‘RHOC’ Season 20: New Housewife Carmella Garcia Has Connections to ‘Selling Sunset,’ ‘The Girls Next Door’
A new face is joining the cast of The Real Housewives of Orange County for its 20th season.
Former Playboy Playmate Carmella Garcia joins ‘RHOC’
Carmella Garcia is a former Playboy Playmate turned real estate broker/developer. Introduced to the group through Jennifer Pedranti, she’s a self-proclaimed “girls’ girl” who makes fast friends. But some of the other RHOC question the newbie’s choices and motives. Tension is particularly thick between her and RHCO OG Vicki Gunvalson, who returns to the show this season.
“I started this franchise,” Vicki tells Carmella at a group dinner. (Earlier in the trailer she refers to the newest Housewives as “Carmella DeVille.”)
“Everything has an expiration,” Carmella fires back.
In an interview with Bravo’s The Daily Dish, Carmella confessed to “probably” being the source of most of the drama in RHOC Season 20.
“Just because I’m the new person,” she said. “I think I just came in, and I just do me. And it was either gonna go one of two ways. It was either going to be accepted or not, and I was OK with either side of it, but I think we’re going strong at this point.”
Carmella appeared on ‘The Girls Next Door,’ works at The Oppenheim Group
Carmella is no stranger to the spotlight. In 2004, she was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year. That led to her appearance on several episodes of The Girls Next Door, E!’s reality series about Hugh Hefner’s live-in girlfriends. She was also a finalist on WWE Diva Search in 2004.
In 2007, Carmella married NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia. They had four children together before divorcing in 2020: Presley, 18; Jason, 17; Jax, 15; and Faith, 14.
While she got her start as a model, Carmella eventually moved on to a new career in real estate. She is an agent with The Oppenheim Group of Selling Sunset fame, where she specializes in luxury sales, working out of the Corona Del Mar office.
RHOC is also not Carmella’s first brush with the Real Housewives franchise. According to her IMDb, she appeared in a 2014 pilot for The Real Housewives of San Diego. However, that show never became a full-fledged Bravo series.
The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 20 premieres Thursday, July 9 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
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