Vicki Gunvalson never imagined she’d receive her Real Housewives of Orange County orange again.
Vicki, 63, learned of her comeback in time for the show’s landmark season 20, during “The Bravos” award show held during BravoCon 2025 in Las Vegas.
“When I went out there, Andy [Cohen] wanted me to give Kandi Burruss the Wifetime Achievement Award, and he gave me a week’s notice,” Vicki exclusively told Us Weekly on Saturday, November 15. “I prepared a speech, and I went up on stage, and it wasn’t on the prompter.”
Instead of finding her notes about Kandi, 49, on the screen, it was Andy, 57, who flipped the script and asked her to return to her reality TV roots. (Vicki helped launch RHOC during its first season, promptly earning the nickname, “The OG of the OC.”)
Vicki Gunvalson Is Confirmed to Return to ‘RHOC’ for Season 20
“When he asked me about season 20, I was really somber going out there because I thought, ‘This is my last time on stage. This is my last time with BravoCon. They’re putting me out to pasture,’” she quipped. “‘I’m going to kick and scream the whole way out, but I’m going to do it.’ And then, when he asked me, it took a while for me to understand that this is my next life now for at least a year.”
Vicki continued, “I’m so grateful and thankful. I’m just going to be me and have fun and encourage women.”
In fact, the Bravo legend is already mentally prepared for her revived role, which means she has her next RHOC tagline already in mind.
“I have a couple written down,” she teased to Us. “I have it all prepared.”
Vicki, who left the show in 2020, is now excited to return to RHOC as “a working woman.”
“When the show ends, you have to have a side gig or a real job,” Vicki, who runs her own insurance agency, added to Us. “[The show is] not gonna last forever. So, anyway, [I’m] grateful, thankful. Thank you, Jesus [and] for my family. My brother’s here, my sister-in-law.”
Vicki’s RHOC costar Shannon Beador chimed in to say that she also has plenty of support “from [her] man.”
“I said to him last night, ‘Are you OK with this?’” Vicki said, referring to boyfriend Michael Smith. “It’s an equal relationship. It’s not anyone powering over the other one. He doesn’t control me. I don’t control him. If he said to me, ‘I really wish you didn’t do it,’ I [would be like], ‘Goodbye.’ I’m not listening to him. This is my life, and I choose the life I want to live.”
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As for Shannon, 61, she thinks that Vicki has found a good match.
“I just saw him, and I said, ‘Get ready for the ride,’” Shannon told Us. “He’s a great guy, [and] you know what I love is that Vicki is so happy. She is in such an amazing place in her life right now. I love that people are going to see that.”
Vicki was previously married to Michael J. Wolfsmith between 1982 to 1991 and Donn Gunvalson between 1994 to 2014. She was also in respective relationships with Brooks Ayers and Steve Lodge following her second divorce.
A premiere date for RHOC season 20 has not been announced.
