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Credit: Bravo
Rulla Pontarelli reacted to a video of her husband, Brian Pontarelli, and his mistress, rumored to be Beth Walker, after Sunday’s episode of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island.
As Rosie DiMare, 35, admitted that she felt “uncomfortable” bringing the video to her, Alicia Carmody, 41, explained why she didn’t show her, and Jo-Ellen Tiberi, 38, suspected Rulla would suggest it was “doctored,” Rulla, 46, shaded the clip of Brian, 49, as “bullsh*t,” and Jo-Ellen reacted to not being invited to her and Brian’s Arabian Nights-themed party.
“It’s all bullsh*t to me,” Rulla stated on the June 7 episode of the RHORI: After Show. “Can we just not talk about this stupid thing? It was quite the way to kill a vibe.”
According to Rosie, she didn’t want to bring it up but felt pressure to do so from Alicia.
“I felt very uncomfortable by it, but what happened at the mansion was really unsettling to me. Obviously, it looks real. Obviously, there’s a date on it. Nothing like super promiscuous was going on. So it wasn’t like, ‘Oh my god, we caught them in the act.’ I’m like, ‘Why am I being shown this?’ It just was like, ‘This seems like a setup,’” she explained.
Although Rosie felt that someone closer to Rulla should have brought the video to her, she felt a moral obligation to do so after Alicia told her that she didn’t think she could do it.
“[Alicia] was like ‘Can you do it?’” she recalled. “[And] I’d rather [Rulla] shoot the messenger and be mad at me for telling [her] than [her] not knowing about it.”
Meanwhile, in her own segment, Alicia said she simply didn’t want to do it at Rulla’s party.
“I said, ‘No, no. I’m not doing it at her party. I’ll do it the next day because Rulla just came out of the hospital,’” she reasoned.
Alicia then alleged that Rosie wanted to tell Rulla herself.
“Rosie took it and was like, ‘Give it to me!’ Rosie was like, ‘I know you can’t do it. I’m gonna do it.’ I was like ‘Oh,’” she claimed.
As for Jo-Ellen, she felt it should’ve been Alicia who told her, and she suspected that Rulla wouldn’t believe the contents of the video.
“She’s gonna say it’s doctored,” she suspected, as Alicia said Rulla would likely feel that failing to acknowledge the video was her way of “protecting her family.”
Elsewhere, Liz McGraw, 55, said Rulla had the opportunity to shut down the speculation about Brian’s romance with another woman early on but failed to do so.
“I feel as though if Rulla just came into the summer saying, ‘Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, maybe I know, maybe I don’t, but it’s none of your f*cking business, and I’ll handle it on my own terms,’ she would’ve shut it down right then and there,” she explained.
During another portion of the RHORI: After Show, Jo-Ellen commented on being left off the guest list for Rulla and Brian’s event.
“I don’t think I was excluded. I had a wedding,” she explained. “[Rulla] knew that I wasn’t around that weekend, so she didn’t bother inviting me … I would say that she would be extremely uncomfortable with inviting me, but there’s a chance that she would’ve invited me, even if I didn’t have the wedding, and you know what I would’ve done? Been cordial .. I wouldn’t have caused a scene there.”
Although Rulla confirmed that she didn’t want another “sh*t show” party like the cast’s Studio 54-themed bash, she insisted that her party was a hit.
“I’m hosting. We’re having a blast. We’re here together, Brian, me, and everybody else,” she stated.
But Liz and Kelsey Swanson, 32, disagreed, with Liz saying, “There was something energetically lacking,” and Kelsey suggesting it was one big front.
“She wanted to paint a picture of her and Brian’s relationship that everything was hunky dory and everything was status quo and ‘we’re good over here and we can have fun and look at us.’ And it still felt stale. It was like we felt seedy being there … we knew too much,” she shared.
The Real Housewives of Rhode Island season one airs Sundays at 9/8c on Bravo.