Over a year after opening up about her sexuality in 2020, “Real Housewives of Orange County’s” Braunwyn Windham-Burke is letting fans know about her journey to coming out and where she stands with her former reality series castmates.
Braunwyn and her 19-year-old daughter Rowan recently spoke with Page Six about the alleged “homophobia” she says she experienced while filming the cult reality show series.
“Making off-color jokes about me being intimate with a woman, that’s not OK. Those are microaggressions,” she said. “After I came out, having to prove that I was gay, that should never have been tolerated… That is homophobia.” said the former reality star.
In the joint interview, Rowan jumped in to defend her mother against “invalidating” comments made by viewers and fellow housewives.
"It’s really invalidating that people were saying they didn’t believe it or they didn’t think it was true," Rowan explained. "Not just for my mom, but for other people who come out later in life."
Fans of the RHOC series might remember former cast mate Kelly Dodd, who also exited the show after season 15, blamed Braunwyn for getting her fired.
“This was your fault. We’d still be on the show if you didn’t make things so dark and ugly and brought all that political ‘woke’ BS,” said Dodd to Windham-Burke via messages shared online.
“Your lies about me, calling me a racist and homophobe were horribly destructive and your phony storylines didn’t help either.”
Meanwhile, current cast member Emily Simpson, said she believes Braunwyn was “selfish” for exploring her sexuality while being married to her now ex-husband Sean Burke.
“One one hundredth of what we film makes it onto the show,” Windham-Burke explained in the interview. “So you can choose what you want… It was not easy to be the first gay Housewife. There should have been a little more grace.”
“At the end of the day, it’s a show about drama, but you need to have some humanity at a base level, and I didn’t get that with my cast members,” she added.
Rowan, who identifies as pansexual, shared how her mother inspired her to journey to finding her sexuality.
“[My mom] was a big part of me actually being able to find that identity and that label. I went by bi for a while but then I realized that it wasn’t actually bisexuality because I love every single different kind of gender and everyone,” says the teen.
“That helped me a lot, not just with sexuality but knowing myself as a whole, which helps along my journey of becoming a better person, a better me — better mentally, better physically, just knowing myself.”
The 44-year-old is currently dating model, dancer, and designer, Victoria Brito and even shared a few Instagram pics of the two of them enjoying this year’s Super Bowl game.
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