Teresa Giudice has brushed aside a report that her sister-in-law will be joining The Real Housewives of New Jersey for its next season.
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"I have no idea," Giudice said during a Wednesday morning appearance on NBC's Today show. "There's a few relatives, actually. A lot of my friends got interviewed."
"There's all kinds of rumors," recently departed The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Dina Manzo added during the appearance, which also featured Housewives stars Caroline Manzo and Jacqueline Laurita and their adult daughters.
RadarOnline had reported that Melissa Gorga, who is married to Giudice's brother Guiseppe, will be joining The Real Housewives of New Jersey for its next season early Wednesday morning.
According to the report, cameras have already been filming Gorga "for weeks" and she is believed to be replacing Dina Manzo, who left midway through the Bravo reality series' just-concluded second season.
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"At first she wasn't sure she wanted to go on the show, but she decided to accept it," a Giudice family friend told RadarOnline. "Melissa's husband used to have a landscaping business and then he got into real estate. And she used to do his paperwork as his secretary and now she is a housewife."
"Their house is actually twice the size as [Teresa and her husband Joe's]. It's enormous! She has two live-in nannies and lives in a $4 million mansion on an exclusive lot in Montville. Teresa and Joe's house looks like a garage compared to theirs."
The women appeared on Today to promote My Big Gay Italian Wedding, an Off-Broadway play Dina Manzo is producing and they are making guest appearances in, however questions about their The Real Housewives activities dominated the interview.
During the appearance, the cast also dodged Today co-hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb's attempts to ask about recent reports that fellow Housewives star Danielle Staub will not be returning for the show's third season, which Bravo just ordered this week.
"That's speculation at this point because Bravo really hasn't announced that and we don't know that for sure," Caroline Manzo said.
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"We don't really know at the end of the day who is going to be on, including ourselves."
While Caroline Manzo admitted she'd "obviously" be happy if Staub leaves The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Giudice -- who was shown nearly coming to blows with Staub during this week's broadcast of the first part of the show's season reunion -- claimed to be indifferent about the possibility.
"She hasn't really bothered me, she's no threat to me, so I really don't [care]. I mean if she's on, she's on... it makes great TV. She likes to push buttons [and] when she pushed buttons, I push right back," she said.
About The Author: Steven Rogers