When it comes to balancing a life filled with glamour, drama, and family, Heather Dubrow is the queen.
She has captivated audiences with her wit, style, and unapologetic honesty for years now. But there's more to Heather than her larger-than-life Bravo TV persona. She's also an incredible ally to the LGBTQ+ community and mom to four children, three of whom are queer.
With a new season of The Real Housewives of Orange County on the horizon, Heather sat down with Out to spill all the tea on parenting, Pride, and all the juicy drama we can expect from the OC girls!
Out: Do you have pieces of advice or tips for parents that maybe their children just came out or they're trying to navigate and understand the situation?
Heather Dubrow: Well, first of all, I mean, love and support your kids. It's crazy to me that I have to say that out loud because that should be the bare minimum of what a parent does for their child. But yeah, love, support, encourage, and listen. The best advice I could ever give parents, whether your kids are queer or not, is to listen to them. Because I think too often as parents, we want to impart our words of wisdom and give our advice and all of that and show them how smart we are. And the truth is, they just want to be heard. And if you create an environment where your kids just feel comfortable talking about anything, they will tell you anything, sometimes too much, they will tell you anything.
You do have a new partnership happening with Equality Vines, and I love the message behind it, but I definitely want you to tell us more about it.
Yeah, so what's crazy is I've been working with Family Equality for over a decade. Well, before I even knew I had a child in the LGBTQ+ community, it's always been an organization that I thought was incredible. So they came to me like a year ago and said, 'Hey, what do you think about doing this champs collab with Equality Vines?' And I said, 'Yeah, if a hundred percent of the proceeds go to Family Equality, I will absolutely do that.' And so we've been working on it for a year, and I think you're going to see it on Housewives this year. It's called "The Gems Line," available for purchase now. And the gems are based on each of my four kids being my precious gems. So there are four different kinds of sparkling wines. They're amazing. The bottles are gorgeous, and it's been just so amazing. I have to say, coming back onto the show, after taking a few seasons off, I really wanted to come back on to show our normal family, hopefully start conversations in other people's family and all of that. And we've been able to do that. And I know that by my DMs and the interviews I do, but I have to tell you what I've been able to do this year that you'll see on the show, I'm so excited about it.
How do you celebrate Pride at home?
To be honest with you, Pride in my house is all year long. It really is. And a couple of my kids went to some parades and that kind of thing. A couple of my kids are too young for all of that. So we've been trying to just show our support in ways that we can that seem a little bit more age appropriate. I'm looking forward to when they're all over 21 and we can hit West Hollywood.
Let's shift to RHOC, because you came back in season 16, you made your incredible return. We were all so excited to see you, but then 17 felt like it was just war brewing. So I'm interested to know what you're most excited to address in the new upcoming 18th season.
That's a good question. Well, first of all, coming back was not easy for me because I really had to make a conscious choice to restart my friendships with everyone and figure out what they looked like individually. I think you'll be interested and excited to see how that all plays out and who still wants to come after me.
A question that I think is on everyone's mind, and I don't want you to give anything away, but can you just give us an idea of how the dynamics of the group have changed? Because this season you have some major changes, including Alexis coming back and her situation with Shannon and John. I think that causes a lot of chaos. Can you just give us a little spoiler on how the dynamic is working?
It's crazy. I mean, no one could have predicted this. And just so you know, I really want this to be clear, Alexis was being spoken to about coming back on the show way before she started dating John Janssen, so those two things really have nothing to do with each other, which is so crazy. Truth is stranger than fiction, right? I mean, it's as explosive as you can imagine. Some of it's sad and confusing and frustrating. I don't envy either of them in that position, to be honest with you. And also I think for the rest of us, it's very difficult to navigate those two. I've known Shannon for a decade. I've known Alexis for longer. So much happened this season. I honestly don't understand how they're going to fit it all in, but it's very... things just change very quickly.
The Real Housewives of Orange County returns July 11 on Bravo.