Friends through thick and thin. Real Housewives of New Jersey star Dolores Catania gave an update on how costar Teresa Giudice is coping with the news of her husband Joe Giudice‘s possible deportation in an exclusive interview with Us Weekly.
“Teresa is a machine. I will always say it. Teresa never sits down and lets everything that’s going on take over. She just takes control and gets through it and piles through every day. She kind of detaches herself from what’s going on,” the Bravo personality, 47, told Us at the Ladies Night Out event presented by Formaggio cheese. “It’s sad. I just really feel for her. There’s nothing else [Teresa] can do. She has no control over [the] things that are going on in her life right now. It’s scary. I’ve known Teresa since we’re 16 years old and I know she handles things by detaching herself from the situation.”
Joe, 48, is serving a 41-month prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2014 to 41 counts of fraud — including bankruptcy, mail and wire fraud. He also confessed to failing to file a tax return. (Teresa served 11 months in prison in 2015 for similar charges.) While Joe has lived in the United States since age 1, he never became a legal citizen. On October 10, a judge found the former reality star “deportable and ineligible for any kind of relief,” ordering him to leave the United States upon his scheduled release date of March 14, 2019. The family plans to appeal the decision.
Adding to an already complicated situation, Catania told Us that the 46-year-old Standing Strong author’s father, Giacinto Gorga, has been fighting a serious illness. “Her dad’s not well … he’s in the hospital. I check on [Teresa] all the time. I keep in contact with her and I check on her dad. I’m always checking on him. I ask [Teresa] if she needs anything for the kids, for her dad.” (The cooking entrepreneur shared an Instagram Story pic of herself from inside Giacinto’s hospital room on October 26.)
Things between Teresa and her sister-in-law, Melissa Gorga, are a little less friendly, however. “Melissa and Teresa I feel are in a place that they will be forever. I don’t think it will ever be any better or any worse. They’re as good as it’s gonna get,” Catania told Us. “I think they’re at different places in life, they’re busy with their own families and their own businesses. But there’s always been a difference between them, and because of that, that’s the way it will stay.”
Through their ups and downs, Catania made it clear that she will always have The New York Time’s best-selling author’s back. “A lot of what goes on, and I can tell you this from the bottom of my heart, Jersey is who they are on camera, is who they are off camera. Anything I would do in real life, I do on camera. Anything I wouldn’t do in real life, I won’t do on camera.”
Season 9 of The Real Housewives of New Jersey premieres on Bravo on Wednesday, November 7, at 9 p.m. ET.
