The Real Housewives franchise has introduced fans to some interesting people, and before the season 16 cast was announced, RHOC fans wanted a cast shakeup. Now Braunwyn Windham-Burke's friends were cast and she is off the series, along with Kelly Dodd and Elizabeth Lyn Vargas.
When looking back on The Real Housewives of Orange County, fans always think about Vicki Gunvalson and the time when she dated Brooks Ayers, who lied about having cancer.
What really happened between Vicki and Brooks? Let's take a look.
How It Began
When thinking about Vicki Gunvalson's time on RHOC, fans can't help but remember Vicki and Brooks's romance.
In season 7, fans learned about Vicki's new boyfriend, as in the season premiere "Stranger Things Have Happene," Vicki was dating Brooks, selling her house, and moving on after her divorce from Donn.
Briana said that she read a text from 2007 that suggested they knew each other back then, according to Bravotv.com. Briana was never really on board with this relationship, telling her mom that she wasn't sure that this was the best partner for her.
It was in season 10 that fans realized that something strange was going on with Brooks because the cast began wondering if he really did have cancer. But even in season 7, there were some signs: according to a fan's Reddit post, they watched some episodes again and realized that Brooks said a lot of cliches. The fan wrote, "I just watched the scene where Vicki walks through the house she bought for retirement with Don, she's super emotional, and in the last three minutes he's said,'"Life is 10 percent what happens to you, 90 percent how you react,' 'a house is just a house, but you know what you make it a home', 'embrace the past, learn from it, but never look back to it.'"
Did Brooks Have Cancer?
Brooks and Vicki dated for more than five years, according to Cheat Sheet, as they dated from 2010 to 2015.
It was in season 10 of The Real Housewives of Orange County that things really got bad between Vicki and Brooks. According to Entertainment Weekly, Brooks said that he was a cancer patient at City of Hope and that he was given a diagnosis in 2013 of stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Brooks said that because Vicki's co-stars didn't believe that he had cancer, he decided to fake documents. While Brooks does admit to putting those false documents out there, he does keep saying that he really did receive a cancer diagnosis. This isn't something that everyone believes, though, and because he is known for lying, Vicki's co-stars and fans of RHOC wonder if Brooks had cancer at all.
According to People, Brooks didn't want Vicki telling anyone that he had cancer. He explained, “However, Vicki felt compelled to share a private email later that night with Tamra Judge and Lauri Peterson along with a text to Shannon Beador asking for all of their support during this time rather than conflict. I was not okay with that at all when I found out about it, however the information about my diagnosis was out."
Brooks said that he felt that too many people were getting involved in their romance and that is why things fizzled out.
Fans know that in season 10, Meghan King Edmonds was the one who was really at the forefront of looking into whether Brooks had cancer. And once a psychic came on the show and said that it wasn't true at all, the questions really started flying around.
According to The Daily Mail, Andy Cohen interviewed Brooks, and Brooks said that it was Vicki's fault that people didn't understand what was going on with him, which must have been tough for her to hear. Brooks said, 'The main source of information came from Vicki who sometimes leaves out some critical pieces of a story that create those questions. And quite frankly Vicki misspeaks quite a bit and sometimes tells people what they want to hear."
While it was definitely sad to see Vicki in such a difficult relationship with Brooks, she is now engaged to Steve Lodge, and fans saw glimpses of their relationship during Vicki's last episodes of The Real Housewives of Orange County.
According to People, Vicki shared her thoughts about Brooks sharing that he pretended to have cancer. Vicki said, “First of all I would like to thank Brooks for once and for all speaking out on this, and for reiterating what I have said numerous times. Over the last year I have been bullied, belittled, and humiliated by viewers, the media, and my so-called ‘friends.’ I am not now, nor have I ever been involved in covering for Brooks. I continue to wish him nothing but the best and hope that we can both now move past this difficult chapter in our lives.”
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