, when I gave my answer, my brother’s like, ‘There you go putting me down.’ And I’m like, ‘First of all, I would never put my brother down. I love my brother.’”
This wasn’t the first time Joe quit this season
After a heartbreaking confrontation with his neice Gia Giudice early in the season Joe Gorga quit the show for the first and stopped taping with production for a while
“I was shocked. Think about that. Alright, I’ll deal with my sister. I’ll deal with my brother-in-law. I’ll deal with all that nonsense, right? But not my niece. You know what that did to me?” Joe told Melissa Pfeister on the podcast Side Piece
“You know, I wasn’t filming after that. I didn’t film for, I don’t think I filmed for a month. Three weeks. I was quitting. Yeah. Production kind of slowed down, they weren’t even filming as much. I wasn’t there. They were just doing outside stuff. I was going to quit. I was done,” Joe said. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing this. I’m not going to sit on the show and argue with my nieces now.”
Is Joe Gorga really not coming back?
At this point, it’s unclear if Joe Gorga is done for good, and if he is, what that means for his wife Melissa’s spot in the cast. There have also been rumors that even Teresa Giudice might not be coming back after 12 seasons of the show. If the Gorga family leaves the Real Housewives of New Jersey cast it will definitely be an end to an era, but it might open doors for a completely different show dynamic. RHONJ started off as a show centered mostly around family drama, but in later years has branched out to being more about friend groups like the rest of the Real Housewives‘ franchises.
Why isn’t Melissa Gorga going to be a bridesmaid for Teresa?
Teresa has shut her sister-in-law Melissa out of the wedding party in her wedding to Louis. To further salt the wound, Teresa has instead invited Luis’ sisters to join her at the alter on her big day.
During the reunion, Teresa said she didn’t want Melissa in the wedding because she doesn’t consider herself close to her. She did invite her brother Joe Gorga to be in the wedding, but he doesn’t know if he wants to participate if his wife Melissa isn’t involved as well.
PHOTOS: Instagram, Bravo
