‘RHOP’: Charrisse Jackson Jordan Says She Did the Show Out of Retaliation to Her Then-Husband
Housewives fans are used to divorce. It appears once a person is cast in a Bravo franchise, divorce is imminent. That proved to be the case for The Real Housewives of Potomac star Charrisse Jackson Jordan. In fact, she says that as soon as she revealed her desire to potentially join the show, he threatened to divorce her. She did the show out of retaliation, ultimately ending their marriage.
She initially didn’t want to be part of the show because of her personal issues
Jackson Jordan was approached by a casting director. She helped to cast the show, using her own social circle she knew through her philanthropy and work with the NBA Wives Association to do so. The casting director wanted her to be part of the show, but it was something she was hesitant to do.
“I had no desire to be on the show, I just wanted to help cast it,” she told former RHOA producer Carlos King on his Reality With the King podcast. At the time, she was going through personal turmoil, having lost three of her siblings. Her marriage to Eddie Jordan was also at a standstill. While she lived full-time in Potomac, he was a basketball coach in New Jersey and spent most of his time there, even in the off-season.
She used casting the show as a distraction. But once she told Eddie about it, and he gave her a shocking response, she made a different decision.
Charisse Jackson Jordan says her husband gave her an ultimatum if she did the show
Casting directors kept coming back to Jackson Jordan asking her to be on the show. “They told me there was one more spot, and I was the glue [of the group],” she told King. But Eddie was not a fan of her being on the show, and even threatened to end their marriage.
“I wasn’t going through a divorce when they said I was going through a divorce. What was said to me from my husband when I brought this thing up, that they’re interested in me being on this show, he said, ‘If you do that, then we’ll probably get a divorce.’ To me, when you say to me, ‘We’ll probably get a divorce,’ means your head is already somewhere else. So now, I went into a whole different kind of spiral,” she said.
After considering all that she’d sacrificed for her marriage and family, she decided to do the show regardless of Eddie’s feelings. “Honestly, I did the show because I gave up my career, I had given up everything, and I’m like, ‘What the hell am I going to do now?” And so I said I’ll do the show,” she explained.
They eventually divorced
After two seasons as a full-time cast member, she got demoted to a friend in Season 3, which she was happy with due to having so much going on in her personal life. Jackson Jordan says her children had difficulty adjusting to the divorce, and she became depressed. “I was crying all the time on the show,” she recalls.
But she says she felt pressure from the producers to show more of her life. “My stuff wasn’t moving at the speed of TV. They wanted to see me date. I didn’t want to date. I really didn’t want a divorce, so I was just going through all this pain, and all this stuff, so it was good for me not to come back because I was checked out,” she said.
She left the show after Season 3 and returned for random pop-up appearances. She’s now a friend of the show in Season 7.
