Teresa Giudice is in defense mode on ‘The Real Housewives of New Jersey’ season 11 reunion
Bravo
In a tale as old as time, or at least the majority of The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s run, the Giudices and the Gorgas are getting into it… about one another. It all goes down in ET’s exclusive first look at the season 11 reunion, when host Andy Cohen offers up this viewer question to Teresa Giudice: “Your brother has done nothing but defend you against your ex-husband and the terrible way he treated you. Why can’t you see that?”

“Yeah, and [I did] nothing but defend my brother in the beginning of my marriage,” Teresa answers, inspiring quizzical looks from most of her co-stars. “Like, and he knows that. I always put my brother before my husband. Alls I’m trying to say is, they’re saying this on national TV. My kids got upset about it.”

In the middle of season 11, Teresa’s brother, Joe, his wife, Melissa Gorga, and Teresa got into it over Teresa’s ex-husband, Joe Giudice, in a cheese-plate throwing, table-smashing fight. The Gorgas were upset that Teresa was seemingly defending her ex to a fault, despite the fact that he regularly posts clickbait articles about his estranged siblings-in-law on Instagram. As Melissa told ET back in March, just before the fight aired, “I am his clickbait. ‘Screw Melissa, I hate…’ … you’ll see on this episode, [Teresa’s] like, ‘Take his name out of your mouths.’ Really? Because I don’t care — ever — to bring him up, believe me that. So it just gets very one-sided and Joe gets very insulted, which I have to agree with him. Not because he’s my husband. When he’s wrong, I tell him he’s wrong. But I feel his pain.”

That pain seemingly goes further than Joe, as Melissa counters Teresa’s comment that her “kids got upset about it” by sharing an example of the hurt Joe’s words have caused in her own home, sharing an anecdote about her 14-year-old daughter.

“The other day, Antonia came into my room with an article and she’s like, ‘Mommy, why does Zio Joe always write these horrible things about you?'” she recalls. “It’s like, Antonia’s reading it, too.”