True crime and Real Housewives fans, unite! You're not the only ones who are getting deja vu with Bravo's new series, Dirty John. Based on the podcast of the same name, the series tells the true story of Debra Newell (Connie Britton), who ignored her daughter's suspicions and fell deep into a dangerous romantic relationship with John Meehan (Eric Bana), the titular "dirty John." For Real Housewife of Orange County Vicki Gunvalson, this hit a little too close to home. She likened the harrowing experience to her former relationship with Brooks Ayers, who admitted to faking documents to pose as a cancer patient at City of Hope hospital in California in 2015.
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"This is totally — my daughter [was] adamant that this guy was a bad guy, and I was like, 'He wants to make love with me four times a day. He's filling me up, my love tank,'" Gunvalson told Andy Cohen during Sunday night's reunion. "When you're in it, you can't listen to other people, because he was chirping in my ear, 'They're the enemy. Your daughter just doesn't want you happy.' Like all this mixture of just chaos."
On Watch What Happens Live later that evening, Cohen approached Britton with the same question: Does she see the Real Housewives similarity?
"I was really interested in this because I think it's really about the stories we tell ourselves as women," she said. "In Debra's case, she's super successful. She's self-made, she's a great mom, she's got this incredible business that she created herself. And yet, she felt inferior without a man. She told herself that story. And so she was really longing for that. She felt this huge void in her life. So yeah, I think that's a big deal."
The first episode of Dirty John aired on Sunday, with seven more to come. Catch the next one on Sunday, December 2 at 1o p.m.
Watch the full What What Happens Live clip, below!
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