Rumors of trouble in paradise for Porsha Williams and Dennis McKinley started circulating shortly after their first child together, daughter Pilar, was born — and on the Season 12 premiere of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” Porsha reluctantly addressed them.
According to various castmembers, the rumors “in the blogs” mentioned infidelity, drug use and even an allegation of bestiality, but the only one Porsha spoke about in the new hour was her fiancé’s alleged infidelity.
“Dennis has moved out,” the somber new mom revealed in her first confessional of the season. “It’s been about four or five days. We were arguing about something that I found in his phone that I found to be inappropriate, and then that’s when I realized he was unfaithful to me while I was carrying our child. There are a lot of crazy rumors about Dennis in the blogs. And I’ve had questions about the situation, and I just feel like I haven’t gotten the total truth.”
Porsha couldn’t find it in her heart to be up front with her mom and sister about why she and Dennis were on a break because she didn’t want them to hate him. Like she said, Dennis was her family now, regardless of what he may or may not have done. “I only told my mom and sister what they need to know, which is, ‘We ain’t together right now,'” she explained. “That’s it.”
But her mom and sister knew something was up given the dozens and dozens of roses Dennis kept sending to the house. At one point during a conversation with both of them, Porsha broke down and explained why she hadn’t left the house in days.
“These are not ‘just because’ flowers; they have a reason,” she said tearfully. “I’ll be going back to work soon. I go back to Dish at the end of this month, so I’m really just trying to figure out how I’m gonna do that. It’s not like I don’t try [to get out of the house]. I mean, Mom will see when I get up and Mom comes and gets [Pilar] from me, I tell her I’m getting dressed, and then an hour getting dressed turns into three hours, turns into four. And then, you know, it’s 6 o’clock. So you just don’t end up getting dressed, ’cause then wherever you plan on going, it’s like, for what? ‘Cause then you come home and you don’t feel the same way. That’s why I don’t want to be going anywhere or doing stuff.”
Crying, she went on, “I just don’t understand. I keep going to sleep at night thinking that I’m gonna wake up and it’s not gonna be true. The only reason I keep answering his phone calls is because I keep thinking that he’s gonna say the one thing to make me believe that this isn’t happening, you know? This is my family. I wanted a family. This is what we’ve been working on. And then this? What? It’s like it’s gotta be a bad dream or a joke.”
Elsewhere, Cynthia Bailey and returning Housewife Kenya Moore discussed the rumors, including the bestiality one. “He wanna watch animals do it, or he wanna actually do the do with a doggy in the poopoo?” Kenya wondered of the bizarre allegations, later telling the camera, “I’m not saying it’s true, but maybe Porsha needs to find out what he meant by doggy style.”
The topic came up again while Cynthia, a pregnant Eva Marcille and Kandi Burruss were eating lunch at Kandi’s restaurant, The Old Lady Gang.
One of the women whose name had been “in the blogs” regarding Dennis’ alleged infidelity was Sincerely, an acquaintance of Kandi’s. She just so happened to be at OLG when the three women were there and filming. She approached them and asked if she could sit, then proceeded to explain to them that she had never met Dennis in her life. Sincerely was adamant that she would never do anything to break up a beautiful Black family.
The women seemed to believe Sincerely and thanked her for stopping by, but when she walked away, Kandi seemed skeptical, noting Dennis must’ve done “something” since Porsha had unfollowed him on social media. Last year when Kandi tried to tell Porsha about Dennis’ alleged other girlfriends, she was shot down hard, so she wanted as little to do with this situation as possible. Still, she agreed she’d be with Cynthia and Eva when they filled Porsha in on what Sincerely had said.
While Eva said she didn’t believe any of the rumors, Kandi said she didn’t believe the bestiality one, wasn’t sure about “the coke stuff” and made quite the face when asked about “the cheating stuff.”
Later, Kenya gushed over her “miracle baby,” Brooklyn. The topic of her marriage to Marc Daly, however, wasn’t met with as much enthusiasm. (The two announced their divorce last month.)
“I feel like God put me through certain challenges in my life,” Kenya said in one of her first confessionals of the evening. “He made me kiss a lot of frogs. I felt like I had a fairy tale ending, but some things are not exactly like you thought it would be. Marc’s businesses are growing, so he has to be in New York a little bit more often, but I envisioned when Brooklyn would be born, that Marc and I would be spending the majority of the time under one roof in the same city in the same house. Although I love Marc’s hustle and work ethic, the distance is really putting a strain on our marriage.”
Toward the end of the episode, Kenya threw her daughter a princess party. She was disappointed Marc couldn’t make it due to work obligations, but she refused to let it bring her down. After all, the theme was “come dressed as your favorite Barbie,” so she was stoked. She urged the women to bring their kids and dress up, too.
Eva didn’t bring her two kids because she said the last two times she was around Kenya, chaos ensued. Porsha felt the comment was bizarre and relayed the information to Kenya during a heart-to-heart they had after the party. Those two have come a long way.
After receiving the news, Kenya was pissed. However, since Porsha spilled some “tea” to her, Kenya felt she owed her the same. Even though Kandi, Cynthia and Eva filled Kenya in on the Sincerely situation and asked her not to say anything to Porsha, she did anyway. She then brought the three ladies over to validate the story.
Porsha was appreciative but not necessarily relieved. For starters, she was skeptical as to why this went down at Kandi’s restaurant with Kandi’s friend. Secondly, she said the text she saw in Dennis’ phone was with another woman.
In less explosive news…
Cynthia repeatedly told boyfriend Mike Hill and everyone in Atlanta she wanted to get married as soon as possible. She even posted a photo from inside a bridal shop to her Instagram Story!
Kandi’s surrogate is pregnant with the only embryo that survived (she and Todd had two). This was the same surrogate we saw Kandi meet last season! When this episode was shot, the surrogate was almost 14 weeks along. Kandi was happy but felt weird not going through the physical process herself.
NeNe Leakes did not appear in this episode.
Bravo would not confirm if Dennis responds to the various allegations in the coming episodes of the show, when contacted by TooFab, but promised “we’ll see it all play out this season.” We have also contacted a rep for Porsha.
“The Real Housewives of Atlanta” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on Bravo.
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