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“It means a lot, it really does, that people are identifying with me and relating to me,” he said. Real Housewives of Dubai season 2 newcomer tells ET about the fan love she’s felt so far. “At the end of the day, I’m not Meryl Streep. We’re, like, at rock bottom as far as celebrities go, like, I’m not going to let it go to my head.”
The woman who brought her into the group, however, seems to believe that Taleen is doing just that. Carolina Brooks has made no secret that she thinks Taleen has an ego, calling her out on social media as the season airs on Bravo, in part because she’s not grateful to her original wife for helping her secure a spot on the show.
“Brooks had a really good intention, you know? We obviously had a friendship coming into the show,” Taleen acknowledges. “She put my name forward. She also put, like, seven other people’s names forward, and other people’s names forward, too.”
“Am I grateful? Absolutely,” Taleen continues. “But I walked through that door myself. I’m never going to be blindly loyal to anyone. When I see something’s wrong, I speak up. That’s just the way I am, and she didn’t like that, right? I think she wanted me to be kind of her sidekick, and she put these preconceived notions of some of the other women in my head. She was doing that long before we started filming, but then when I walked in, I was like, I’m really into these girls.”
Taleen says she found friendship with the other Caroline in the group, Carolina Stanburywas “kind of going against (Brooks’) game plan.”
“She dragged almost everyone in the cast except Sarah (Al Madani)“, Taleen says about Brooks’ preseason game planning with her, listing Stanbury, Lesa Milan It is Chanel Ayan as Brooks’ favorites to beat.
Taleen says he joined the friend group looking to, well, make friends. This apparently proved problematic for Brooks, who suggested that Taleen strategically pursued Stanbury, playing Housewives like a game.
“Absolutely not,” Taleen counters. “I went in trying to give everyone a fair chance. I didn’t actually film with Stanbury that much, but… I connected with Stanbury.”
Taleen claims that Brooks “was doing everything in his power” to prevent her from having a relationship with Stanbury. This comes after the events of the Season 2 premiere, during which Brooks came to Taleen’s defense over a snide comment Stanbury made about seeing Taleen’s private parts when she fell into a Beyonce concert. The comment seemed to bother Brooks much more than it did Taleen, who managed to sweep it under the rug and not use it as fuel to create a petty fight. Housewives “time.”
“It wasn’t choosing Stanbury over Brooks, letting Brooks down,” she makes clear. “I’m not that calculating, I really am not. I went with my genuine self. Carolina Stanbury and I ended up becoming great friends. I wasn’t choosing anyone over anyone else.”
What Taleen it was What she’s doing, she says, is realizing things about her friend of nearly a decade. Behavior she used to turn a blind eye to has become hard to ignore with reality TV cameras in her face. She tried to talk about these feelings over a private dinner, which Brooks abruptly ended when she didn’t like the direction the conversation was going.
“I think TV changes people,” she reflects. “She’s not the Brooks I knew 10 years ago. When I came into the group, I think just the dynamic and all of that, it changed her and transformed her, and I hope that somehow we can come back to a better place.”
“This is a build-up, years– it wasn’t just me coming on the show, it was before we even started filming, there was tension building,” Taleen shares. “There was manipulation going on, and tension between my husband and her. I think she was in his ear as well, and it got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore, and I was really coming at it as a friend, I was coming at it from a good place… and I spoke to her privately,[off-camera]like, ‘Please stop this.’ It wasn’t stopping.”
Things come to a head in Tuesday’s episode when Taleen’s husband, Raffi, Steps in to defend his wife in another verbal altercation with Brooks.
“I was taken aback, because A) my husband is one of the calmest people you’ll ever meet. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. I mean, it’s crazy,” Taleen teases. “For him to get to that point, it takes a lot, but he was really mediating the situation and he was standing up for me, because what you’ll see is that it’s painful for me.”
“People might not agree with it, but it is what it is,” she continues. “And they had a relationship, you know? I met Caroline through my husband and that side of the family. So they have that[history]. He’s not one of those guys who tries to get involved with girls. They had a close relationship.”
It’s a relationship that apparently ended with season 2. Taleen confesses that she and Brooks are not on speaking terms, and haven’t been since filming wrapped. She is well aware of Brooks’ current thoughts on her, however, due to her castmate’s prolific posts online. Brooks laughed off Taleen’s Instagram story about wanting the “truth” to come out at the reunion, and shot down her on-camera claim that she didn’t contact Taleen after Taleen’s family dog died. It turns out that Brooks did contact Taleen’s sister.
“I wish she would have reached out to me,” Taleen laments. “Yeah, she reached out to my sister, which actually, when I filmed that episode, I didn’t even know she had reached out to my sister. She did, okay. My fault.”
Taleen says she didn’t mean to drag Brooks over the condolence message; she was simply venting to her family about the frustration she felt over her friend’s change in behavior.
“I would have appreciated if she had reached out to me, because I had reached out to the girls in the group,” she repeats. “I think that was the painful part of it.”
Even with all that said, Taleen is hopeful about her and Brooks’ future.
“We’re not talking, let’s see what happens in the meeting,” she says. “I’m the kind of person who wants to save it for the meeting, because I want certain things to be resolved, and I want the truth to come out on both sides. I’m a fair person, I’m a logical person. I want to hear her side. I want to explain my side. But right now, unfortunately, we’re not talking. Well, she’s been talking a lot on Twitter, but I want to take a step back and the truth will come out.”
With Brooks no longer her BFF, Taleen calls Stanbury and Ayan her closest friends in the cast. She also bonded with Sara, but is apparently keeping Lesa at arm’s length after Lesa inserted herself into Brooks and Taleen’s feud.
“That was a little hurtful,” Taleen admits. “I’m like, you had nothing to do with this. Just back off. Like, stop.”
Taleen says viewers “are going to see something really sad and heartbreaking between Ayan and Lesa,” which also helped shape her opinion of Lesa.
“I feel for Ayan, because she didn’t deserve what she got,” she says. “There’s still a long way to go before the season ends, and everyone is going to be shocked.”
The biggest shock of RHODubai the second season is the friendship of Ayan and Lesa didn’t survive it. Taleen says the cast is still trying to figure out why, shutting down fan theories that Stanbuy is somehow responsible. However, she may be involved, as a messenger. Taleen reveals the old Ladies of London The star drops a “bombshell” on the cast’s trip to Bali — a bombshell that may or may not involve Lesa and Ayan — that kicks off the season finale.
“It kind of blows up in everyone’s face, and we had no idea it was going to happen,” she says. “It’s kind of an avalanche of drama. Bali is crazy.”
Like Taleen and Brooks, Ayan and Lesa haven’t spoken since the season wrapped filming about a year ago. Taleen is optimistic about their future, as she is with Brooks.
“I have these conversations with Ayan, and I told her, ‘You guys are stronger than this,'” she shares. “Friends, even Brooks and I, there are ups and downs in friendship, and there are ups and downs, and hopefully, I really, genuinely hope that they– Brooks may not want them to be best friends, as you saw in the midseason trailer. She was very happy about that fallout, but I really, genuinely hope that their friendship reconciles, because it was more than just a friendship.”
“At the end of the day, we’re a group of friends, we are,” Taleen says. “I hope we can get past all this bullshit, but there’s a lot to come and you guys are going to love it.”
The Real Housewives of Dubai airs Tuesdays at 9pm ET/PT on Bravo. Episodes stream the next day on Peacock.
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