GRETCHEN ROSSI: A LOOK BACK AT GRETCHEN… GRETCHEN TALKS ABOUT SLADE, HER BUSINESSES, CHEESE AND TURKEY BACON!!

ORIGINAL POST DATE NOVEMBER 12, 2010

 Gretchen Rossi… November, 2010

NOTE:  How things have changed since Wretched was interviewed by HappyHour magazine!  It’s interesting to look back…  Wretched is still very loyal to her hair stylist, Victor Paul!!

Happy Hour Magazine was able to catch up with The Real Housewives star Gretchen Rossi at the Surf & Sand Resort in Laguna Beach to find out all the juicy gossip that Season 6 has to offer.

Favorite Happy Hour: Out back on the porch with my lovely boyfriend Slade Smiley; we pour ourselves a martini or a glass of wine and sit by the fire outside.
Favorite Restaurant: Sorrento Grille in Laguna. I love it, it’s fabulous! It has a great ambiance and it’s a beautiful restaurant with fabulous food.
Favorite Cocktail: An extra dirty martini with blue cheese stuffed olives.
Choice of vodka for your martini: I really like Chopin lately.

What is something only a local would know about Orange County?
The Living Room Salon in Costa Mesa where my hair stylist Victor Paul works—he makes my hair look this good! (Slade added the caves at Corona Del Mar Beach.)

What do you like to do for fun?
I love fashion and I love beauty, so I started a make-up line called Gretchen Christine Beaute, and my handbag collection called Gretchen Christine Collection. I love to play fashion and beauty. So all day, I am designing or thinking of new make-up or playing with my make up; it’s something I really enjoy.

What has the experience been like being on The Real Housewives? 
It’s been a lot of fun. There are always positives and negatives that go along with putting your private life on public display. There have been some great opportunities that come from it, but at the same time there are some tough knocks that come along the way. With anything that you do, people are going to judge it and/or have something to say about it, but at the end of the day you just have to know who you are and say, “look, this is who you are and you either like it or you don’t.”

Before the Housewives, did you ever want into get into the TV business?
I think when I was a little girl and came out of the womb, I said “haha, here I am world!” But my parents really kept me very guarded from that whole industry. I got asked a lot growing up to be involved in the industry and I kept turning it down before Housewives came around. I actually got asked by three other reality shows and I turned them down. So, when Housewives came along… I decided to go for it. At the time, my late fiancé Jeff was the one that really convinced me to do the show. It’s been a journey ever since and that’s for sure. (Wonder which “reality shows” Wretched turned down?  Probably “The Bachelor”…)

From the show, who are you the closest with? 
Currently on this cast, I’m closest with Alexis, but the new girl Peggy that came into the new season—I really like her and we’ve been bonding over the last couple months we’ve been filming. (Peggy Tanous did not agree with Bravo re her storyline and will only be seen in the first two episodes of season seven…)

Some people may not know you were in real estate prior to Housewives, why did you get into that? 
This is actually an interesting story. When 9/11 happened, I wrote a list of everything and anything that I wanted to accomplish in my life, from everything to traveling the world to get my real estate license. So, I started going down the list and knocking things off, and I got my real estate license. As soon as I got it, so many people said, “you’d be great in the business and it’s a very lucrative business in Newport Beach, why don’t you go for it!” I ended up getting hooked up with the top agent in Newport Beach and worked my ass off 80 hours a week and I ended up doing really well. I loved it and it really brought in my background in my degree in Psychology from college, which seems weird, but it really did. You wear so many different hats in the industry and I really enjoyed it. (FYI: Slade was also in RE…)

What do you do to stay calm from all the drama that Real Housewives bring to the table? 
I drink a lot and go to a lot of happy hours! No, just kidding. I have been very blessed to have a great family and great people around me. I really surround myself with great people and I have my faith, and I’m not going to lie, things get tough. There are some hard knocks that came my way, but I have been fortunate to have my faith and have my family and friends that really know who I am and support me. At the end of the day, women tearing women down is not a positive environment to be in, so I’ve kind of stepped back and removed myself from being involved in a lot of that and you’ll really see me in Season 6, and I really say what I need to say. Hopefully, I can make an impression that women really need to empower each other, build each other up, and not tear each other down.  (Has Wretched sent this message to Miss Andy or the RHOOC producers?  If so, they are not listening!)

Speaking of drama, what can fans expect from this upcoming season? Any juicy gossip you can fill fans in on? 
Season 6 is going to be very interesting and what’s exciting for me is that Orange County, and all of the women on the show, we really have a story to tell. What’s great about the concept of the show is that life happens and you don’t know what’s going to happen, like I talked about earlier—it covers everything like divorce and relationships, being step-moms and getting married. All of us are changing. Personally, I’ve been through a lot, I lost my fiancé to cancer and had to get back on my feet. I’m in a new relationship and debating whether or not I should get married or not, am I ready to have kids, am I too old to have kids, there’s so many things I struggle with in my daily life. One thing I learned that is so neat is that you don’t have to be perfect to have a perfect, amazing life. (Clearly, Wretched got back on her feet quickly!  Guess her “kids/marriage” storyline will continue in season seven!)

What do you think about all these other Real Housewives in other areas (Atlanta, New Jersey, New York, and Beverly Hills)? 
You know, it’s interesting with all the Housewives that are popping up. The concept of The Real Housewives franchise is amazing and I think that every single person in the country can relate to probably one person that they see in some franchise, and that’s what makes the show successful. Ultimately at the end of the day, we’ve become the modern day soap opera. Everybody watches what goes on in each person’s life and we’re all dealing with life’s issues; everything from to divorce, to relationships to friendships, to sickness, to happy times, to marriage. It’s so many things that all of us are dealing with across the board and most people in the country are dealing with some aspect of it in some shape or form.   (Hmmmm… did Wretched answer the question???)

Are you still dating Slade? 
So, I am dating the very fabulous, beautiful Slade Smiley. Slade gets a lot of slack, (did Wretched mean “flack?”) but it’s okay because its just part of the game and this industry. But Slade is truly one of the most amazing fabulous, unbelievable men I have ever met. He takes such good care of me. He does things for me that I didn’t know that a man can do. Simple things like when I get up from the table and he stands up and pulls my chair out or puts my napkin on my lap when I sit down at the table. There are so many things in this day in age; men just don’t have the same traditional ways on how to treat a woman. And Slade has those things in him and I just adore him with all my heart. And I’m not just saying that because he’s sitting right there.  (As seen in season six, Slade also is great at carrying Wretched’s handbags and Beaute products for Wretched!)

You have started two businesses; tell me about Gretchen Christine Beaute and Gretchen Christine Collection 
The handbag line is going great! Our first launch was on Shop NBC this past July and we sold 83%, which is huge for a first time launch of any brand. We’re just plugging along like any new company is. We have some great new designs coming in for this fall and we have a new spring collection we’re working on, and we’ve been invited to come back by Shop NBC. We will sell them on my website GretchenChristine.com and I’m really excited about it!

Do you have anything to tell those people that consider you as a role model? 
I can tell any girl at a young age two things that are important. First of all, never decide that you’re going to let a man take care of you, that’s really the bottom line. I was a very successful real estate agent before I met Jeff. I met Jeff and he seemed like my Prince Charming and I stopped working to be there with him and travel with him and then unfortunately he got sick. Life happens and things happen, you really have to take care of yourself and be in charge of your own life and I was really in a bad place financially after he passed away and I had to get back on my feet. That’s why I pursued everything that I love in the fashion and beauty industry. I really had to start from scratch, so my advice is, “make things for yourself and make life for yourself.”  The next thing that is really important is dream big and go for it because nobody is going to stop you, but yourself.  (Jeff did leave Wretched some cash…)

What’s the Gretchen Project? 
The Gretchen Project was actually a project that came together to really encourage women to look and feel their best. I’m all about looking and feeling your best and that’s why I came out with a make-up line that is affordable to the everyday women and why I have the Gretchen Christine Collection. You can have access to beautiful high-end looking bags without paying that expensive price. The Gretchen Project has the same concept behind it and learning how to look and feel your best without having to spend a lot of money and not necessarily going under the knife. I am probably the only housewives that still haven’t gone under the knife, anyway. I haven’t had by boobs done, I haven’t had my nose done, I haven’t had cheek fillers or lip fillers or any of that stuff and most of the housewives have, at least in my franchise, and I’m proud of that. I feel that you should be able to say, “look at me, this is how I am and I don’t have to inject myself with a lot of stuff,” but I’m not against it, because maybe in twenty years from now I might stick some stuff in me. That’s what the Gretchen Project was all about, to bring information to the consumers and is the pursuit of everlasting beauty!  (Isn’t that the goal of any of these Housewives selling any of their products??)

What is one of the proudest moments in your life?
That’s a tough one because there’s been a few things that I’ve been proud about, but honestly the proudest moment is when I bought my own home. I worked so hard and I was a young 26 year old working woman, and to buy a home in the Newport Beach area is great.

What are your day-to-day duties?
You know it’s interesting, because a normal day in my life is really low-key. I love the beauty and the make-up, I love the big jewelry, I love the fun coats and I’m the first girl to get dressed up, and play dress up. Really a lot of people out in public meet me with no make-up on, with sweats on, and see me running through Target.

 Gretchen, Slade and Grayson… not Target, but CVS is close enough!

I’m not the type of girl that has to go buy designer everything, I am your everyday girl. I am a hardworking woman trying to get my businesses off the ground. I am with the love of my life right now and spending everyday just working hard and trying to be a normal person. And that’s the thing that sometimes lots of people forget; they only see you as a celebrity because they see me on TV, but I am not! I put my pants on the same way as everyone else, but I just happen to have cameras there filming it.  (Well, then Wretched is NOT “your everyday girl”… “everyday” girls don’t have cameras filming them!  Why do these Housewives continually attempt to convince viewers of how “everyday” or “real” they are???)

What’s one thing in your fridge that you can’t live without?
That’s a bad question because literally my fridge never has anything in it. I travel so much and constantly on the go and I’m very spontaneous. Oh…cheese! I love cheese! I’m like a mouse and I eat cheese all day long. Or turkey bacon, but I only eat it once a day and I eat cheese like twelve times a day!

Then how do you stay so thin when you eat bacon and cheese all day? What’s the secret?
It’s Turkey Bacon! What’s interesting is that I have taken a long time to get to this place but truly it’s doing everything in moderation. There’s not one thing that I allow myself not to have, I have desserts, I have drinks and all that stuff, but you just have to do it moderation. I eat all day long and people assume that I work out all day long, but hell to the no! I don’t have time for that! I literally walk around when I’m cooking dinner and pick up my weights and do ten reps or when I’m sitting down watching TV, or I’ll do twenty sit-ups or whatever. All throughout the day, I’m working out. A lot of people think they have to dedicate an hour or two hours to working out, and I really think you can stay in shape if you take a brisk walk and then come back in the afternoon and grab your weights. I have weights all over my house – upstairs, downstairs, in the kitchen, in the garage; everywhere and I literally just pick them up every once in a while and do some sets. I swear, it works!