Heather Gay Admits ‘RHOSLC’ Black Eye Storyline ‘Didn’t Play out Well’
Heather Gay’s black eye was all many Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fans cared about in season 3 of the Bravo series. Well, that and the outcome of Jen Shah’s sentencing.
Regardless, the mystery behind the black eye hooked some fans while annoying others. Now, we finally have clarity on how Heather got the black eye in the first place. Thanks to a recent interview, we also have clarity on what went on in Heather’s mind when she said she “didn’t want to talk about the black eye” after her drunken night in San Diego. It has to do with showrunners wanting to create engaging reality TV.
Heather’s black eye was a mystery until the ‘RHOSLC’ reunion
Heather woke up with a black eye during their trip to San Diego. She immediately called Meredith Marks and Jen Shah to her room to try and piece together what happened but to no avail. Later, she told her co-stars she knew how she got the black eye but didn’t want to talk about it.
As Heather explained to Andy Cohen during the RHOSLC reunion, she lied about knowing what happened because she didn’t want her castmates to “rewrite the narrative.” She added: “If I said I didn’t know, they could say anything they wanted.”
Heather clarified to Interview Magazine: “I got drunk and woke up with a black eye. … The truth is, I woke up on reality television with a giant massive black eye. Not face down in a cactus or anywhere that it could be explainable.”
When she woke up, she “tried to cover it up and act like we could figure it out eventually.” As she admitted during the reunion, Heather thinks if she had gone to bed earlier that night, she could have avoided the issue altogether.
Heather Gay calls her black eye an ‘anomaly’ that ‘didn’t play out well on TV’
In that same interview, Heather refers to her black eye as “one of those Housewives anomalies that did not play out well on television.” She also said a lot was happening behind the scenes that she couldn’t make sense of for fans without breaking the fourth wall.
Heather added: … “Especially when it happened a year ago and we had to keep mum about it for this long. … But I don’t know how to make sense of it for the viewer without ruining the magic of reality television. We don’t control the edit and we can’t really make sense of everything.”
‘RHOSLC’ star thought there was footage of her getting the black eye
Despite having a camera crew around them, it turns out they don’t capture the real housewives’ every move when they’re filming the Bravo series. However, Heather was under the impression cameras did catch her getting the black eye.
“I woke up with a black eye and I couldn’t explain it, but I was told there was footage that could,” she told Interview. “So I played coy because I didn’t know what was going to be presented to me.”
Instead of “condemning someone” or saying they were innocent at the chance there was footage proving otherwise, Heather played coy. “… I hoped that it would resolve itself,” she concluded. “And hopefully it will.”
