Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images
-
Entertainment
Likes or Yikes?
My, how things have changed between the Real Housewives of New Jersey! At the beginning of this season, it looked as though new cast members Melissa Gorga and Kathy Wakile would be the big source of conflict. But now it appears that the real problems are between the original group of friends: Teresa Giudice, Jacqueline Laurita and Caroline Manzo.
In the season 3 finale, Manzo, 50, became infuriated after reading comments about her family in Giudice's Fabulicious! cookbook (see the clip below). Now Teresa is firing back, saying that Caroline is reading too much into an innocent joke.
"Why would I purposefully insult someone I had only ever been nice to--even nice to behind their back, unlike how they were to me?" writes Giudice, 39, on her website. "Why would I even want to bash the Manzos? I have no problem with them. Never have."
Teresa goes on to make a whopper of an accusation: that all the other Housewives are jealous of her success. (Her first cookbook, Skinny Italian, was a big bestseller.)
"I remember when I was writing my very first book proposal, Caroline was also trying to sell her own cookbook (and 5 other Housewives were too!)," claims the mother of four. "Caroline told me I was doing it wrong, that I wasn't smart enough, that I didn't have the right agent, the right co-writer, the right anything. I took her criticism like I always do, with a smile, and did what I wanted to anyway. And my book got picked up. Caroline's didn't. Not one publisher wanted it. I don't know why. I wish everyone success in all they do, but I can't help it hers didn't get published."
Ouch. To back up a bit, the reason Caroline got angry is that Teresa's book accused her of being a fake Italian ("about as Italian as the Olive Garden") who doesn't know the right way to make meatballs. Teresa scoffed when she learned that Caroline felt insulted, saying that the comments were obviously jokes. But one gets the sense that the cookbook intro was simply the last straw for Manzo, whose patience with Teresa's drama-baiting personality has been wearing thinner and thinner over the course of three seasons.
Between Caroline and Jacqueline -- who called Teresa "scum" on Twitter last week -- Giudice is shaping up to be the least popular woman in north Jersey. Will Sunday's reunion show win her back some friends -- or have the rest of the Housewives had enough, too?
