Even Real Housewives of Atlanta’s self-proclaimed “breath of fresh air” has her breaking points, and when someone questions her relationship, the claws come out.
TooFab spoke with sophomore cast member Tanya Sam about Kenya Moore bringing up allegations that Sam’s fiancé, Paul Judge, was cheating on her with who Bravo labeled “the cookie lady,” and Tanya did not hold back.
“I don’t know where that came from. I thought we had a great weekend,” Tanya told us of Kenya’s decision to call out her relationship in Toronto. “And then fast-forward to the spa day, everyone was like, ‘Uh, Tanya, what’s happening? Don’t poke the beast!’ And I’m like, ‘Guys, I don’t know what’s happening. Why is she directing this at me?'”
Tanya said she never got to the bottom of Kenya’s motive; however, based on Moore’s confessionals, Sam seems to think it might’ve been “reflective of what was going on in her own life.”
Only after Kenya brought up the rumor did Bravo show previously unseen footage of this cookie shop owner telling Kenya and Cynthia Bailey that Paul had been all over her, trying to booze her up.
When Tanya saw the scene — along with the rest of America — she was “mad.”
“By this time, we had already gone through this whole season, so when you actually see the footage — and you see this woman who I kind of thought was a bit of an opportunist…she saw a camera and was like, ‘oh my gosh, I wanna tell this story’ — I was mad because it was like trumped-up exaggeration. Now, I have the full story, and I’m like, ‘None of that happened.'”
Careful not to spoil what’s to come on the rest of Season 12, Sam told us Judge assured her the encounter the cookie lady described was a platonic one and in a group setting. “It’s zero on the scale of anything,” Tanya recalled Paul telling her. He also assured his fiancée there was no touching involved and no asking for or exchanging of numbers.
“She’s got ‘RHOA’ in her [Instagram] bio!” Tanya told us. “So I was like, okay, this was obviously a really great platform for you to display your business, and I think there’s somewhat of a disregard for the real people’s lives in there, but it was a great platform that worked for her.”
In spite of the attempt to knock down her relationship, Tanya said she and Paul are stronger than ever. “We’re solid,” she told us. “That’s part of the beauty of having a strong foundation on which you can go on reality TV.”
When it comes to her relationship with Kenya, however, that might not ever recover.
“You have to cherish the things that you hold dear, and so when people sort of try to attack those things, it takes a little bit longer for you to forgive that,” Tanya said. “I can forgive a lot of minor infractions, but that, to me, felt a bit across the line.”
Sam also has no regrets about showing Moore’s wig on camera, telling TooFab she felt the gesture was simply a “funny,” “corny joke.”
“The scene before, she denied wearing it — like, very vehemently denied wearing it — and we’re all sitting there going, ‘But we can see it!'” Tanya said. “We all know Kenya has great hair, so it’s like, if we can’t talk about this, what are we supposed to be able to talk about? We’ve talked about such personal things. And hello! It’s a bunch of Black women! We all wear wigs! To me, it had nothing to do with [her natural hair care] business or anything else.”
However, “the retaliation of it,” Tanya added, “did not match what I had done.”
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait and see how said “retaliation” plays out during the rest of the season.
“The Real Housewives of Atlanta” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on Bravo.
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