The Real Housewives of Orange County only had Dr. Jen Armstrong for one season of shooting, but she declared that it was more than enough and that she is happy to be done.
“Probably the first feeling was a relief,” she said on the Behind the Velvet Rope with David Yontef podcast. “I think they’re starting to film like now.” But she added that she thinks the decision to fire her from the show came last minute.
“Surprising the Covid people actually reached out to me to test today to start filming,” she said. “So I think that this may have been more of a last-minute decision, but I couldn’t even imagine.”
Dr. Jen is happy to be off of ‘RHOC’
“I couldn’t even imagine starting to film right now,” Armstrong continued. “Like I just moved into a new house and remodeled it. And there are just all sorts of like … it’s just kind of chaotic right now.”
And while Armstrong said she was happy to be off the show, she’s a little sad. “Relief was my first feeling. And then of course you’re sad, right?” she admitted. “Because it’s like exciting, you do new things and you’re like nobody wants to be dumped, right. You want to do the dumping.”
“So you had to kinda go through all that,” she added. “But everyone was extremely nice. We talked about the future a lot. Talked about other aspects, and I have a great relationship with the network, a great relationship with Evolution.”
“And this is interesting. A lot of the producers texted me and were like, it’s not, we’re so sad. We’re so sad. And so we’re all going to have a beach day, one day. So that’ll be fun,” she dished.
‘RHOC’ was a lot to manage and work full time, Dr. Jen says
Armstrong made it sound like the decision that she would not return was collaborative. “So I had a meeting, for a few hours, with the producer, the new producer,” she shared. “And then, I had a phone call with Evolution and then we decided to not come back as a full-time Housewife. And so it happened very kindly of suddenly, you know.”
The notion of Armstrong appearing on RHOC as a friend as possible, but not really something she wanted to explore. “I was going to have that conversation with the producer and talk about coming back as a friend role,” she said. “Because I don’t know if I could keep up that much production again for another year.”
“I worked full time and I have three kids,” she continued. “And so I don’t have the backup rich husband. Filming five days a week and working five days a week, was a lot.”
‘RHOC’ was a ‘unique experience,’ Dr. Jen Armstrong says
Armstrong said filming RHOC last year took a toll on her. “Like it was just a lot last year,” she said. “So I was kind of hoping that they would bring me back as a friend where I was going to ask them if that we could do that.”
“And then they made that call first,” Armstrong said. “So I was like, OK, well, that’s kind of what I wanted anyway. So yeah. I mean, look, Housewives is wonderful. It’s wonderful. I had a great time. It was definitely a unique experience, but I’m not like the drunk mean girls. I definitely have like a different play on it. You know, I was just myself, and my world kind of crumbled, crumbled a little bit during filming. So it was an interesting world to navigate doing that on camera.”