Former “Real Housewives of Dallas” star LeeAnne Locken has happily moved on from the series two years after saying goodbye — even though she believes producers didn’t “portray” her properly.
“I was set up to fail every year and the thing that the producers and Bravo never got about me is that I truly live the life of a Phoenix, which means if I get to the end of my rope and I see no hope, scorched earth is my only policy left because I know I’m gonna rise and that’s how I’ve always been,” she said during an episode of Us Weekly’s “Getting Real with the Housewives.” “So here I am, rising and soaring again and being happy and I am not struggling.”
Locken, 55, left the show in 2020 after feeling like she was constantly the “target” of drama.
“It started to show as the years went on that I wasn’t having a good time because the cast was so focused on ‘taking out LeeAnne,'” she told the outlet.
The former Bravo star claims she wanted no part in that storyline as she spoke to the executive producer before each season and told them not to ask her to “lie” or “do anything that’s not of my character.”
While Locken “just wanted to be authentic” during her four seasons with the franchise, she claims the other cast members’ “loyalty” was rooted in making good television rather than their friendship.
“It’s funny because as the show ended, our cast would reach out to me saying ‘I just want you to know the producers really wanted me to do that,'” she said, adding that she “wasn’t gonna lie to the audience.”
“The Real Housewives of Dallas” was canceled one year after LeeAnne announced her departure. According to the Texas native, the series would “one hundred percent” still be on-air had she decided to stay.
“I mean, the highest-rated episode of season four was not the reunion, people turned off the reunion. The highest watched episode of season four was my wedding,” she claimed. “People want a love story. I just think in today’s times, petty fighting and bickering over bulls—t is just not what people want to see. People want to see an authentic journey of victory and that’s, that’s what I tried to provide.”
Although she didn’t have the best experience on the show, Locken says she would return to reality TV “in a heartbeat” depending on “who the production company was, who the other cast members were” and where she is in life.
