Lydia McLaughlin Claims 'RHOC' Cast Mates Were 'Mean' And 'Cruel'

Twitter | Lydia McLaughlin

Lydia McLaughlin opened up about her past experience on "The Real Housewives of Orange County" during a May 14 interview with Us Weekly magazine.

Years after appearing on the Bravo reality series' eighth season in 2013 and its 12th season in 2017, McLaughlin said that the show appeared to be much tamer when she was on it.

“The season that I was on, like, they didn’t even show the drama,” McLaughlin explained.

While producers seem to thrive on chaos between their cast members today, McLaughlin said they attempted to keep the series classy years ago.

Twitter | Lydia McLaughlin

"The producers said, ‘No.’ [They said], ‘You still need to [act] like [a] Housewife and you can’t show so much of [people’s drama] that they can never recover,'” McLaughlin recalled. 

According to Mclaughlin, the runners of the show did their best to take each cast member on a "ride" during the season, showing viewers all of their flaws, before redeeming them at the end of the year.

McLaughlin then noted that while producers avoided getting messy on the show, the behind the scene antics of her cast mates were often quite ugly.

Twitter | Lydia McLaughlin

Looking back at her two seasons on "The Real Housewives of Orange County," McLaughlin said that if viewers had seen what was going on behind the scenes with her and her cast mates, they would have never been fans of the other women. 

“What was going on behind-the-scenes, I felt, was [something] that if the viewer saw, they would never be able to be redeemed,” she said. “They were so mean. They were just so mean that it was, like, you can never vote [for them to win]."

Twitter | Lydia McLaughlin

"You can never, like, cheer someone on that would be so cruel,” she continued.

McLaughlin's time on the show was plagued with drama with her cast mates, which was hard to watch, but according to the mother of three, it was the reunion that really upset her.

“They were being mean to me, but I’m just saying that it was hard to see,” she explained. “There was a lot that wasn’t shown that season, even in the reunion, which I think does the show a disservice. You want to show the reality of everyone, so show it.”

Twitter | Lydia McLaughlin

As the series prepares to begin filming its 16th season, McLaughlin told Us Weekly she hopes producers will "shake" up the cast and portray a better variety of the women living in Southern California.

No word yet on which "Real Housewives of Orange County" season 15 cast members will be moving on to the show for its 16th season.

To see what current "Real Housewives of Orange County" star Elizabeth Vargas recently revealed about her traumatic childhood on "The Doctors," check out the article below.