The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Margaret Josephs‘ ex-BFF, Laura Marasca Jensen, is speaking out against her.
Following her controversial meeting with Teresa Giudice and Melissa Gorga, during which she shared a cheating rumor Margaret repeated about Melissa, Laura is accusing Margaret of drug use, failing to pay attorneys, trash-talking Melissa and Jackie Goldschneider, jealousy, and more.
“Everybody wants to believe that it was because I wanted to get on the show, but it was just a lead-up to one final nail in the coffin,” Laura explained on the April 17 episode of the Behind the Velvet Rope With David Yontef podcast of her decision to go after her former friend.
According to Laura, her and Margaret’s falling out had nothing to do with filming.
“We had a falling out about a party, a holiday party … I just did not like the way she treated me and disregarded me,” she shared.
While Laura didn’t reveal specifics, she said Margaret didn’t like that she “spoke up” and told her they needed a break. Then, when the break didn’t blow over as Laura expected, she decided she didn’t “owe [Margaret] anything anymore.”
“She was talking behind my back,” Laura revealed. “She changed, you know, things changed through the years and when she got on [RHONJ], she started to I guess show who she really is … I’ve seen so many things that I say, ‘Is this the kind of person that I wanna align myself with?’ … When you are devious and deceitful and you have that in there, it’s always in there and [it’s] coming out more and more ever since she got on the show.”
Although Laura wanted to get on the show, she believes Margaret did not want her on the cast — even though Margaret claims RHONJ producers didn’t want Laura.
“I really think she had a lot of deep-seeded issues. I think she’s a very jealous person … She knew that I looked better than her. People like me. And she did not want any competition,” Laura suspected.
Laura even suggested that Margaret attempted to sabotage her potential role.
“She told me that I should cut my hair off and dye it blond,” she revealed. “She said, ‘You look too much like Teresa and Melissa.’ I couldn’t look like a Jersey housewife. I should look more like her.”
Over the years, Laura shared, Margaret has exhibited questionable behavior.
“She gets herself into trouble,” Laura continued. “She hires lawyers. She doesn’t pay them. I myself got her a lawyer through someone I knew who again wound up not getting paid … She’s always in these lawsuits, always has legal bills that she can’t pay.”
Laura said Margaret has also taken shocking action against her RHONJ castmates, including Siggy Flicker, whose husband’s ex-wife she allegedly met with in hopes of “getting information.”
“She called [Jennifer Aydin] a disheveled drug addict … coming from someone who told me when they were on a girls trip in Lake George, she took edibles with her intern or whatever,” Laura stated.
Laura said that she learned from Margaret that she filmed a girls’ trip amid the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she allegedly “did edibles,” despite her harsh words against Jennifer. Meanwhile, Margaret’s husband, Joe Benigno, according to Laura, smoked pot at a filmed event at their house.
“Someone had posted also that her husband hosted something that was filmed at the house and he was apparently smoking pot,” Laura disclosed. “And this was all after calling Jen a disheveled drug addict.”
While Margaret trash-talking Jennifer is nothing new, Laura said Margaret also bashed Melissa and Joe Gorga behind their backs.
“She would always talk about them behind their back … Talking about how [the Gorgas] don’t pay their bills. This was someone who was supposed to be her friend,” Laura noted, adding that Margaret also felt she “should have been” cast on Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip season one “instead of Melissa.”
She even reportedly targeted Melissa’s shore house and store.
“Margaret said, ‘…It’s filled with a bunch of sh-t. She buys all her furniture online at Wayfair,'” Laura alleged. “[And] I said … ‘I’d like to go to Envy.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, you don’t want anything in there. It’s all a bunch of sh-t.’ She’s the one who told me that Melissa was selling fake Chanel in her store.”
As for her meeting with Teresa and Jennifer, Laura said she wanted to tell the ladies that Margaret “was planning to come after their families.”
“It had nothing to do with Melissa and Joe. Did it come up after? Yes, it came up … and one thing led to another … [But] I’m not the one who spread the rumor,” she went on. “I did tell Teresa and Jen but it was in a room where nobody else was and where it went from there is not really even my concern.”
According to Laura, Margaret was also behind the passing of the fake rumor claiming Jackie’s husband, Evan Goldschneider, was cheating at the gym.
“Margaret started the whole rumor about Jackie and Evan. She told me. I knew of it long before it was on the show. It was probably like two seasons before,” Laura shared, then clarifying, “She did not start the rumor. She spread the rumor.”
Continuing on about Margaret’s meddling with Jackie, Laura said she told her that Jackie “f-cks her husband with a t-shirt on” — and that Jackie and her sister “had a terrible relationship and she was thinking they might bring the sister on and because the sister I think apparently knew this girl at the gym.”
Margaret also supposedly went to Bravo executives to tell them, “Jackie’s weak. She’s emotional. She’s not cut out to be on this show.'”
“Maybe they thought, ‘Oh maybe there is something [to] this.’ And then, you know, she gets demoted to a friend,” Laura recalled.
Laura then revealed that Margaret seemingly tried to have Jennifer fired.
“She told me she thought Jennifer was gonna get fired. She said she told executives that nobody wanted to film with Jennifer. That’s, you’re trying to get someone fired,” Laura explained.
The Real Housewives of New Jersey season 13 airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
