‘RHOP’ Star Monique Samuels Says There Is ‘No Future’ for Reconciliation With Candiace Dillard After Fight (Exclusive)

Monique Samuels doesn’t see any kind of future in which she and Candiace Dillard can forgive and forget after The Real Housewives of Potomac co-star’s major fight, grimly hinted at during Sunday’s Season 5 premiere of the Bravo series. Ahead of this weekend’s all-new episode, Samuels opened up to PopCulture.com about the “very difficult” season and how it inspired her anthemic new song, “Drag Queens.”

The RHOP season kicked off with a dramatic glimpse at the altercation, which resulted in both Dillard and Samuels taking legal action against each other in November 2019, although all charges were dropped. While Samuels and Dillard have had ups and downs over their years on the show together, the Not for Lazy Moms founder said this was a death blow for their relationship. “Look, at any point that somebody wants to put me in jail and makes an attempt to try to put me in jail, I am done,” she told us in our series, PopCulture @ Home. “There is no future.”

It comes as no surprise that with an explosive episode like that, Samuels called this season “one of my most challenging seasons yet,” which inspired her to pen “Drag Queens” as a stress-reliever while staying silent about what had gone down. “It’s an anthem for me because … it’s reiterating what my belief system is, the fact that I don’t mess with you unless you come messing with me,” she explained. “So a lot of that, just reminding myself who I am, what I stand for, what I’m about and I was hoping that people would accept it as the anthem that it is.”

Looking back on this season, Samuels said she has since learned in therapy that she is a “reactor,” and more able to identify things that trigger her negatively. “You’ll see this season as I go on this journey of just self-discovery and just trying to connect all the dots, you’ll see that I actually learned some things about myself that I didn’t know,” she explained. “That helps me to be very confident in saying that the things that you see coming up won’t happen again, because now I’m more aware, I’m more aware of knowing what my triggers are so that if I am triggered, I can remove myself.”

Despite everything that happened, Samuels said she tries not to have regrets about anything. “I try to make sure that I can turn it into a teachable moment and a learning lesson and that’s what it was,” she told PopCulture. “Had that never happened, I probably never would have thought to see a professional therapist. […] So the fact that that situation led me to do that, and then discover things about myself that I didn’t realize, it’s a blessing in disguise. It really is.”

For more of Samuels’ on-camera journey, The Real Housewives of Potomac airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo. For more on your favorite Bravo stars, click here, and for everything reality TV and entertainment, keep it locked to PopCulture.com!