Rachel Fuda will soon be a mom of four!
The Real Housewives of New Jersey star made the reveal during Sunday’s unconventional reunion, subtitled Off the Rails, that she and her husband, John, were expecting their fourth child. The pair previously welcomed daughters Gianella and Guiliana together, while Rachel adopted John’s teen son, Jaiden, from a previous relationship.
“Jaiden was actually funny,” Rachel shares to ET, speaking of her son’s reaction to the family expanding. “We sat down, and I’m like, ‘We have to talk to you…’ and I filmed the whole thing, and it was like the biggest womp, womp, womp! He’s like, ‘I knew it.’ I’m like, ‘What do you mean you knew it?’ He’s like, ‘I just knew it. I just knew!'”
Rachel dropped the baby bomb on her castmates in the final moments of episode, eliciting some big reactions from the women she sat down with to relive RHONJ‘s explosive season 14 finale: Melissa Gorga, Margaret Josephs, Danielle Cabral and Jenn Fessler.
“I had seen the girls right before we [filmed] together,” Rachel recalls. “I was in my backyard, and all the girls were like in my pool hut outside, and [Danielle] yells across the backyard, and she’s like, ‘Are you pregnant?!’ And I’m like, ‘No, that is so offensive.’ I’m like, do I look pregnant?! Which, like, I’m so bloated that I definitely did at that point. And I’m like, how? Why does she think that I’m pregnant like? Why is she saying that? And she’s like, ‘I had a dream that you’re pregnant.'”
“I went to the bathroom, and I’m like, whoever’s telling her, shut up,” Rachel continues, miming talking to spirits in the sky. “I’m not telling them yet! Because once you tell one, then they all know, you know? … So when got together at the reunion special, that’s why she is freaking out, because she called it. So, she was losing her mind. … She is a witch, man!”
Rachel was concerned Melissa had caught on, too, after Melissa called her out for not drinking during a night out together.
“I wanted to say it the second I sat down [at the taping], just to get it over with, because I was, like, I was like sweating,” Rachel shares. “I don’t know why I was nervous, but I just wanted to get it out! Like, Melissa going out to dinner with her, stressed me out. … She’s the one that stressed me out the most because she pays attention.”
It was a happy moment to wrap up an otherwise heavy season of RHONJ, which ended with the cast at such divided odds that the network opted out of bringing them together to reunite as it had the 13 previous seasons. Instead, the ladies came together in two separate factions — Teresa Giudice, Jennifer Aydin, Jackie Goldschneider and Dolores Catania being the other group — to provide commentary on the headline-making finale episode at the scene of the crime, so to speak, Rails Steakhouse.
“I’m not gonna lie, I was a little confused,” Rachel says of what all made the final cut. “I feel like I need to watch it again, but I just I think that watching the two rooms, our room felt very like, it was a group of friends watching the episodes together, as we have multiple times, you know, sitting on my living room couch, chatting, laughing. You know, mocking people. Like, that’s what we do. And then, the other room is like, ‘Why would they do that? Why would they do this? They need to say that. And what? Oh, shut up!’ And like, all these very meaningful sentences, like everything was very purposeful, and it feels very manufactured to me.”
Two of the most talked-about moments coming out of the Off the Rails episode so far include Teresa still not caring Jackie spoke with Teresa’s husband, Louie Ruelas’, ex behind her back — Teresa only cared that Margaret had been involved with the woman, and Jackie denied doing anything nefarious with the information she was provided — and Teresa defending Louie saying he hopes Margaret’s son suffers (a comment he’s since apologized for on social media).
“Listen, Margaret is my friend and Jackie is not, and based on her past behavior, I mean, she literally got called out for having the ex in her house, and lied right to Teresa’s face,” Rachel muses. “No, I don’t believe her [version of events].”
As for the Louie situation, Rachel wants Teresa to realize “it’s OK to tell your partner they’re wrong.”
“It is also OK to apologize on their behalf,” she has. “But it takes a fully emotional, intelligent person to do that.”
Teresa took issue with Rachel’s husband throughout season 14, too, their friction coming to a head at that fateful finale, where Teresa once again referenced John’s past arrest for drug possession. Since the season started airing, news stories have surfaced about other run-ins with the law John faced in his late teens and early 20s. The revelations left some fans feeling lied to by the Fudas, who had only addressed an underage arrest up until this point.
“We have all made mistakes, and my intention was never to misrepresent,” Rachel offers now, “But to expect a 36-year-old man to walk around carrying and bearing the weight of mistakes he made at ages 18, 19 and 20 is comical, because there’s people that were criminals yesterday that decide today that they’re going to be a better person, you know? Those mistakes that he made have shaped him into who he is. He’s again — I’ve said this a million times — not ashamed of it. But he’s not walking around with these mistakes, meeting people, saying, ‘This is what I did when I was 20. This is what I did when I was 18…’ like, it just doesn’t work that way. And there’s also a lot of missing pieces to those stories, and he doesn’t owe any of them an explanation. Sorry.”
Rachel’s biggest disappointment in the edit was finding out a 20-plus minute discussion over the social media drama, which exploded ahead of the season and added an additional layer of distrust between the sides, didn’t get its due on screen. Before season 14 premiered, screenshots circulated on social media that appeared to show Teresa and Jennifer encouraging at least one blogger to pursue certain information, or post certain information, in order for the women to have a reason to bring it up on camera and push story. Jennifer’s owned up to some of this dabbling, while Teresa’s denied any involvement and, instead, pointed the finger at Margaret and Melissa for doing it. They’ve also denied taking part in the behavior.
“That’s literally one of the main reasons that we’re sitting in opposite rooms right now,” she laments. “Jen Aydin and I didn’t have any issue all season long until all this stuff came out online. … That was a very important piece of the puzzle, to make sense of it all. But I guess, if the same puzzle pieces aren’t fitting back together, then what does it actually matter?”
The one thing the two groups seem to agree on is that there’s no moving forward with the other. That’s left producers in a precarious place: a big question mark on what the future of RHONJ looks like moving forward. Does the show get a full-on reboot, with an all-new cast, like The Real Housewives of New York City? Or, does it get The Real Housewives of Miami treatment, with a half-and-half approach to casting? On Sunday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, comedian Matt Rogers pitched Andy Cohen — who executive produces the Housewives shows — on keeping the majority of the cast, claiming it’s Teresa, Jennifer and Jackie who are holding the show back from being “fun.”
“I’d love to see that,” Rachel admits. “I think that we are a group, even if you didn’t add anyone else to that cast, we could make a show out of us. We could! And I think that we’re able to have conflict with each other, and also resolution, which are the two words that go together in these shows. And I think that’s a huge issue with our cast is that there’s a ton of conflict and not enough resolution. So, there has to be both of those things to make a show work, and it’s unfortunate that there’s only conflict and no resolution, but we’re at the end of the conflict rope now.”
Rachel says she’s in a good place with everyone she shared her Rails room with — including Jenn and Dolores — and “would like to do the show again,” but notes there are “factors I would have to consider before returning … and I think that I think the network knows what they are, for all of us.” If this is the end of her Housewives chapter, though, she’s OK with that, too.
“I feel great,” she shares. “I’m grateful to have had the opportunity, and I’ve done some really cool stuff along the way, and I’ve made friendships that I will have forever, and I just feel grateful for it. Whatever is going to happen is gonna happen.”
History could repeat itself, though. When she joined the show for season 13, she started filming just two months after giving birth to her youngest daughter. Cameras might go back up on the next iteration of RHONJ just after she gives birth to her next kiddo, though Rachel and John are choosing to keep details about the pregnancy — including the child’s sex and due date — private for now.
“We’re just enjoying announcing our pregnancy and all that,” she explains. “But we did our third IVF transfer, and it was a bumpy road. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, like my first two pregnancies, to get pregnant. But, ultimately, everything always works out in the end, and I feel very grateful and I’m very blessed.”
Rachel’s girls interacting with their new sibling (or siblings — Rachel’s not sure this will be the last!) would surely make for some cute TV.
“They haven’t stopped talking about it!” Rachel reveals. “They’re like, ‘We’re gonna have a baby. We’re gonna have a baby. I want to feed the baby the bottle. I’m gonna change the baby’s diaper. I’m gonna wipe the baby. Mommy, I’ll babysit.’ That’s Gigi’s new thing: ‘You and daddy can go to dinner, and I’ll watch the babies.’ I’m like, oh, the babies? … I’m like, what do you charge? She’s like $5. I’m like, you’re hired!”
All episodes of The Real Housewives of New Jersey are now streaming on Peacock, including an extended and uncensored version of the Off the Rails special.
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