The Real Housewives of Vancouver Cast Blog: Mary Zilba

Following each episode, a cast member of The Real Housewives of Vancouver will blog about their experience on the show for Dose.ca. For the fifth episode, Mary Zilba discusses why she decided to do the show, her unexpected friendship with Christina, Jody’s propensity to lie and the frustrating events that led to the fall out with her “sister,” Ronnie.

It wasn’t an easy decision whether to take the show or not.  I vacillated quite a bit, as I became more aware of the stigma attached to the show and felt that this show could have the potential to decimate everything I’d worked hard all my life to build and I really wasn’t sure I’d fit the bill of a “housewife”.  However, as much as there were cons, there also were pros. I weighed them out.

At the time the show approached me, I had been going through a transitionarytime in my life, having just went through a difficult break-up and being that my children were much more independent, I’d been actively seeking out opportunities to get back into the entertainment business in some capacity.  I’d been discussing with my LA agent hosting/TV work again, while simultaneously thinking of recording another CD.  I’d also been dabbling into fashion and beauty products.  After very careful consideration and talking it over with my family and close friends, I started to convince myself that perhaps this show could provide me with ample opportunities not only for myself professionally, but also assist as a huge platform and voice for the many charitable organizations I support, especially Tuberous Sclerosis Canada of which I sit on the board.

In this episode, Ronnie and I have a big falling out.  We have known each other for nearly 20 years and although there have been breaks of time in our friendship and hurt feelings between us and arguments, etc., we seem to always somehow get through it and get back on the horse.  We have been through a lot together, as you can imagine.  Marriage, divorce, births, deaths, catastrophic events, joyous events and if there is ever a serious problem in either of our lives, on speaking terms or not, we call each other first.  So, probably in that way we are like sisters.

In the episode, Jody suggests that Ronnie is jealous of me and I one hundred per cent do not agree with her. We have very different lifestyles and always have for all of our years as friends and jealousy from my perspective has never been an issue.  Jody, btw, suggests a lot of things that fall under the inaccurate category!

As much as at the time of my falling out with Ronnie I felt so hurt and alienated, there was a silver lining and that was that Christina and I developed such a strong bond.  On the surface we are very different: she is single with no children and carefree and I am a mom with three boys and more conservative, but we are very similar in our dispositions and share the same sense of humour.  She and I will be life-long friends, I believe.

At the end of the episode, Ronnie and I have it out in my hotel room. There was so much leading up to that night and I felt like I had just taken enough of the bullying from everyone. Ronnie and I had just made up with respect to the issue at Grace and the text message fight and I just wasn’t up for any more of it.  I had invited the girls over for a nice get together, which I had wanted to be fun and I just couldn’t believe that they couldn’t be civil and nice.  When we sat down for what I thought was going to be a friendly chat, Ronnie started a line of questions that wasn’t going anywhere pleasant.  She became confrontational and started rehashing the past and started in on Christina for defending me and at that point I also realized that she had completely made up a lie to Jody in saying that I said she wasn’t Jewish! It was ludicrous! I’d just said, ‘Enough…’ I wasn’t going to listen to it any longer. The night for me had to end.

I asked Ronnie to leave and the rest left in tow. I felt so upset that I had tried to plan a nice night and thought we’d all have dinner together, but once again it turned into a disaster.  I felt like a little girl on the playground who no one wanted to be around…it was very humiliating.  I truly never knew grown women could act so disgustingly mean.

The Real Housewives of Vancouver airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on Slice.

More on The Real Housewives of Vancouver:
Top 5 WTF moments from episode 5 (On Canada.com)

Previous cast blog:
Episodes 1 & 2 – Christina Kiesel
Episode 3 – Jody Claman
Episode 4 – Reiko MacKenzie