Caroline Stanbury isn’t new to the world of reality TV and all its machinations. But the Stanbury you see this season on The Real Housewives of Dubai might just be a bit different than the Housewife audiences were re-introduced to in Season 1.
Having to plan a wedding, adjusting to a new friend group, and a new show, Season 1 of RHODubai was a learning curve for Stanbury, one she’s mastered by learning the art of tuning out outside voices.
“Last year, they really caught me off guard. It was so tough for me, as everyone knows. Everyone came after me, one after the other,” she told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “This year, I refuse to let them kill my mojo. I’m just going to be me. Everyone’s really responding [positively] to me now, and I’m back to who I was.”
“I realized that some of them are going to come for me just for breathing,” she added. “I try and rise above it as much as I can. I let most of the comments go over my head, because mostly they just sink themselves, not me.”
Season 2 of RHODubai comes after a two-year wait, and Stanbury, more than any other Bravolebrity, knows that good things come to those who wait. A star of Bravo’s Ladies of London, which aired from 2014 to 2017, Stanbury’s return to the network was long-awaited by many of the network’s fans.
Her return not only came with a new location, but with a new husband, Sergio Carrillo, who has become a polarizing hot topic amid the fanbase.
“All the rubbish they say about me and Sergio, we make fun [on] social media about it,” she said. “There’s no point fighting people. They’re going to say what they want anyway. And I think if you turn around and have a giggle with them, then people go, ‘Oh, they’re cool!’ You know, that’s it. At the end of the day, we’re here entertaining people. You can’t get mad when they have an opinion.”
Thankfully, Stanbury has little to be mad about when it comes to audience reactions to Season 2. Coming off a shaky first season, RHODubai had a lot to prove to viewers. And the show has managed to woo audiences with ease, thus far, providing a nice palate cleanser of petty drama and lifestyle porn so many viewers yearn for after some stilted seasons of Potomac and New Jersey.
With the first few episodes ranging from arguing over who had the best seats at the Beyoncé concert to former enemies Chanel Ayan and Stanbury finding a friendship, RHODubai has given fans a low-stakes, fun ride Bravo desperately needed.
“It’s fun drama. No one died, you know? And I think that’s important. People want a laugh, right? They don’t want to bring other people down all day long. TV is like relief, isn’t it? And the drama is giggling about where we sat at Beyoncé, it’s hilarious,” she said. “By the way, my seats were better.”
That’s one thing Stanbury and castmate Caroline Brooks—who also didn’t sit in the V.V.I.P area at the concert—can agree on. As for the rest, the two still stand at odds. While the duo spent Season 1 as close friends, their friendship was out the door the minute cameras went up for the second season.
The abrupt shift has left many viewers confused, and Stanbury was just as perplexed.
“I was totally blindsided. The week before, she was in my house with my family. I really didn’t see it coming, and didn’t understand it,” she said. “Still really don’t. She’s never really explained herself.”
That provided a major hurdle for Stanbury with newbie Taleen Marie, who entered the show through her friendship with Brooks. Before the season even began filming, Stanbury found herself in the line of fire for comments she’d made about Marie’s behavior at the Beyoncé concert.
In the season’s first full cast event, Brooks calls Stanbury out for talking about Marie behind her back. While Stanbury attributes the jab as harmless “British humor,” Brooks’ reacted much more severely, even as Marie shrugged the comments off.
Watching it back, Stanbury doesn’t understand Brooks’ point of view better, arguing that it’s absurd she would insinuate Stanbury talked about Marie with malice.
“I don’t hate anyone. I didn’t even know her. Why on Earth would I hate her? You have to have a reason to hate somebody. So, that was ridiculous right off the bat,” she said.
“But Brooks is quite manipulative like that,” she added. “She calls one of us and says one thing and [then calls] the other, and then hopes that we don’t pick up the phone to each other. So I think we’ve understood that, and Taleen accepted exactly what I said.”
On the flipside, Stanbury entered the season in a fresh, healthier place with Ayan after a season-long squabble. What that came down to, simply, is communicating with each other. The two shared a private, off-camera conversation and realized they actually have a friendship worth salvaging.
“We didn’t tell anyone we were going to go and do that, so there was no noise and no one to pull us apart. And we actually understood that we had more in common than we ever thought,” she said.
“I think what she didn’t understand before was my British way of saying things,” she added. “Now, every time I speak, you can see her sort of take a minute and then understand that it’s a joke and that everything is good humor, and that we’re all giggling.”
As for the “noise” in question, that would probably be cast member Lesa Milan.
Milan and Ayan were once the best of friends, and that friendship is still visibly evident in the early episodes of the season. But as the Dubai dynamics continue to shift, that rock-solid relationship is put to the test, as teased by the season trailer. That has come as a major shock to viewers, but Stanbury isn’t as surprised, calling their dynamic a “friendship of convenience.”
“That relationship was going to come undone. You know, you can only be someone’s puppet for so long,” she said.
The season trailer teases tension between Ayan and Milan as the former grows closer to Stanbury, but Stanbury feels the fallout has nothing to do with her—and Ayan “will tell you that ’til she’s blue in the face,” she said.
Although Stanbury and Milan don’t see eye-to-eye, she wishes there wasn’t such a team mentality to the dynamics.
“Why does it have to be them or us? Or me and them? Why can’t we all just get along?” she said. “All I do is lift women. I don’t spend my time going, ‘This is mine mine mine.’ I love to share things. Ayan has seen that. There’s room for all of us.”
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