Hi, I'm Megan Zagora. And I'm Erik J. Mack. And this is the Daily Dish, Bravo's official podcast.
In this week's episode of the Real Housewives of Potomac, season five ended in celebratory and explosive fashion with Juan proposing to Robin and Michael Darby yelling at. Well, everyone, as you guys know, I had the pleasure of interviewing the entire cast of RHOP for Bravo TV.com's exclusive season five after show. In the latest installment, the Cascade, a very specific play by play of Michael and Chris Bassett's heated confrontation, which led to Michael yelling at production and Ashley yelling at Michael. Giselle said Michael's behavior was disrespectful to Ashley.
And executive producer Kamar Basaraj explained exactly why he chose to show the footage of Michael breaking the fourth wall. Also, in our Bravo Insider clip, which is available [email protected] K, Karen explained the details of why she arrived so late, saying she doesn't want the fact that she was target for the party to take away from Robin's big night to see the cats break down. Karen's real reason for arriving late. Did she not want to be there or she's trying to make a statement?
Head to bravo tv.com or check out the link in our description. Well, while the argument between. When Candace continues on, there's all sorts of commotion going on at the bar. You didn't even control your watch.
It's out of control. You didn't even control. It's not good for us. Michael, you should get the.
Out of my face. Shut the. Listen to what I'm saying. Look, I could barely hear what's going on because Candace was yelling at me so loud.
I'm literally mid yell, okay, I'm mid emotion here. And I just. I hear this ruckus to the back left of me, and I was like, dang, why were your guests. That started up.
I looked up and I could see producers, like, looking past us. Like, they're like, you know, I got a little walkie, whatever. And I looked around and I'm like, oh, okay, great. So I had no idea what was going on, what was going on with another fight, if you will, or fuss.
And I wanted nothing to do with it. I mean, you know, one fight, you know, shame on us, too. Shame on me for standing around being involved with it. And I craved my neck.
And I saw my husband's head just doing this, and I was like, gotta get up. My husband doesn't get upset. He doesn't get angry. He's not Agitated easily.
Unless he's talking to me because he don't his wife. But just outside of me, he doesn't get perturbed easily. When I saw his face, like I was. I knew I was.
So I got upset. I didn't know what happened, but I was upset for him because it's like, who. Who is messing with my man? And I get to him and I.
Then I realized what was going on. And it's just. And then it's like, okay, Michael Darby. Like, you literally just can't.
You can't get right. You just can't get right. When I heard like commotion and I heard something, Michael, when I said firefight response kicked in. It was like.
I mean, I wanted to jump across that booth and get involved in whatever was going on. And at that time, I didn't care who it was. I didn't care if Michael was getting into a fight with Juan. I didn't care if he was fighting.
He couldn't fight Chris Samuels. I would have put myself in there. Valleywood courage. I mean, it comes about every now and again.
But it was very strong right then because you know, now that Michael is more than my husband. He's also the father of my son. I'm super protective of him now. I guess he saw me getting upset with Karen and he gets upset that I'm upset enough to go over to my husband and show his ass.
You need to control your wife. The only thing controlling Candace is Jesus. Okay? My husband will control me.
And I'm sorry for any man. If another man comes to you and says, you need to do this for your wife. Like what those. Those are.
That's. I don't call them fighting words, but that's a no, no. You're coming up to another man to say to another man, patrol your wife. Why are they doing that in your house?
Keep that in your house. And nothing is controlled over here. Well, you and Ashley also then start to kind of get into it. So tell me, has no self control.
What do you have? You have no self control, do you? Without even knowing what's going on. She wants to charge.
She charged at me. Yeah. And it's like, what? Do you even know what went down?
I actually have no recollection of that. I have no recollection of talking to Candace after the Chris and Michael incident. I don't know if it was adrenaline or what, but I have no recollection of saying anything else to her. This.
This whole scene, just paint. It's a metaphor for their lives together. This is why you are in this particular in now with this man who continues to disrespect you and embarrass the dog crap out of you publicly because you blindly follow his lead over a cliff. Quite frankly, I don't think Monique is justified in getting physical with Candace, just like I don't think that Chris is justified in putting his hands on my husband.
And with all of the aggression and the animosity that Candace and Chris feel toward Monique, they're actually doing the exact same thing that she did, and yet they want to cry wolf about the incident. Again, Monique was wrong, but so was Chris. And two wrongs don't make a right. Chris Bassett wanted no parts of any trouble.
Like, he was over in the corner. He was mind his business. For Michael to just, like, basically roll up on him, and he was, like, egging him on for an altercation. Chris Bassett emailed me.
I mean, texted me, called me. I talked to Candace and Christie on the phone after the party. He was so apologetic for. For that scene, for that.
For that happening at that party. He felt so bad. But, of course, Michael, we don't hear anything from him. No apology from him.
And then for Michael to cuss out the entire production team was like, dude, you can cross the line. You need to go and, like, don't come back. I'm so disrespectful. I mean, I get it.
He had a rough season four. He probably has held on to that animosity. But, like, dude, you did what you did. Like, you know, it's the only person to be mad at yourself.
So I don't know. But clearly, he's a loose cannon. Yeah, I think it's disrespectful to Ashley. I mean, you know, Ashley, I'm sure, doesn't go to his place of business and act a fool.
Stop it right now. Stop it now. For me, the biggest why I felt like it was important to leave it in. I just know our ladies, they're gonna talk about it.
They are gonna talk about it whether it's at the reunion, whether it's on Twitter, whether it's in a blog, and there are other people there who witnessed it. I never wanted to feel like I'm hiding anything from the viewers. I feel bad for her. I feel bad for her because she is.
She's literally made into a fool every year on the show because of him. We see you talk to your therapist, Esther. It's like I'm in a circle of women who I still feel like I'm trying to Prove to them who I am to the point where I feel like I'm always independent. I think because I am the middle child.
Maybe I have a little middle child syndrome, as they like to call it. But I always had to fight for the attention. I always had to fight to, you know, be seen or get my point across or I just always felt like I had to prove that, you know, I'm worth it, I'm here. It might not be exciting because I didn't go through it first or last, but I'm going through it, you know?
So a lot of how I am with people is because of whatever I feel like I didn't get when I was growing up or how I felt I wasn't really paying attention to as much as I would have liked from, you know, my family. Where's the other times, if I come from, though? I mean, just being young, just kind of being bleak. I went from one neighborhood where predominantly white me, my sister and another child, we were the only black kids at the entire school.
And I remember being out on the playground one day, and one of the girl. I hate talking about this. At that point in time, I didn't even know what black was. I was just a person.
And she's like, well, we like you. We want to play with you, but we can't because you're black. And I'm like, wait, what? What's that mean?
And she's like, well, yeah, look at your hair. And I just felt, like, out of place. So then I think my parents started recognizing that, and they're like, okay, we're gonna buy a house. We're gonna go to a nice neighborhood.
It's more predominantly black. And I started going to black school. So I'm excited. I'm the new kid once again.
And then it was just like, I got iced out because of, she's smart. Oh, she talks proper. Oh, you act like a white girl. And it was just like, wow, I can't win for losing.
It was like I couldn't even find my place in any environment that I was in, so. And I think a lot of that treatment also stems to how I am as an adult, a person who wants to show people that, you know, I just want to. I just want people to know that I'm worth it, and I love who I am, and I don't apologize for it. And that's why I'm so adamant with my daughter, to make sure that she loves herself the way I love myself and screw anybody who doesn't like it.
So I Found myself more so gravitating to. I'm an animal lover. I had every animal you can think of. And I found myself gravitating more to my pets because they didn't judge me.
They were happy when I came home. You know, they were happy to cuddle with me. It didn't matter. So I became person who trusted people very less and less.
And I think that because of that history, it definitely stems into my adult life. Because when I do feel like I found a friend and I trust that person, and then I'm betrayed by that person, it's like I'm feeling that same childhood pain all over again. And to some extent, I think that I attract people who are damaged because I'm always wanting to rescue somebody who I see maybe the outcast. Which is why when I asked Candace in Newburgh, we had that whole questioning game that we did, and I said, what was it like growing up in school for you?
And when she said she was the only brown girl, I immediately realized why our friendship was how it is. And I immediately realized what attracted me to her. It was the fact that we're two people who are hurting. You know, we did was keep hurting each other.
So it's just a bad cycle, you know, and just trying to break that cycle through therapy has helped me to recognize it, and then I can move forward. So when I say this is more than just a show. This is real life, I really wanted to get down to the bottom of what. What's going on to make me always feel like I'm guarded or needing to defend myself.
The wig shift party. Okay, there's some discrepancy in the text messages and the timing of the whole thing. Everybody connected the dots and realized that you invited Monique and Candace to come early at the same time, and because of that, you decide to exit. No, that's not true.
You know what? I probably was at that at Robin's party all of five hot seconds in my mind before the whole group just. You know, I call it gang banging. They like to come together and attack me in a group.
What? A reception attacked by the Banshee. I was. I was like, you know what?
But y'. All. Y' all did disappoint me. I knew it had to be something, you know, four things.
What did they learn? There was no discrepancy. I called Candice. I believe, if I get it correctly, I believe I called Candice to make sure what time she was arriving.
I'm not a big texter. Karen called me specifically to tell me that she didn't want me to have to take off my wig in front of the group to put on one of her wigs because I expressed to Karen several times how I felt triggered by when Monique was pulled trying to pull my wig off, and my wig was glued down to my edges. So Karen knew this because we had talked about it ad nauseam. We talked about it forever.
And so she called to say, hey, I want you to come early. I want you to come at 5:30. She said on the phone. She said, 5:30.
Come. Come early. So you can take. Have your wig taken off in private, and we can have Stephen put your wig on before anyone else gets there.
I said, okay, great. So I am a baby Robin. So I'm late number two, and I'm always late. So I texted her, I want to get it wrong receipt.
I don't have a whole lot of correspondence with Karen, so it's not gonna be hard to go back that far. The receipts are longer than CVS, honey. I said, this is on December 7th, I guess the day of the day before. And I said, tell me what time you want me to come again.
She says, 6:30, please. Then she says, what's your ETA? I say 640 because I'm always late. But 6:30 was not the time she originally told me.
She originally told me 5:30. It showed that they were going to be there at the same time. It just so happened that Candace was running late per usual. But no, she was having them get there at the same time.
So when I get there and I'm talking to Ashley, and Ashley's telling me that Monique had just come and that it seemed like Karen, or I guess Monique had told Ashley that Karen seemed to be rushing Monique out of the party. Monique felt like she was being rushed out. That was because Karen, in her whatever, stupor, had jacked up these times and knew that I was on the way. I mean, did you guys not see me breaking sweat because I had to rush my friend out the door?
Yeah, exactly. Okay. The timing was, you know, was all was was Karen's timing. You know, it was her event.
But, you know, sometimes people don't show up exactly on time. So there was not a lot of, you know, sort of cushion in the various arrival times. Monique did arrive early, as she was supposed to, but late. In terms of the time Karen wanted her to arrive, Monique was literally there for, I would say, about under 10 minutes.
And then Karen tried to rush her out, and then Karen rushed her out. She went away, and then Candace Arrived around, I would say, 15 minutes later. For the record, I was invited, and I did not want to be there when the other ladies came, nor did Karen want there to be any conflict. So we were in agreement with that.
And she maybe did or did not want us to run into each other. I have no idea. In my mind, I feel like Karen got cold feet and realized what I thought I was gonna do. Yeah, I shouldn't really do that.
And that's why she changed the time with Candace. But originally. Oh, absolutely. She was trying to get them together at the same time, no question.
But she said she wanted to come at 5:15, and she was running late, and I told her to come at 6:30. You know, I had her back. There was a reason for me doing that. To ensure that there was no butting of heads because everyone's schedule shifted that day.
So that's why I said come at 6:30 and not 5:30, because I wanted to make sure that she and Monique and I was respecting there was just not to be in the same room. So I accomplished my past. There's no fishiness there. Both Monique and both and Candace relate from the time that Karen initially wanted them to arrive.
So that's what really happened in terms of the orders of event. They both were supposed to come at different times, but they both were late from the original time they were supposed to attend. Listen, I'm not confused about the texting messages. I'm on board.
I got this under control. It's a wrap. So whatever someone's trying to do to make these girls meet and betray their faith and trust in me was gonna happen on my watch. So I'm not confused about any of that.
Let's talk about something happy. Juan proposing to Robin. Yay. And I'm gonna try this for the second time.
Okay. The room exploded. Like, people went bonkers. Oh, my goodness.
So the only people who really knew were Giselle and I. We were the only in Juan, obviously. And so people started to get a little suspicious when we gathered. You could sort of like, hear a little whispering, like, what's gonna happen?
Kind of thing. So people started speculating. And then when it actually happened, there was like, an eruption. Like, literally my eardrums, like, a little.
Because there was an eruption of excitement that happened. And I don't know if they showed this, but, like, Wendy and Candace kept looking at me like, is this happening? Is this happening? What's happening?
I hoped that they would eventually find their way to that place. But no, I was not. Giselle did a Very good job of keeping the secret very secret. And, no, I did not know that that's what we were coming for.
Robin. I mean, this was such a huge moment. Did you see it coming at all? I didn't.
I did not. I was like. I mean, when I was like, I had the microphone, and he's, like, about to grab it, I'm like, what the hell is he doing for him to, like, really, like, stand up and want to talk to people? I was like, what the hell is happening?
I was like, is he gonna, like, ask people to come to his basketball games or something? Like, support his team? Like, so. Yeah, it was.
It was awesome. It was sweet. And, like, you know, Juan has a way of expressing his feelings for me, and I really appreciate that he did it the way he did it. For him to propose at a.
You know, in front of a whole group of people on television, I was just like. I was shocked by that. When did you lose your damn mind? I'm like, girl, first of all, we worked a long time on this.
Second of all, get out of the camera shot. Okay, you in the camera shot. Move. So I just wanted Juan to say everything he wants to say uninterrupted by these crazy women who are losing their minds.
Let me tell you something. It's that damn vodka. Oh, my God. Wendy texted me her video, and all I hear is, yes, yes, yes.
Oh, Wendy had to put this on mute. What the hell? I think Wendy just loves love, too. I think she likes the idea of.
I mean, it's really hard not to root for Robin and Juan. You know, I know I've had my opinion about them in the past, and what I was saying back then was how they weren't on the same page, and they both weren't committed to a relationship. All of that happened, and now here they are, they're about to embark on this journey again, and they both seem to be in it for the right reasons, and they finally seem to be on the same page. But it just goes to show that everybody loves love, and everybody loves a wonderful love story.
So, you know, whether you've known Robin for six months or forever, like, everybody was all in and so happy. You just. You just revel in the happiness of anybody. But again, especially as we talk about, you know, in 2020, the attack on the black family, and the way that the black family is made to suffer and be seen as subordinate or broken in so many ways, and to see this black family sort of elevate to this new echelon of happiness and Greatness.
And to see these black boys who will get to see their mother and father mend their relationship, it's a very unique story. So it's just a really nice, like, oh, my God. I'm not getting emotional about it, but it was just a really nice, like, you know, just like people coming together who really love each other, even though there's been so many obstacles trying to take them apart. It was beautiful.
Yeah. Before you guys get to the holiday party, you mentioned that Juan is preparing to propose to Robin. And Michael seems very, very convinced that it's not going to happen. Oh, Lord.
Juan is planning to propose. Get out of here. It's not possible. If someone's pulling your leg, does that man will not do that.
I am completely shocked by Michael saying these things about Juan because he's never given any indication of that to me before. That he knows something about Juan. I told Ashley in Portugal, just because Karen kept saying crazy things. When I saw Giselle's ass on Instagram, I'm like, juan is joining her at the jewelry store, and I just felt like, I don't know what Karen's gonna do.
I see some back up with regards to the ladies in case Nathan goes left one. Of course, that would be Ashley. And she then told Michael, and Michael wasn't, like, super happy, from what I understand. Michael was like, huh, what?
That ain't gonna happen. He even questioned me about it once he got there. Juan has been reluctant, previously committed. We all know.
Okay, I have to go check on Juan Dixon. Is it happening? Maybe it wasn't. I just didn't get it.
I just felt like it was very unsupportive. And, you know, I know he's got, like, some special feelings when it comes to Juan, but I thought he'd put those feelings to the side in order to be happy for Robin. Juan, like, come on. This is like a long.
This is like years in the making here, sir. Oh, my gosh. I felt like I was monkey in the middle because, you know, I love my husband. I support my husband always.
But this is one area where we had a very different opinion. To me, I felt like Juan had some time to reevaluate his priorities, and he realized that at the end of the day, when everything came down to it, Robin was the one who'd been buying him and stuck by him, and this is where he wants to spend the rest of his life. So I, you know, being a romantic that I am, I want this fairy tale to happen. But upon asking him later what he meant he says that he meant that Juan has been not married to Robin for so long and everything has been fine.
They've been living together. Everything has been functioning normally. Why would one feel the pressure to get married now? He said, a man is not going to necessarily think he has to do that unless someone is telling him he has to do that.
Oh, I just didn't know I would be happy and be present in the moment. Smile and laugh and cry tears of joy and hear Michael saying, well, I don't know. You know, it's like, what do I do? Very weird.
Yeah. You know what? Like, maybe Michael felt like, wait a minute, Juan didn't tell me this, so it can't be true. Like, maybe he thought he should have known about this before.
Like, before. I don't know. And if anything, he's just being a little more salacious. It obviously works because, God, gazelle, rob up.
I'm sure it's going to get robbed and routed. What was your reaction when you found out that the charges had been dropped by the court? I was very relieved. I was very excited.
Thank God the charges were dropped. I wasn't surprised just because there wasn't a whole lot of physical damage that was done. And then I know that Monique filing that counter suit was a strategic move. Like, I know.
I think it's like, stuff like that happens. Like, that's in order to get them, like, 30 cases out. I believe I was in Mexico. Yeah.
I was in Cozumel on a family vacation. And that's when one of my Bravo besties, Portia, joined me out there with her family and her daughter. And it was just really nice. And it's so crazy because Portia had been in an incident as well some years back.
So for me to get that news and I sit next to her, it was just like, wow. And she's been so supportive and just encouraging me, and it's been great to have that bond, but I was just very relieved because it was just something that was already so heavy and then to know what the possible outcome could be and for things to keep getting dragged out further and further. I just wanted it to be done. I was disappointed for Candace because I know that that did not offer her the closure that she needed, but it also at least was like, okay, like, I can move on from this.
Yeah. I feel like from a judge's perspective, you know, these are two women that are on reality television. I'm sure their view of reality television is, you know, this is what you sign up for, getting smash in the Face. I mean, I don't know.
You know, depends on who the judge is. So I felt. I wasn't surprised. But, yeah, like Robin said, I felt really horrible for Candace.
I felt like, you know, she does need to see some sort of win out of this in some capacity. The first thing that came to mind was the musical stylings of Monique Samuels. And it's like, just when you think that it can't get any more comical and disgusting, that happens. By no means do we want to see Monique do jail time, but, you know, it would have been nice for her to have some sort of repercussion or some sort of something that would.
Even if it was like, okay, you have to make a public statement, apologizing or something. You know what I mean? Like, something. Something like, at least acknowledge that this took place and that something needs to happen.
So I think the only resolution, and really the most important resolution of them all is the one that I've had internally is that I have come to a place of kind of a little bit of peace with everything and then especially kind of seeing everything play out and watching the court of public opinion shift in line with the truth, the actual and real truth has been very cathartic and very, very. I don't know what this is, but this word, it's been very hot for me. So that's that. For me, that's the only resolution in all of this that really matters.
No story about me. Good start. And distract, you know, take away from her celebration, but we'll see how that goes. No, no, she wasn't gonna calm.
She didn't feel like it. It was all this drama with her. It's like, girl, you wanna come, don't come. And remember, watching Bravo isn't a guilty pleasure.
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