Melissa Gorga's Stripper Past Exposed On 'Real Housewives Of New Jersey'
The filming of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" went crazy this week when Bravo ambushed one of the cast members by arranging for the owner of a strip club where she used to work to show up on camera.
"The ladies were taping a fashion show at Posche," an insider tells me. "Teresa [Giudice] didn't want to go because she's completely over the fake Bravo set-ups; however, no one knew what was about to happen. Melissa [Gorga] was nervous that ex-Housewife Danielle Staub was going to show up, but it turned out the surprise guest would be much more damaging.”
These ladies should know by now that if you have a skeleton in your closet and you go on a reality show, sooner or later it's going to come out.
"Bravo's surprise at the fashion show was for Melissa: her ex-boss at Lookers, the strip club she used to work at. No one knew him, no one knew he was coming -- although, of course Bravo had a microphone on him -- and Melissa ran away from him and refused to film with him," a witness at the taping tells me. "The producers made Teresa talk to him to 'hear him out,' so his accusations would be aired on camera, but Teresa stopped him mid-story and told him to not talk about her family and left."
But a Bravo spokesperson strictly denies that producers had any involvement with orchestrating the encounter: "Bravo was not involved in any set up. Ours cameras document the lives of these ladies."
Giudice, who then attempted to comfort Gorga, was shrugged off as a distraught Gorga went straight to Caroline Manzo and Jacqueline Laurita for shoulders to lean on.
"Melissa doesn't want her new besties, Caroline and Jacqueline, to know about her past (including who paid for her fake boobs), so she came back to the table and told everyone that Teresa had set her up," a Bravo insider tells me. "Teresa had nothing to do with it, but Jac and Caroline were more than ready to go with it because it makes Teresa look bad. And Bravo will never admit they set it up like they set up Danielle, whose past was also 'accidentally' discovered."
Laurita immediately took to Twitter that night, bashing Giudice, who responded to her with a phone call rather than fighting in such a public way. But the drama didn't stop with Gorga's questionable past.
“Jacqueline’s parting shot after she hung up the phone was to text Teresa a photo of [her husband] Joe and [a] mystery lady at dinner and said she was going to leak it to the press to hurt Teresa,” an insider tells me.
And guess what? The picture turned up yesterday!
"Teresa has all these texts. Isn't it sad and sickening what some people will do?" a friend of Giudice's asks me. "What Jacqueline doesn't know is that Teresa's laughing about it privately, because she knew about it already. Joe had told Teresa he ran into the girl, a family friend, the night when he went out for drinks with his buddies. The girl has a boyfriend, and I'm pretty sure Joe wouldn't carry on a big affair at TGI Fridays in Clifton."
Although I've got to say, TGIF wings are pretty yummy.
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First Posted: 09/30/11 12:44 PM ET Updated: 11/30/11 05:12 AM ET