Shocker: Karen Huger Skips ‘Real Housewives of Potomac’ Reunion, Enters Rehab

Not a second of footage has aired from the upcoming Real Housewives of Potomac reunion, which was filmed on Jan. 9 in New York City, but it’s already explosive—and fans are shocked.

Karen Huger, who relishes her moniker “The Grande Dame of Potomac” and is among the show’s original cast members, did not show up to the taping, as revealed in the seating chart that was posted to social media on Thursday.

That is table-flipping, leg-throwing, returning-the-bunny level news for fans of Real Housewives.

Andy Cohen, the Grand Poobah of all things ladies who boozily lunch, famously has a rule: If you don’t show up to the reunion, you don’t get invited back to the show next season.

That’s something that Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum Lisa Vanderpump and Salt Lake City’s Mary Cosby attest to. (Though both were hardly dead to Bravo after; LVP maintained her position as the Matron of Lunatics on Vanderpump Rules), and Cosby was eventually brought back to RHOSLC.)

A representative for Huger confirmed that the RHOP veteran was a reunion no-show: “Karen made the important decision to enter a private recovery program, so was unable to attend the reunion taping today. She was fully supported in this choice. We stand behind Karen as she embarks on this meaningful journey and are proud of her for taking such a significant step forward in her personal growth.”

That Huger entered a private recovery program is major news of its own, as, prior to the statement, viewers speculated that Huger may have skipped the reunion so as to not have to face the heat sure to come at her like a firehose from the rest of the cast after being found guilty on five of six charges related to a March 2024 drunk driving car crash.

Following her conviction, a series of videos of her were released from the crime scene, in the cop car, and being interrogated, in which she was extremely intoxicated, smug, belligerent, and insulting to officers—and generally, in Bravoverse terms, an absolute mess.

Throughout the season of RHOP, which is currently airing on Sunday nights, Huger has maintained that, despite the charges against her, the incident wasn’t as bad as it was being made out to be, deflected any criticism or accountability, and would only engage in conversation about what happened on a surface level, in the briefest of terms. She’d gone as far as saying that she’d be “vindicated” by her trial.

So the release of the footage from the crash, portraying a much darker reality than the one that Huger had been attempting to render on camera, landed like an atom bomb on her carefully manicured story and reputation.

On their podcast Reasonably Shady, current cast member Gizelle Bryant and former Housewife Robyn Dixon reacted to the videos of Huger. “I was like... If this is being vindicated, I don’t wanna see what being guilty is,” Dixon said. Bryant followed up, “Well, you saw guilty. Actually, there was the mini-movie called ‘Where Your Wig At?’ ... You’re guilty as charged.”

There is a path forward for Huger, Bravo fans were quick to point out. In 2018, Real Housewives of New York City star Luann de Lesseps missed her show’s Season 10 reunion after checking into rehab for a second time, following her first stint in the wake of a drunken New Year’s Eve arrest in Palm Beach.

Famously, de Lesseps returned to RHONY the next season with a new perspective, an enriched passion for cabaret, and a boundless amount of sanctimony that made for deliciously insufferable TV.

It begs the question: How’s Huger’s rendition of “Fever”?