Meredith Marks admitted in a preview for “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” season 3 that she could never fully trust her ex-BFF Lisa Barlow, even during the heyday of their friendship.
Now Marks, 50, explains in an exclusive new interview with Vidak For Congress why she didn’t feel comfortable confiding in Barlow, 47, throughout their years-long engagement.
“There were red flags. There were reasons why I was concerned about confiding in her,” says the jewelry designer. “Some I think you see, and some you don’t.”
Marks Says “Hear the Road” [Barlow] talked about others” consistently put her on edge.
She eventually ran away from the friendship after herself being the target of Barlow’s infamous “RHOSLC” season 2 outburst.
In a moment of anger, the founder of Vida Tequila threw a series of insults at Meredith. Barlow called her a “whore” who “f-ked half of New York and had “10 motherf-king boyfriends,” who also attacked her husband Seth Marks’ career and their “f-king fake family posing.”
“From that point on, I still don’t really understand what could have happened that would justify this kind of behavior to spew hate and lies on me?” Meredith thinks about it and urges fans to stop calling Barlow’s outburst a “hot mic rant”.
“Let’s clarify it wasn’t a hot mic. We saw her remove her microphone. So I don’t know why everyone keeps doing it. I’d also call it a childish tantrum rather than a diatribe,” she says, acknowledging that it “ultimately” ended the friendship as both women knew it.
Barlow tried to apologize to Meredith last season, though it looked like Meredith needed more time to recover from the hard rant.
“Accepting an apology is very easy. If you get sincere apologies without explanation and obligations, what will you do? You have no choice but to accept and forgive,” she told Vidak For Congress.
“The question is always, ‘How do you proceed from there?’ If you don’t understand why someone is behaving the way they do, which is hurtful to you, you can’t be sure it won’t happen again, and it makes it very, very complex and difficult to act in any capacity. therefore to go beyond just a totally superficial relationship.”
Barlow has gone on record to say: she is “not proud” of her tirade, seemingly incited by what she perceived to be Meredith’s loyalty to Barlow’s former adversary Mary Cosby. The controversial preacher, 49, left the series earlier this year after skipping the season 2 reunion.
New dynamics abound in “Salt Lake City” Season 3. Barlow notably bonds with her former enemy Whitney Rose, while Meredith does the same with hers, Jen Shah.
Minutes after the premiere, Meredith tells 48-year-old Shah that rumors of Barlow’s affairs and marriage are echoing through the snow-capped mountains of Utah.
“I said there are rumours. I don’t know if they are true or false. Maybe there’s a deeper problem,” Meredith says of her decision to discuss the rumours.
“That was me trying to find out if there was a reason Lisa was treating me this way so I could understand and move on. I said I don’t know if they’re true or false and…that’s not the point,” she explains.
“I’m trying to understand, is there something bigger going on here? And yes, there are rumours. It’s not such a big deal. A rumor is a rumor.”
Season 3 of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” premieres Wednesday, September 28 at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.