There was no fooling Tamra Judge over who amongst them was a Faithful or a Traitor in The Real Housewives of Orange County.
Tamra, who played as a Faithful in Season 2 of the Emmy Award-winning competition series The Traitors, saw right through Heather Dubrow’s games when the Housewives gathered for their own roundtable meet in the August 29, 2024, episode of RHOC. Heather told Bravo’s The Daily Dish that she was “so mad” to learn she was chosen as the sole Traitor of their fun.
“I did not want to be picked; it felt like a lose-lose to me,” Heather told The Daily Dish. “I’d seen the show, and I’m like, ‘Alright, so I have to mess things up, but not too much that they know it’s me.’”
All about Tamra’s time on The Traitors
For The Traitors, Tamra headed for the Scottish Highlands where she and a handful of Bravolebrities — including Larsa Pippen (The Real Housewives of Miami), Shereé Whitfield (The Real Housewives of Atlanta), Phaedra Parks (The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Married to Medicine), and Kate Chastain (Below Deck) — competed against other reality TV stars for a jackpot prize of up to $250,000.
While staying in the lavish castle, players are tasked with sorting who among them is an innocent "Faithful" or one of three "Traitors" looking to take the prize money for themselves in the whodunnit-style game. Unfortunately, Tamra was “murdered” only five episodes in by order of The Traitors.
A teary-eyed Tamra took the elimination on the chin, as seen the episode now available to watch on Peacock.
“That’s OK, I had the experience,” she told producers at the time. “I got to be in this amazing castle. I got to see a little bit of Scotland, and it’s time to go home and be with my kids and my husband.”
She said that because the competition series was “so cutthroat,” it was “way worse” than anything she’d experienced on Housewives. Her only hope in leaving was that none of her fellow Bravolebrities were Traitors.
But, SPOILER ALERT, Phaedra was one of the three to send her packing. Tamra's "murder" was arguably a result of Phaedra sacrificing her to throw the other players off her own Traitorous scent.
Tamra later said on the Two Ts In A Pod podcast, which she hosts alongside ex-Wife Teddi Mellencamp Arroyave (The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), that she suspected Big Brother’s Dan Gheesling of giving her the axe.
Tamra Judge takes The Traitors back to Orange County
Even though Tamra didn’t quite make it halfway into the Peacock show’s second season, she took what she learned with her back to California, as seen in the recent episode of RHOC. She told The Daily Dish she “absolutely knew” Heather was the Traitor in their game based on her mannerisms and line of questioning.
“After playing the game, you learn to read people’s body language and the things they say, and she was acting a little anxious and weird, and I’m like, ‘She’s a Traitor,’” Tamra said.
This was particularly evident in the Season 18 episode by how Heather tried — and failed — to convince Tamra to look at Jennifer Pedranti and Gina Kirschenheiter as possibly being their RHOC Traitor.
It probably wasn’t as hard for Tamra to solve the mystery, especially after Heather sent Teddi to “murder” Vicki Gunvalson, but instead, Teddi mistakenly killed Tamra. Heather could not correct the mistake lest she revealed herself as the one true Traitor.
She later told The Daily Dish she wouldn’t have killed Tamra because “that would have pissed her off.”
“But honestly, everyone was so bad at the game, it wasn’t difficult,” Heather admitted.
The Traitors’ upcoming third season will include a handful of Bravo’s best, including Chanel Ayan (The Real Housewives of Dubai), Dolores Catania (The Real Housewives of New Jersey), Robyn Dixon (formerly of The Real Housewives of Potomac), Dorinda Medley (formerly of The Real Housewives of New York City), Ciara Miller (Summer House), and Tom Sandoval (Vanderpump Rules).
Meanwhile, watch as all-new episodes of The Real Housewives of Orange County continue, airing Thursdays at 9/8c on Bravo and streaming the next day on Peacock.
