Tamra Judge is speaking out about her emotional exit from The Real Housewives of Orange County, and she’s not holding back when it comes to how she feels some of her castmates responded during a difficult time.
In a recent interview with Us Weekly, Judge opened up about her decision to temporarily quit the show during the filming of Season 19. According to Tamra, her breaking point came while dealing with the emotional toll of her friend Teddi Mellencamp’s stage four brain cancer diagnosis, something that deeply affected her mental and physical health.
“Going into filming, Teddi Mellencamp had just gotten diagnosed [with brain cancer],” Tamra shared. “I think people don’t understand the other side of cancer. When your friends or your family member or somebody is diagnosed, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. When someone says you have stage four brain cancer — you’re having brain tumors removed from your head, it’s scary as hell.”
Tamra described herself as “devastated,” revealing that the stress caused her to lose weight and rely on medication to get through the day. “I wasn’t eating or sleeping,” she said. “I would have to take Xanax to even cope during the day without crying. I was wasting away. I was down to, like, 108 pounds.”
Filming the show amid this emotional period proved to be overwhelming. Things came to a head during a cast trip to New Orleans. “It was such a painful time in my life, and I just didn’t want to relive it,” she explained, referring to the August 14 episode when she abruptly walked out of a group dinner and announced she was done with the show. “I had a few drinks and I had a Xanax, and it was the worst thing I could have done. I just decided this isn’t for me right now. I can’t do this anymore. And I left.”
Though the trailer for the season shows Tamra returning later, she says the break was crucial. “Everybody was calling me. Andy was calling me. [Executive producer] Alex Baskin was calling me. They asked me to please take a week off,” she said. “They said, ‘We know how much stress you’re under, and I want you to take a week off. Come back to us in a week, and if you still want to quit, we respect where you’re at in your life and everything that’s going on.’ They were very nice to me, very kind to me about that.”
However, what’s stuck with Tamra isn’t just the emotional weight of her personal life—but also how her castmates responded.
“I’m not asking for grace. I’m not asking for people to feel sorry for me but I’m a human,” she said. “I might seem tough but it doesn’t mean I don’t have any feelings. To see people like Emily [Simpson] and Gina [Kirschenheiter] say the things they said about me and not have any compassion? Honestly, Heather’s the only one that truly had any compassion whatsoever for me.”
Despite everything, it was encouragement from her friend Teddi that eventually brought her back to filming. “I am a person that gives 100 percent in everything I do, and when it came to the show, I wasn’t given 100 percent,” Tamra admitted. “You wouldn’t know that, because every story line is about me.”
While viewers may have seen only snippets of Tamra’s struggles, her comments suggest a disconnect between what was happening behind the scenes and how it was received on camera. Whether or not Emily and Gina will respond remains to be seen, but Tamra’s message is clear: compassion, or the lack of it, left a lasting impression.
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