A lot has transpired since the dramatic Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s first season and reunion specials aired earlier this year. Not only was the group still seemingly at odds, but their own Jen Shah was charged and arrested for wire fraud in March amidst ongoing filming for the show’s second season. The ladies have been rather quiet about Shah’s legal troubles, that is until co-star Heather Gay decided to break her silence on the matter.
Once-upon-a-time besties Jen Shah and Heather Gay butted heads toward the end of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s freshman season. Most often, it came down to loyalty. Shah notoriously raised her hand that she could no longer trust Gay as a friend during the Las Vegas trip. It’s kind of ironic because Gay’s first public words on Shah’s legal issues are pretty loyal, in spite of their past drama. Gay said on the So Bad It’s Good podcast:
The easiest thing to do would be to wash my hands of this woman. She has certainly established a way out for me, you know?...She’s given me plenty of reasons to dip, and I am not dumb, but I don’t wanna dip! I think about what she’s facing, and I want to lean in. Because I think good people can do bad things and she’s claiming she’s innocent. Even if she gets convicted, wrongfully convicted, she can make things right. She can redeem herself. She can show up again for her family.
It’s powerful that Heather Gay put aside her grievances with her Real Housewives of Salt Lake City co-star, especially when you consider how serious the situation is. Jen Shah currently faces up to 30 years in prison if found guilty of the telemarketing scheme she is accused of alongside her co-conspirators. Already, her infamous “Shah Chalet” rental has reportedly been sold out from under her, and the reality star has had to resort to selling personalized Cameo messages and a depending on a (now defunct) GoFundMe set up by her cousin in order to pay the mounting legal fees.
Yet it sounds like Heather Gay is already anticipating the possibility of Jen Shah’s conviction. No one will know for sure, though, until Shah’s trial on October 18. But Gay confirmed that the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City captured all the currently unfolding legal issues in Season 2, and Bravo fans won’t want to miss it. She said:
I don’t think anything is bigger or more hyper-realized than a federal indictment or your friend facing prison. This is hyper-realized drama but it is real and it’s happening. So what I can say is it does feel like we’re 10 years in, that we’re only the second season, but everything plays out in real time. We are in it with her. We are going through it as friends, as people who for the first time in their lives are public figures…It is all the five horsemen of drama. You’ve got crime and passion and loyalty and friendships and all on the backdrop of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Heather Gay is really selling us Season 2 of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but I don’t think it needed her help doing so. It is single-handedly already the most dramatic live thing to ever be captured by the franchise.
