This article was originally published on PEOPLE.
Here’s a question for the Real Housewives of Atlanta fans out there. If two best friends stop being best friends, is it ever okay for either of them to start spilling the other one’s secrets? Does trust and loyalty end when the friendship ends? Or are there some things that are just sacred?
Answering that might help one figure out just how to navigate what’s going on between Kandi Burruss and Phaedra Parks in Sunday’s episode of RHOA. Because these former BFFs have stopped being polite and started getting real — and it’s becoming very challenging trying to determine where the truth is in all the mudslinging going around.
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It started with Burruss, who took the first swing when she accused Parks of dating another man while still married to ex-husband Apollo Nida. The accusation happened during a face-to-face dinner between the two women — though Burruss didn’t waste any time retelling the tale to Kenya Moore, Cynthia Bailey, Shereé Whitfield and her mother, Mama Joyce.
“I said everything that I had not said before,” Burruss said, recounting her chat with Parks. “I said, ‘You know good well that you wasn’t sad about your husband leaving. ‘Cause you was with me talking about how you were dating somebody else before he even went to jail. …You was talking about marrying somebody at the top of the year as soon as he was gone. So clearly you wasn’t that upset.’ ”
The women appeared to drink up the tea Burruss was spilling — especially Mama Joyce. “She better leave you the f— alone,” Joyce told her. “Now she know you ain’t gonna sit back and take all her b——.”
But there was one person who wasn’t laughing at Burruss’ big mouth: Porsha Williams.
Friends with both Burruss and Parks, Williams felt frustrated that Burruss would spread gossip about Parks — especially because, when coming from Burruss’ mouth, even a lie would be interpreted as truth.
“If your best friend speak on something, it almost like that make it true,” Williams explained. “Any hoe can say anything all day long. But if my best friend were to speak those things on me and on my life, it’s like a confirmation. So I just think she should just be quiet.”
“I think it is just very very dirty for someone to try to tear their ex-best-friend down,” she added. “It’s a messy and ugly situation.”
Williams was also frustrated with earlier claims Burruss made about Williams’ relationship with Burruss’ ex-boyfriend (and father of her daughter), Block Spencer.
“Kandi said I had sex with her baby daddy… Phaedra was trying to have a man on her side in her marriage… So for me to hear not just that these things are being said in the street, but also that it all got kicked off because Kandi went and told all these lies? That’s the part I really can’t get with,” she said.
She may not have been able to get with Burruss’ gossiping, but Williams didn’t hold back from gossiping herself. While discussing Burruss’ big mouth with Whitfield, Williams and Parks did a little rumor-spreading of their own — telling Whitfield that their mutual friend Shamea had been involved in threesomes with Burruss and her husband Todd Tucker.
“They are really close — she’s close to both of them,” Williams said.
“Close to her and Todd — she doin’ both,” said Parks, who had also been accused by Shamea of trying to flirt with Shamea’s husband. “People say that Shamea sleep with everybody’s husband, but who talking about that?”
Later, Williams even suggested to Whitfield that Burruss was still in the closet.
“That sounds like she just sorta outed her for being a lesbian,” Whitfield commented to viewers. “So now you’re rolling in the dirt with Phaedra and Kandi too? They are just airing out each other’s laundry. These bitches are just messy!”
It was a crazy accusation — and one that will surely anger Burruss when she hears it. But Parks didn’t seem to mind. As she told viewers, “the grave you dig for me, you better dig a double one because you’ll fall in first.”
One thing’s for sure — Burruss fully stands behind her words. When meeting with Williams and Whitfield at the end of the episode, she stood by everything she had said — from saying that Williams and Spencer had been sexually active together to claiming that Parks had been having an extramarital affair.
She also gave some insight into why she was so adamant about exposing Parks.
“She not going keep running her mouth, saying s— behind closed doors when people don’t know she talking and don’t think that s— can get back,” Burruss revealed. “This bitch now went around here and tell people that they shouldn’t work with us? That is below the belt. That may not be no husband s—, but that’s money s—. And you know I give a f— about that. Had she done that to you, you never would have been down with that.”
“I don’t give a f—,” she continued. “When I say to somebody, ‘she was full of s—,’ they won’t have to guess what I meant by that. She was full of s—. Don’t f—— keep dragging me. Don’t play me like that. I’ll keep it to myself for so long. But it was along with that partnered with the s— that she was saying about my husband — It just built up. I’m just DONE.”
Williams didn’t debate Burruss too much — except when Burruss accused Williams of knowing that Parks had been unfaithful to Nida. “I’m not about to say that,” Williams said. “That’s not something that I know.”
The decision to stay quiet bothered Burruss. As she told the audience: “Porsha sitting up here playing dumb like she don’t know what going on, when she knew…. She even talked about how she was the one that took the picture that was sent to [Parks’ lover] in the text message. So bitch, you knew she was sending the picture to another dude. You knew what was going on. We talked about this. Stop tryin’ to play me right now.”
Before Burruss walked out, Williams made one more plea. “I just want the back and forth to be done,” she told Burruss. “It’s not easy to see you keep taking jabs at each other, going back and forth over and over.”
With the accusations Williams and Parks dropped on Sunday, there’s no way this back and forth will be ending anytime soon.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta airs Sundays (8 p.m. ET) on Bravo.