cont'd
PS: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is this blog post, which I'm sure you're aware about. Do you know who wrote it?
Gina: I don't know for sure, but someone actually posted as commentary, I think it was in a blog, this comment, on the 21st of April this year at 7:41 a.m. — I think it was about an hour-and-a-half before someone posted it on Twitter. It was about four hours before this anonymous person emailed me a copy of the letter. It said, 'I have a friend who's one of the producers and knows some of the girls formally, and he says behind the scenes is a mess.' There has been a lot of communication going on on this site about Real Housewives. Then she says, 'Some of them apparently reek of desperation for fame, and apparently Lydia has hired someone to write an anonymous blog attacking Gina so the audience will somehow be persuaded to be Team Lydia/Andrea before the reunion airs.' The logic behind that is so brainless and pathetic. So that's what was posted.
Now, the other thing was that Lydia had been posting from the night before, 'Gina the cancer patient,' and putting little images of me smoking cigarettes. She wouldn't know anyway, I haven't seen her since then; she would not know for one minute whether I smoke, do or don't, or drink — she wouldn't know anything. I have no contact with her at all. Occasionally I have a cigarette with Janet when we finish a shoot, or whatever, but she wouldn't know. Her son smokes, my boys smoke, smoking's around. It's not a big deal, but for some reason she's being a bit hideous about everything, about me. She thinks that will make me look bad, at least about my health.
She also started posting things in the morning about one of my followers or something, someone who was not very friendly to her, she posted things on Twitter like, 'We'll see what you think about Gina by the end of the day. Wait and see.' It's like she was pre-empting some tweets about what was coming. So that doesn't make sense.
Now there are things in that email, things like cheap perfume — and I will say that at the reunion show I did have a cigarette with Alex Perry, and I do carry Impulse around, which is cheap perfume, so I can use it afterwards. So that tells me that someone there has written this. It's definitely not a Foxtel employee; I know all the Foxtel employees and I get along famously with all of them. And Foxtel has actually made a statement to say it's got nothing to do with Arena or Foxtel. It was really offensive things, like how my children were referred to as 'offspring,' but Andrea's children were referred to as 'babies.' There was a lot of contempt in it, and there was a lot of detail in it, things like the perfume, that someone really had to have been there. Now whether there was a pin camera, I don't know. . . I'm thinking there was no way it could have been Foxtel — the whole thing was recorded, what do they need a pin camera for? [Laughs] It doesn't even make sense.
PS: Hearing your point of view now, it really is a lot to go through and so intense. You do have a lot of fans who are worried you won't return for another series, and many have said they won't watch it if you leave. It makes me think the producers would love you to stay because they will have seen how many supporters you have. What are your thoughts on doing another series now?
Gina: No one's had a conversation with the producers about it yet. It's not something that's come up. I've had an awful experience; it's certainly not what I thought I was signing up for. What has got me through: I can see how people are bullied, and it's relentless bullying, and it escalates often, with a lot of bullies, until they get a rise out of the victims and they retaliate. That's usually when it stops. In the end they push until you break, so they can point their finger and say, "See, she is that person." They're trying to justify their behaviour, and you see it in a lot of abusive relationships. I see it in a lot of cases where there is child abuse and family violence, and I've seen a lot of crime. You can see a pattern. I feel I was very much on the receiving end of an abusive relationship with each of those girls, bar Chyka. And probably not Jackie, she sits back and let it roll. And I was on the receiving end of abuse that was behaviour that Jackie had already put in place.
With the lateness, Lydia had been late on many occasions — in fact, if you speak to the producers, Lydia was consistently late. I was actually the least late — actually, that's not the right way to say it, but out of the cast members, I was probably the most punctual. I had drivers picking me up to go to every shoot, so there was no reason for me to not be on time. It was only on one occasion that I got tied up in court, and they just thought it would be a great storyline, because I did say to Janet, "Can you please not push that storyline? It's actually really serious misconduct as a barrister to not be punctual. You can't keep the court and your client waiting. They're so pedantic and particular about it." She pushed this, and it could affect my career. And that was almost like a green light: let's go.
I just don't know whether I could do that again. I think they will have to reconsider the cast. I don't think the audience will want to watch that dynamic happen again. They will switch off. The reality is that under contract, when you sign up for reality TV, you really sign away your rights to be precious about being embarrassed or disparaged, and all those things. And that's OK. I copped it on the chin because I thought, 'OK, I thought I had a pact with these girls, I thought we were going to look out for each other's backs.' Now I've copped it from them, but I'm contracted and I signed up, which is one of the reasons why I keep going. Otherwise I would have never kept going like that.
Now that that season is over, the contract's over, so when that ended I was looking forward to not seeing them again. Despite signing up for that under contract, there were social media policies under the contracted that prohibited the girls from embarrassing and disparaging each other on social media, and they hadn't really complied with that. I mean I've been called filth by Andrea Moss, and I've never been called anything like that in my life. People might say, "Oh, well you called Lydia the c-word," but we were filming, it was for entertainment. I was angry with her at the time, because I'd been called one and I was in a situation where I'd been set up for it. I was angry.
So the point I'm getting to is this: whilst I signed up for it, and I was put in that situation where I was treated really badly, it continued outside the parameters of the contract. That's the bit that has really upset me. And every time a show goes to air, whoever is the target of the audience, they escalate and up their campaign against me. After Mission Beach, it was Andrea Moss who targeted me, and she got really aggressive. Then it was Janet, and I've had messages from Janet where she's called me really vulgar things that I can't believe a woman is speaking to anyone like that. So the bullying has continued. This week it's Lydia, potentially with this email. And if she didn't author it, she certainly promoted it; she retweeted it. And can I tell you something? I received a pretty vicious email about her six or seven weeks ago, and you know what I did with it? I put it in the cupboard. I thought, 'There's no way I will allow anything like this to come out.' It is so defamatory and harmful — it talks about her children, her husband, their finances, it's got phone numbers in it — it's a full exposé. I actually told her about it! So not only did she not tell me about this letter, she kept it a secret and then published it.
Do I want to do a second season? I don't like these women! I really don't. I signed up for it in the season, under contract. The season ended, and I'm copping even worse in the assassination of my character in the screening period, and it's just gotten worse and worse. Every time the audience reacted they pointed the finger at me to target me, to try and explain or validate their behaviour. Do I want to do that again? Probably not. I think the audience will be upset, and I don't think Matchbox Pictures can do anything about it, to be honest.