Jacqueline Laurita wants to speak for herself. The Real Housewives of New Jersey alum took to Twitter to clarify reports about why she isn’t returning to the Bravo reality series.
“I was asked by an executive producer what it would take for me to come back to #RHONJ…I said full time and a whole new cast. Lol! (Dolores [Catania] can stay.) I don’t like the direction it’s going in anymore,” Laurita, 47, tweeted on Tuesday, March 27. “I’m a very positive person & I’m very happy with my life. I love my family & I love my friends. I want to do positive things. I love sharing my journey & knowledge I’ve gained along the way. I love helping people and that’s what I am going to continue to do.”
Love how the media gets everything twisted🙄.I was asked by an executive producer what it would take for me to come back to #RHONJ…I said full time and a whole new cast. Lol! (Dolores can stay.) I don’t like the direction it’s going in anymore.
— Jacqueline Laurita (@JacLaurita) March 27, 2018
I’m a very positive person & I’m very happy with my life. I love my family & I love my friends. I want to do positive things. I love sharing my journey & knowledge I’ve gained along the way. I love helping people and that’s what I am going to continue to do.🤗❤️@ChrisandJacGB
— Jacqueline Laurita (@JacLaurita) March 27, 2018
Multiple sources told Us Weekly exclusively in January that producers had considered approaching Laurita and Caroline Manzo about coming back on the show. But two months later, Us confirmed that neither would return.
Laurita was one of the original Housewives when RHONJ premiered in May 2009. She was demoted to a friend of the Housewives in season 6 in 2014, only to return as a full-time cast member two years later. In April 2017, Laurita revealed that she had officially left the show, telling Entertainment Tonight that she no longer had “an authentic connection” with fellow OG Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga. Meanwhile, Manzo, 56, was a main Housewife for the first five seasons before starring in her own spinoff, Manzo’d With Children.
Manzo opened up to Us exclusively in January about the prospect of one day returning to RHONJ. “It would be a major major decision that I would have to really think very long and very hard on,” she said. “It’s not something that I would embrace wholeheartedly and say, ‘Let’s do this!’ It’s something that I would consider very, very heavily and for a long time.”
Giudice, Gorga, Catania and Margaret Josephs will return for season 9. Danielle Staub will also be back, but a source previously told Us that the extent of her role is still up in the air.
