The Real Housewives of Potomac has just finished airing the main part of its 9th season. Now, fans only have the reunion before having to wait for the casting news concerning season 10. Ahead of the reunion, Ashley Darby has quite a bit to say about the season as a whole, where she stands with the ladies, and what she thinks about Karen Huger‘s decision to attend rehab almost a year after her car accident.
Regarding Ashley, she’s been on the show since its inception. While she hasn’t had the most concrete storylines in recent seasons, fans still like her for the fun factor and messiness she brings to the series. Additionally, she’s often one of the cast members who gets the ball rolling in terms of holding the other ladies accountable for their actions.
Recently, Ashley had an interview with Gibson Johns on his YouTube show, Gabbing with Gib. They discussed quite a bit during the 22-minute conversation, starting with how she felt about season 9 as a whole.
She said, “Season 9. First, I’m just really thankful that we even have reached 9 seasons. I don’t think any of us in our wildest dreams when we started this would ever imagine that we’d be here.”
She went on, “I will say the season was interesting because usually around this point, we start to like slow down. This season, absolutely not. Up until the very end, there was something that had my jaw on the floor. I didn’t think it was possible, but boy, howdy.”
Gibson then brings up some of the storylines from the show and says explicitly how much he enjoyed Stacey Rusch having become more comfortable on camera. Ashely agreed and said, “I really appreciated the way that Stacey started to open up because, at the beginning of this season, I was just not sure if she was cut out for this.”
However, she says Stacey was being a bit too much “cookie cutter, QVC” when the season started.
From there, Gibson asked Ashley about the status of her ongoing divorce from Michael Darby, who we no longer see on the show. She responded, “I actually have a big day coming up in the middle of February, so that will really be a defining moment. Hopefully, after that, everything will be said and done.”
They also discussed their agreement, where Ashley isn’t supposed to discuss Michael publicly, and how they came to a compromise given her line of work with RHOP. She also shared that she said something about him in an interview recently that he didn’t appreciate. Sadly, she didn’t share what it was.
The topic of Ashley’s dating life then comes up, and Gibson mentions Josh, who fans saw on this season of RHOP. However, it seems they aren’t as close as they were during the season. She said, “Oh, Josh. Josh is pretty great, I will say. We definitely cooled down a little bit.”
She went on, “So, we met in June. We’re filming the season all through July, and we were hot and heavy, Gibson. It was like a full-on honeymoon phase. Then life starts to creep in a little bit, and naturally, it dissipates, but I will give credit to Josh that he is very intentional, and he makes every effort and commitment to still show me that he wants to be together, so we’ll see where that goes.”
Gibson then mentioned Wendy Osefo‘s comments about Josh and how she first compared him to Jack Harlow and questioned if he was successful enough for Ashley. More recently, she called him a “rented boyfriend” and much more. She responded, “It was a little surprising to me that Wendy said those comments in the first place that she said in her confessional because that’s not the energy that Wendy was saying to me to my face.”
Ashley continued, “For someone who I consider to be my friend, I would really think if you really thought like, ‘oh, this guy isn’t of the caliber or whatever ever,’ then maybe you would say that. But to save that for the confessional chair, it showed me that Wendy is two-faced. I didn’t appreciate that at all.
The conversation progressed, and Gibson asked Ashley if she believed Stacey when she said Karen spoke badly of Wendy, which is something that came up at the end of the season. According to Ashley, “Absolutely, there’s no doubt that Karen got a little loose-lipped with Stacey and just spilled all the beans because I’ve seen Karen in that form, so I know it happened.”
She then said, “There had been some talk, like in previous seasons of Karen, just like saying little things about Wendy but nothing to the degree of what Stacey says that Karen said.”
They also discussed Mia Thornton and what many would call her fractured relationship with the truth. In part, Ashley says that Mia has gone through things that she and some of the other ladies have experienced. However, she also said, “It feels like we’re all being gaslit all the time, and I can only do that for but so much, and I have a very big heart. Especially for Mia because of what I know about her and her past, and even I have to throw in the towel.”
They later got to the reunion, and how it was said that someone brought a last-minute receipt that changed everything for someone on the show. Thanks to recent reports, many believe that the receipt comes from Eddie Osefo and involves Stacey and TJ.
Ashley responded by saying, “No one could have anticipated what came out at the very last hour of the reunion.” She then emphasized, “The very last hour. You know, we have long days, and collectively, in the whole studio, there was a giant gasp. Collective gasp.”
Karen then came up in the conversation in regards to her being absent from the reunion. According to Ashley, “It’s a frustrating thing. It’s very frustrating cause for the whole time that we filmed, we’re all thinking Karen knows what’s going on. She knows what she’s doing. She keeps using this word, I think, ‘vindicated.'”
She continued, “For the ending to be so climatic and anticlimactic at the same time, it was like, what the hell?” Gibson then brought up how people were happy she was getting help but many were also questioning her decision to wait.
Ashely agreed and said, “We have all wanted Karen to get help for a very long time. So, that is a good thing. We’re all very happy about that and there’s like a sigh of relief that she is doing that, but at the same time, this happened almost a year ago. So, now is the time? There was a lot of time in that space where she could have gotten some help.”
Moving forward, Ashley says she hopes Karen will be able to take accountability for her actions and not have the accident define her as a person or RHOP as a whole.
Part 1 of the RHOP season 9 reunion airs on February 16th.
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