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RHOC’s Vicki Gunvalson Recalls Learning About Her Mom’s Death On Camera (Exclusive)
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RHOC’s Vicki Gunvalson Recalls Learning About Her Mom’s Death On Camera (Exclusive)

Vicki Gunvalson will never recover from the day she learned of her mother’s death.

In PEOPLE’s first look at Real Housewives episode of Vice’s The dark side of reality TV series, the reality star, 62, opened up about the “traumatic” way she was told her mother, Joanne Steinmetz, died during filming The Real Housewives of Orange County.

“We were playing Bunko at Shannon’s (Beador) house,” she begins, recounting how everyone in her family was trying to contact her. When she didn’t answer the phone, her relatives called production.

Vicki Gunvalson.

VICE TV


“Brianna (his daughter) was calling, calling, calling, and they kept telling her, ‘Well, she’s filming right now, blah, blah, blah,'” Gunvalson recalled. “She said, ‘I need to talk to my mother right away.'”

Eventually, the businesswoman claims, production relented and set up Beador’s wrapping paper room with “lights and cameramen.”

“I was really upset that production knew for an hour and they didn’t tell me. They crossed the line and I think they should have taken me aside and said, ” Your mother died. ‘Talk to your daughter off camera.'” she shares. “If I was a producer, that’s what I would have done.”

“Let me scream and cry by myself and be angry. It was very, very traumatic. I will never forgive Bravo for that,” she adds.

A representative for Bravo had no comment when contacted by PEOPLE.

Vicki Gunvalson learns of her mother’s death.
Well done

In episode five of season 10, Gunvalson collapsed to the floor and burst into tears when she received a call from her daughter Briana, informing her of her mother’s death.

“Oh, my God. I don’t want to believe that,” she said at the time. “I just spoke to him this morning.”

“I just want my mother back. I want my mother,” Gunvalson continued. “I have to go see my mother now. I want to be with my mother. I need her every day. I need her so much. Who will worry about me? I have no parents now. I need my parents. I need my mother.”

Although Gunvalson now has a negative outlook on the moment, she previously said she did not blame the network for airing the scene during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in 2015.

“Mom wasn’t there. It was just me who heard the news,” she said, adding that the cameras did not film her “deathbed.”

At the time, she admitted she hadn’t seen the moment on TV, but said she “wouldn’t be upset by it because it’s part of my reality.”

“I lost my mother and I committed to exposing all areas of my life, the good and the bad,” Gunvalson explained. “There were a lot of great moments that aired and there were a lot of moments that I wish weren’t on a reality show. It’s not a moment that I feel, yet , I regret.”

The reality star claimed that “statistically, people are going to lose their parents” and shared how grateful she was to have had such a close relationship with her mother.

“I don’t blame Bravo, I don’t blame Evolution, I don’t blame anyone,” she added. “It’s my life.”

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The dark side of reality TV airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Vice.