Shannon Beador spoke candidly about the moments that led up to her DUI and hit-and-run arrest during a podcast appearance on Tuesday.
Three months after the Real Housewives of Orange County star, 59, was arrested after driving into a home in Newport Beach, California, Shannon expressed regret as she looked back on an argument she had with former boyfriend John Janssen before she drove and confessed to thinking the show would improve her marriage to ex-husband David Beador.
“I still look back on it and I have a hard time,” Shannon admitted on the December 26 episode of Bravo’s Hot Mic podcast. “I am a huge proponent of Uber. My CFO yells at me every month because my Uber bill is so high. So, if there was even a possibility of me having one sip of alcohol, I always take an Uber.”
On the night in question, Shannon enjoyed an early dinner with friends from her new neighborhood before realizing she left her phone in the Uber that drove her home. From there, she “stupidly got in the car” and drove to the home of John, who is now dating RHOC alum Alexis Bellino, 46.
“I got in an argument with John, and so he asked me to leave, and I was angry, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m not going to leave my car here,’ so I got in my car to drive the three blocks,” she revealed. “I was angry, very angry, and I made a horrible mistake, and I have to tell you — I don’t want to get teary-eyed — it keeps me up at night to think I could have hurt somebody. I’m just so grateful that I didn’t.”
“I made a terrible mistake and I sit back and think, like, ‘Why did this happen?’ But it has forced me to look in and take an inventory of myself and realize what wasn’t working in my life,” she added.
Following the news of her DUI, Shannon was offered free rehab stays but opted for “intensive outpatient therapy” at a behavioral wellness center instead.
“I want to figure out why I make certain toxic and unhealthy choices in my life,” she explained of the choice she made. “There was an alcohol component to it, and in this particular time of my life, have I been drinking way more than normal? Absolutely. And so I’m able to look at all of that and see how I don’t want that to be the life. I wasn’t happy. I think you can see that, too, in the last season. I wasn’t willing to acknowledge it.”
Through therapy, Shannon realized she was still struggling with past trauma from her childhood.
“There’s some childhood traumas that I’ve tried to bury… [And] I’m working through that now because I don’t want to make the same bad choices again,” she noted. “I’m almost 60 years old, and I do want to get married and have a happy life. Working through all this, I have so much hope. All of this happened for a reason — to get me to this point.”
Although Shannon admitted to “[using] alcohol” to cope at certain points in her life, including the period when she was going through a divorce from David, she insisted she’s “choosing the healthy path right now.”
“I do take accountability for mistakes that I make, and I made a horrible mistake in all of this. But I know what’s best for me, and choosing alcohol to cope when you’re not happy is not a good thing,” she shared. “I’m aware of that, and right now I’m not drinking. And I haven’t drank.”
During another moment of the podcast, Shannon looked back on her troubled marriage to David.
“October 13, 2013, that was my first day of filming, and the very next day, David left on a trip with a group that he was in and he started an affair that very next day. And I had no idea,” Shannon revealed. “And as his ego grew, and as he started losing weight, I thought it was because his ego was getting bigger that he was gonna be on television. I remember asking [Tamra Judge] about that. Like, ‘Did [Simon Barney] all of a sudden get cocky like this?’ And I was so stupid, I had no idea.”
According to Shannon, she actually felt that joining RHOC would help her marriage.
“I knew that David didn’t spend any time with me and I thought — this is my a**-backwards way of thinking — I thought if he watched the show back and saw how little time he spent with me, he would make more of an effort. Because in those rare times that we did go out to dinner, we would have fun and I would feel a connection with him. I just wanted more of that,” she explained. “Most people would say, ‘I don’t want to ruin my marriage and be on the show.’ I was thinking, ‘Oh maybe he could learn something from it.’”
Looking back at the drama that followed the reveal of David’s affair, Shannon said she’d likely have done things differently had she not been on television.
“I think I would have left the marriage right away,” she claimed. “But part of me, I was working on the marriage for my first season and it was all fake with him, and I thought, ‘I’m gonna fight for my family. I had been fighting for this marriage this whole season so I’m gonna keep fighting.’ I don’t know if I would have kept up the fight had I not been on the show.”
Also on the podcast, Shannon threw shade at the RHOC cast — at least some of them.
“If the concern from my cast was genuine, then I appreciate it. [But] I don’t know if it was genuine in all cases,” she admitted.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 18 is expected to begin filming sometime in January.
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