Camille Grammer: I Tried to Quit Real Housewives

USMagazine, Wednesday, February 16, 2011, 10:40am (PST)

Camille Grammer almost couldn't go through with Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

The Bravo star reveals that she gave the cable network her resignation in the middle of filming the hit reality show's first season -- only to be coaxed back by her future ex-husband Kelsey.

"I don't know if I can say this, but I quit at one point," Grammer, 42, tells TV.com in a new interview. "I did. Because it was too much."

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As the world knows now, Camille and Kelsey's 13-year marriage was secretly disintegrating off-camera -- thanks in part to his affair with Kayte Walsh, a 29-year-old British flight attendant who is now his fiancee.

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"I didn't know how much I could expose at the time," Camille explains. "I was holding a lot back because I had known for a while that things were not right between my husband and I. So it's very difficult filming a reality show while you're going through this process, and hurt, and devastation."

She explains: "I quit for, you know, a couple of weeks."

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What convinced her to return? "Actually Kelsey called me and said, 'You have an obligation to do the show. You have to finish the show.' So I said, okay. He also asked me to come to the Tonys." (Camille has charged in the past that it was her husband who convinced her to do the series as he carried on his affair.)

Soon thereafter, Kelsey, 55, had another, much more devastating request. States Camille: "He said, 'I've been thinking about it, and I just don't want to be married any longer.'"

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Kelsey denied any affair -- but still insisted she come as his date to the  Tony Awards in NYC, where he was a nominee. Camille understandably protested. "I said that I felt too uncomfortable and upset, and I don't understand why I would have to come. And he said, 'Listen, you have an obligation to finish out the show. You have to come.' He also mentioned that maybe we could talk things through and work it out. That gave me a glimmer of hope that maybe we could spark some romance that weekend. But at that point, he was already gone."

Indeed, their divorce was finalized last week, and Kelsey is set to wed Kayte by the end of February.

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