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Slade Smiley On Why He Wasn’t Allowed To Be The Bachelor; Gretchen Rossi On Why She’s Moved Past The Real Housewives of Orange County

Slade Smiley and Gretchen Rossi hung out with Vanderpump Rules star Scheana Marie on her podcast, Scheananigans. The former Real Housewives of Orange County stars talked about Slade’s almost-stint on The Bachelor, Gretchen’s business, and revealed whether they’d come back to RHOC in the future and they also shared their thoughts on the negativity of the show.


Slade says after ending his relationship so publicly with Jo De La Rosa on RHOC there was a lot of interest in him. Gretchen says he had agents and publicists of “legit celebrities” calling him because their clients wanted to date him.

Scheana asks if he would’ve ever considered doing The Bachelor back in the day and he says he was offered The Bachelor but he was not allowed back then because he was contractually bound to NBC Universal and Bachelor is an ABC show.  “A big battle ensued about that because technically I left Housewives in season 2. But you’re still tied for a period of time and the truth is that’s the reason they spun me off and we did ‘Date My Ex’. So ‘Date My Ex’ was the production company’s version of The Real Bachelorette, basically. So they had me living in a house with suitors who were all trying to date my ex.” He says that was the very first Housewives spin-off show. Gretchen then revealed that there was supposed to be a second season where it was flipped and Jo would help find a date for Slade, but she refused to do another season. Slade shared, “Andy Cohen called, he was so pissed. He loved the show, he loved the concept of it. It was a little campy.”

I’ll spare you the talk about nude photos and Gretchen taking pics of Slade as he paints in the nude. You’re welcome. If you’re so inclined, Gretchen says there are photos of Slade’s naked ass online. She encouraged Scheana to Google it because Slade has a great ass and legs. FYI.

Gretchen then talked a lot about wishing she had frozen her eggs in her 20s and encouraged Scheana to do it ASAP. If you’re interested in listening to Gretchen’s journey with fertility and Slade‘s vasectomy reversal and their four years of attempting to have a baby, it all starts around the 24-minute mark.

On marriage and babies, “Slade and I have been together 10 years. You know, according to all of my previous cast members, it was fake for TV and all that bullshit.” She says “we’ve known each other for 18 years, we’ve been together for 10 years.” She then launched into a long list of the A-list stars who are divorcing and admits that she’s afraid of cursing the relationship with a wedding. Gretchen doesn’t want to jeopardize their “great and amazing relationship.” She thinks they’ll be like “Goldie and Kurt or Oprah and Stedman” and just be okay with it.

Gretchen says that her Gretchen Christine line is doing really well. “This past year we were acquired by this really amazing group of people. You work 8 years of your life to get to a point where somebody wants to come in and acquire you and take you to the next level where you can scale it up on a much bigger level than we could on our own. So that was really, really exciting. It was a very proud moment for me and my business.”

Would they ever go back to RHOC? Gretchen said, “For a minute there I thought there might be a possibility that I would consider it, but I think we’re at the stage now in our life where it’s not really where we’re at anymore in our life. I feel like we’ve grown past the show. I feel like walking back into that would be like walking back into such a negative energy, such an ugly space and you don’t even realize how much you’re caught up in the negativity and the yuckiness of it. We’re just focused on some of the really exciting projects we have in the works right now. We’re doing a lot of things behind the camera and he has some amazing projects that he’s producing on and doing, so that’s been exciting for us. To still be in the entertainment space but not necessarily have to be on a show like Housewives that’s just all about negativity and tearing women down. It’s so against the grain of who I am.”

Slade jumps in to say, “My biggest issue is that the shows have become so big and so popular, which is fantastic for NBC and Bravo, you get people that are willing to say and do anything to keep their paycheck and stay on the show. So, it really kind of starts to erode away the true reality of what’s happening because you have these people that are just so desperate at times. Here’s the sad thing, too: they’re easily replaced because there’s somebody right behind you willing to say something, cause controversy or make something up. I can’t even tell you the people that they’d use Gretchen’s picture for casting calls.” He says they’d claim to know Gretchen and Slade to get on the show and even Photoshop themselves into photos with Gretchen using pictures off the internet, trying to make it look like they were friends.

On who she is still friends with from the show, Gretchen said, “I was friends with Vicki and Kelly and Lydia and Peggy, but then Kelly [Dodd] and I had a little falling out because she said some pretty cruel things about me getting pregnant, but then she apologized when we were at the Watch What Happens Live thing. So, that was good but then I found out like a week later that she was talking shit about Slade again to one of my friends.” Gretchen doesn’t want to have issues with Kelly but is sad that she keeps having issues with Slade when he’s never done anything to her. She then adds, “I would say I’m still friends with Vicki, but then she’s kind of made up with Tamra again and when you’re friends with Tamra she doesn’t want you even looking at Gretchen, so…” She then adds that she’s still friends with Lizzie, Jeanna, and others.

Gretchen says she has really good and organic relationships with the stars from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills but she knows Bravo never “cross-pollinates” like that, so she doesn’t have much chance of being on that show.

She also reveals that anytime she films for the shows, they always cut her out of the scenes/episodes. Scheana says Gretchen and Slade attended her wedding to Shay on Vanderpump Rules but weren’t shown in the final edit, which Scheana found a little weird because she is truly friends with them.

Gretchen ended the interview talking about the number of kids she and Slade are hoping to have. She started off wanting four, but now she just wants to have one and see how it goes. Slade thinks she’ll adopt some, too.

Scheana asked Slade about his son, Grayson. He says “he’s hanging in there. He just turned 18, which is so incredible. He was diagnosed at 5 and they said he’d be lucky if he makes to 8. He’s outlived all doctors’ predictions.” Gretchen added that Slade’s oldest son Gavin just got engaged.