- - ‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’ Star Heather Gay on That Plane Mystery and Lisa Barlow’s Villain Edit: ‘If She Wants It to Go Differently, She Can Act Differently’

Kate AurthurNovember 16, 2025 at 7:23 AM

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“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” is ascendant in its sixth season, with each episode topping the last — the series has become must-watch live viewing. The Bravo show is on a years-long roll rarely seen on television. And arguably, that roll crystallized (to mix metaphors) in the show’s Season 4 finale, in which star Heather Gay unmasked fellow cast member Monica Garcia as an internet troll who’d harassed the women for years, providing the “Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots” that both rid them of Garcia, while also putting “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” in the Bravo Hall of Fame.

The BravoCon attendees have treated the women like royalty, and during Andy Cohen’s Nov. 13 taping of “Days of Our Wives” — in which veteran cast members from every city gathered on stage at Planet Hollywood — the “Salt Lake City” cast received the biggest roar from the crowd. Gay, who’s both an observer of Bravo and a star on the network, says, “it was incredible to feel that.”

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Gay has written two bestselling books, 2023’s “Bad Mormon” and “Good Time Girl” the following year, in which she has continued publicly to reckon with having grown up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her latest effort in that space is Bravo’s three-part docuseries “Surviving Mormonism,” which premiered on Bravo and Peacock on Nov. 11. In it, Gay uses the Leah Remini template from “Scientology and the Aftermath” to expose the abusive, corrupt practices within the Mormon church. She’s emotional as she does it; it’s personal to her. And in the end, she gives voice to her realization that she grew up in a cult.

On a lighter note! In recent episodes, Gay and her castmates merged with the “Below Deck: Down Under” crew for a yachting trip that was out of this world in every sense. But the trip culminated in a bizarre incident in Episode 9 (“Unicorn Overboard”) when Meredith Marks had some kind of freakout off-camera on the plane ride home. What led up to it is that Marks was angry, understandably so, that Britani Bateman had accused Seth Marks of having a mistress (she’d seen a TikTok?), and then claimed she was doing it for Marks’ own good. Well! That did not sit well with Marks, who allegedly began raging at Bateman at the airport and did not stop until they landed back in Salt Lake City many hours later. Bateman was so upset — nay, destroyed — according to the whole cast except for Marks, that she needed to be carried from the plane. Where the cameras were, and why no one pulled out their phones (that we know of), is a mystery for the ages.

Below, from the pressroom at BravoCon, Gay addresses that question, talks about “Surviving Mormonism” and how difficult it was for her to call LDS a cult — and talks about why her new career in fiction-writing is a logical extension for her because as a Mormon, “you live in fiction.”

I have to start with most recent episode of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” I everything. This is our Watergate.

Yep, absolutely. I understand.

We need to get to the bottom of it! In your words, what happened?

I mean, what happened was everything I said in confessionals and in the show. And you’re going to see the aftermath of all that play out. But nothing more or less happened than what we all reported.

Will it play out over the rest of the season?

It’s definitely wrangled with and worked out — not worked out! It’s definitely dealt with for the upcoming episodes. And I haven’t seen them, but I lived it, and I know what’s to come.

And why did no one film it? Or record it?

I mean, none of us thought to do it.

Even Britani, who was recording things for no reason last season?

I thought Britani maybe had. And maybe she did!

Huh.

Maybe somebody did record it. We don’t know. There’s still a lot to be seen.

Do you know, and you can’t say?

I don’t know definitively. Honestly, I don’t know definitively.

You think someone recorded it!

I think it’s going to be a really interesting rest of the season.

All right, all right. Seeing, or I guess hearing, Meredith in that state, what was that like?

Well, I mean, she was upset. Seeing your friend upset — I’d never seen her up that upset before. And it felt like it was concerning, and it felt intense and it was dramatic. And it was, you know — heightened from what we’ve seen before.

And your view is that Lisa was egging her on?

I think Lisa was doing what she said: She was trying to support her friend, but you can’t support a friend when they are harassing someone! You know what I mean? I understand it, but it was a no-win situation for Lisa, and it could have gone better.

Different topic! I loved “Surviving Mormonism.” How did it come about?

When I wrote “Bad Mormon,” and saw the outpouring of support — and the resonance that the book had, and the community that really loved the book and rallied around me — I just wanted to further that experience and reach more people. I was really inspired by Leah Remini and her stuff on Scientology. I thought, I can use this pop culture platform in a way that’s really meaningful and important to me.

A lot of times, reality television is trivialized, you know? But the platform and the reach is not. So it felt like an incredibly timely opportunity for me to use the platform in a way that would change lives and create space for people that I love dearly and have not had an opportunity to share their stories or be heard.

You come to the conclusion at the end in the third episode that you were raised in a cult. Can you talk about how you got there?

I talk about how the word is so loaded, and so charged. And if it weren’t, it would be very easy for me to say that, because yes: The things that I did in the Temple and as a Mormon, confirmed to me that it is a cult. And that is very, very hard for me to say. And it’s something I’m still grappling with and working out, and redefining every day.

And so I hate the word. I hate that it’s a lightning rod for defensiveness, and feels so attacking. But the truth is, it’s just a word. And if the word applies, by definition, to the situation, we should be able to use that word.

Did you waver on whether to come to that conclusion?

Yeah. I still waver right now.

Yes, I can actually see that as you talk about it.

It’s still very dear to me. It’s also the culture I live in, and my history and my life and my story and my identity. I don’t want to diminish who I am and what I’ve become. But saying that feels like I am.

From the Us Weekly cover on down, “The Real Housewives Salt Lake City” is getting all of the praise. I’m sure you noticed at the “Watch What Happens Live” taping last night, with all the casts from all the cities, that you guys got more applause than any other show.

I mean, it was incredible to feel that — and they were chanting Mary’s name. It was incredible, yeah.

Why do you think it is?

I think because we’re all each other has, and we are in it together. And I think that we have a lot of fun together. And we have a lot of natural conflict, and that makes for magic.

Other shows have fallen apart because the cast fights so viciously that they end up not being able to be in a room together. Like, for real — and that’s the end of the show. How do you look at someone in the face who’s said — or that you’ve said to them — terrible things, and move on? Let’s take the boat fight with Lisa Barlow….

We give each other a lot of grace, and we are growing and learning together. And as corny as that sounds, we push it to the limit. And I don’t want to wax philosophical, but like a lot of us are women that were never allowed to push anything to the limit. And so in this space with each other, we can. We make a lot of mistakes, and we push it too far. But I think that because of that, we give each other grace to retract and heal and be better.

Where are you and Lisa now?

I consider Lisa a friend. Absolutely. And that doesn’t mean we’re not going to have continued hard conversations. We’re not perfect friends. I’m not perfect, I’m a shitty friend, too!

I mean, she’s getting the villain edit this season.

If she wants it to go differently, she can act differently. It’s pretty simple, you know? There’s a lot of range there. She can pivot.

Speaking of the villain edit: Jen Shah will be released from prison at some point. Would she ever be allowed to come back to the show?

I mean, Andy said he never wanted to see her again, so he kind of answered that for all of us.

Thank God! So in terms of using your platform for good, what else do you have going on?

I currently have a four-novella book deal with Podium Entertainment, and going straight to audiobooks. They’re all fiction. They’re all, like, 30,000 words. And I love it. I have a romantic thriller with Simon & Schuster right now that I’m working on; I’m currently doing the NBC football sports thing. And I’m working on a scripted version of “Bad Mormon.”

Had you always written fiction?

No, but I was a Mormon, and you live in fiction. You know? It’s like building your life around Harry Potter. And I really think that by fictionalizing it, I can break through a lot of these internal barriers that keep me from being the writer I want to be. Because I just don’t want to be vulgar, I don’t want to be crass, I don’t want to be too sexual, I don’t want to be too dirty. It’s going to be an experiment.

But I love writing, and it’s what I want to do.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”