Phaedra Parks ended season 9 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta in hot water, when she owned up to spreading drugging accusations about Kandi Burruss to Porsha Williams — therefore fueling the season’s most dramatic and damaging drama.
It was a revelation that not only left the 43-year-old mother of two on the outs with Burruss and Williams, but also reportedly off the show’s tenth season as well.
And to think, it all could have been avoided had Parks listened to her fellow Atlanta Housewives as she tried to repair her once close-friendship with Burruss.
On Sunday’s all-new “Secrets Revealed” episode, fans got to see unseen footage of Parks during the season — including one scene in which castmates Cynthia Bailey, Shereé Whitfield, Porsha Williams, and Kenya Moore tried to bring the two women back together.
Shot after Parks and Burruss’ tense private dinner — and well before Williams ever brought the drugging accusations to Burruss — the scene showed Parks admitting to mistakes she had made with Burruss in the past.
“The conversation sort of went awry because she brought up things that had happened in the past and that’s not what I was there for,” Parks first explained of her meeting with Burruss, where the two spoke about digs Parks had made about Burruss’ husband Todd Tucker.
“I will say this, maybe I was being petty,” Parks continued. “But she never apologized about stuff that I’m like, ‘Unbelievable.’ I’ve been accused of turning her into the feds!”
Moore — who has had her own issues with Parks — provided Parks with the clearest advice for how Parks and Burruss could move forward.
“You mess with her family, those are fighting words. So how do you think she’s going to recover for that?” she asked Parks. “You never say, ‘You know what, that comment I made about Todd was way below the belt. And I know how you feel about your husband, and I know I went there and I’m going to apologize to you for that.’ When a person doesn’t receive that, sometimes they can’t move on or move forward.”
Bailey backed Moore up too. “What real grown woman do at the end of the day is say, ‘You know what — I know you can’t stand mad right now. You don’t have to love me after, but at least respect the fact that I am truly apologizing to you and I am truly truly sorry for how I made you feel,’ ” she said.
Parks seemed opened to it at first — though Moore questioned whether she was really absorbing her advice.
“It’s hard to read Phaedra,” Moore told viewers. “Sometimes I look to her in this moment and think she’s getting it. But the other side of me just feels like she just doesn’t think that she’s wrong.”
Sadly, Moore was right as her and Bailey’s words fell on deaf ears with Parks. “My life is too big and too wonderful to be thinking about what’s going on with Kandi,” Parks confessed. “I could care less.”
She did care, though — repeating accusations she claims she heard from an unnamed source to Williams who said Burruss and Tucker had planned on drugging Williams and their mutual friend Shamea Morton in order to take advantage of them sexually.
Though Williams repeated it, she revealed on the reunion she had only done so because Parks had told her she heard the information first-hand from Burruss. “Oh God, that’s so awful,” Williams said, sobbing. “I swear to God Kandi — I would never ever say something like that to you if it wasn’t told to me in truth in confidence.”
Since the reunion, Parks and Williams haven’t spoken — with Williams revealing on Dish Nation recently that she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to get over Parks’ betrayal.
“It’s difficult because I love Phaedra. She was like my best friend,” Williams said. “Someone I talked to on the phone every single day. And for me to feel like she had betrayed me like that. And the fact that I was sitting right No matter what happens next, fans of RHOA are hoping the Parks/Williams/Burruss drama leads to the end of the repetition of unconfirmed gossip on the show. It’s something that’s long been a problem in all of the Housewives franchises, but especially Atlanta.
Why, even Parks herself ironically called out the issue on Sunday’s “Secret’s Revealed” — as Bailey’s ex-husband Peter Thomas confronted Williams on the cheating accusations she’s spread about him.
“People have lose lips in this group,” she said during a tense group dinner in Maui, Hawaii. “They say a lot of stuff that’s not factual.”
Let’s hope that trend ends now.
This article originally appeared on People.
