Bronwyn Newport looked back on the moment she realized Lisa Barlow knew the family of her daughter Gwen’s late father, who died when Gwen was just two years old, after last week’s episode of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
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After opening up about Gwen’s desire to meet her dad’s family, who Bronwyn, 39, claims have not shown interest in meeting her, Bronwyn referred to Lisa’s unexpected ties to the man’s family as a “nightmare” as she looked back on where things took a turn between them. Plus, Lisa spoke of her interaction with the family.
“On the way home from Milwaukee, Lisa and I were talking at the airport, and she said, ‘You looked so much like Gwen when you made that face.’ And I said, ‘Nobody would ever think that if they knew what Gwen’s dad looks like. She’s a twin of him,’” Bronwyn recalled on the October 30 episode of the RHOSLC: After Show. “I have one photo of him from his obituary, and I showed Lisa, and it’s not something I ever do. I don’t talk about him in any way. And she just totally went white.”
Although Lisa had known Bronwyn for years and had an idea of what Gwen’s dad was like, she never asked for his name. So, when Bronwyn showed her his photo, Lisa never expected to know who he was.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, I know him,’ and then I started naming his siblings and his parents’ names,” she recalled, leaving Bronwyn in shock.
“I didn’t know that was a nightmare for me until she said it, and then I lost all feeling in my body,” Bronwyn admitted. “It’s been long enough now that I want to make a joke now and cover it, but it was very awkward and uncomfortable for me.”
Because Gwen has never met anybody from her father’s side of the family and they’ve never sought out a relationship with her, Bronwyn goes back and forth about whether her daughter meeting them would be a good thing.
“I’m very protective of Gwen, and anybody who is not interested in her can jump up my a** and die, to put it bluntly. [But] I have days where I think maybe I should’ve done more to foster it. Maybe I should’ve made it easier for them or maybe I should have continued to try on her behalf,” she reasoned. “As a parent, you always want what’s best for your kids, even if it’s not what’s best for you.”
Amid her emotional turmoil and the potential of Lisa building a bridge between Gwen and her grandparents, Bronwyn went to her husband, Todd Bradley.
“Todd was against this immediately. He wanted it shut down right away,” she stated.
Continuing on about her ties to Gwen’s dad’s family, Lisa recalled the sorrow felt by the man’s mom following his death.
“Every time I would run into his mom, I would just have an overwhelming feeling of, like, prayer for her and sadness that she lost her son. So for me, it was like, this is unreal. But I wouldn’t say anything to them because I’m like, ‘This is such a touchy situation,’” she explained.
While Lisa kept from bringing up the man’s death, she said she was ultimately met with a text from Bronwyn and Gwen.
“They’re like, ‘Can you please talk to his parents and let them know Gwen would be open to meeting them?'” Lisa revealed.
But according to Bronwyn, it didn’t go down quite as Lisa remembered.
“Lisa and I feel differently about how that happened, Lisa told me she knew them and Lisa kept telling me how wonderful they were and that she was convinced that they would’ve wanted to have met Gwen. And I is, was, and will always be convinced that they are not interested in meeting Gwen. So I don’t know that I gave her permission to offer, but I made it very clear that she could if the moment was right,” Bronwyn clarified.
Because Lisa wanted to help get Gwen connected to her relatives, she decided to meet with her grandmother.
“I got pulled over by a policeman and I’m like, ‘It’s fate. I’m not supposed to go.’ And then he didn’t give me a ticket. And then I was like ‘Okay, maybe I’m meant to go,'” she shared. “And then I had a long conversation with Gwen’s grandmother. And she’s like, ‘We’re open to meeting her. We’re excited. Show me pictures.’ They’re not really into social media so they didn’t even know where they could find either one of them. She really didn’t know anything. And she’s like, ‘The last we were told, Bronwyn had a miscarriage and there was no child.’”
According to Lisa, the wife of Gwen’s late father then reached out to Bronwyn, saying, “We never got to meet Gwen.”
“It was like really upsetting for them. I think [it was] overwhelming for Bronwyn and Gwen,” she suspected. “So I, like, treaded really lightly. I feel like Bronwyn, she had an experience as a 19-year-old that I probably would have similar thought processes to, like, what was going on, how people felt about me. I don’t know if those are accurate, but those are her real feelings. And I think it opened up Pandora’s box of emotions.”
Although Bronwyn came on the show as a friend of Lisa, things soured between them amid Lisa’s interaction with Gwen’s dad’s family.
“In the moments that I miss my friendship with Lisa, I miss that part of Lisa that always believes everything’s gonna be fine,” Bronwyn noted. “I think she went into meeting them being like, ‘They’re gonna love Gwen and there’s just this misunderstanding with Bronwyn.’ And I like that Lisa feels that way. When she loves somebody, she really loves them. And she loves this couple. I would love to know what she loves about them cuz I don’t.”
“It went left very quickly once that communication started, and then it went really left for Lisa and I. I think she couldn’t see fairly, the different points of view,” she added.
Also on the RHOSLC: After Show, Whitney Rose, 38, threw in her two cents, accusing her castmate of making Bronwyn’s personal heartache about herself.
“If Lisa didn’t even know that was Gwen’s biological family, then she should probably not make it about herself,” she stated.
