Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Heather Gay opens up about her exit from the Mormon church in the forthcoming three-part Bravo documentary Surviving Mormonism, in which she also sheds lights on divisive topics including conversion therapy.
The reality star, 51, departed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when she joined the cast of the Bravo series in 2020.
The Carmel-by-the-Sea, California-born TV personality told People on Tuesday that she felt spiritually fulfilled by putting together the documentary about the church.
‘I never thought that being an antagonist to my faith and identity and family and community would feel this empowering and fulfilling, but it does,’ the Brigham Young University alum said.
Gay said she felt ‘compelled to do more’ to spread awareness toward issues she feels needs the public’s attention.
The Bravo docuseries also features interviews conducted with former members of the Mormon church.
‘I feel very, very precious about these survivors, about their willingness to share with me,’ Gay said. ‘They’re telling a Real Housewife their darkest secrets.
‘That takes a leap of faith, and I feel such a kinship to them.’
Gay credited the 2016 Leah Remini doc Scientology and the Aftermath as an inspiration in turning her own personal experience with the Mormon church into a documentary.
‘I thought what she did was so important and, in a legitimate way, giving visibility and a platform to voices that were silenced,’ Gay said. ‘That was very similar to my experience when I left the Mormon church.’
Gay said she ‘didn’t really realize how similar that experience was until [she] left.’
Gay said she especially appreciated Remini’s work in looking back on her own experiences with faith, and how she couldn’t necessarily see the entirety of the situation.
‘When I was in it, rainbows and unicorns, great,’ Gay said. ‘But when you leave and when you draw a line in the sand, I recognized and heard for the first time really just an onslaught of people’s experiences that were about surviving Mormonism.’
Gay continued: ‘If you’re in it, you don’t hear of those stories. You don’t speak of them. No one talks about them.
‘They are sidelined and silenced and made to disappear. The second you leave, you’re hearing it for the first time. I was hearing criticisms of the church for the first time.’
Gay said last month in an Instagram post that she was ‘deeply grateful to the brave participants who shared their stories of faith and survival for this docuseries. I know when you hear them you will feel the same.’
The reality star told People that she felt ostracized upon departing the religious institution.
She has past opened up about that experience in her books Bad Mormon (2023) and Good Time Girl (2024).
Gay, upon her departure from the church, said she ‘felt obligated’ and ‘a deep responsibility’ to share stories of experiences she had while an active member.
‘Leaving has taught me and exposed me to so many people that had stories to tell and wanted to share that with me,’ Gay said.
She added, ‘I suddenly had this opportunity to meet people from all over the world that wanted to share their stories with me, and that felt very powerful and inspiring.’
Gay stressed to People that she wasn’t trying to slam the institution, but just rather shed light on crucial things that have happened on their watch.
‘I don’t think this is a show about tearing down the church,’ Gay said. ‘I think this is a show about giving space to survivors that experience the shadow side of something that we all find fascinating, but no one ever talks about.
‘It’s not about the church. It’s about what people that survived the church have to say now.’
Said Gay: ‘I think the church should be worried about the show because the church says that they stand for truth and righteousness and love and humanity.’
Surviving Mormonism with Heather Gay is slated to debut Tuesday on Bravo at 9:45 p.m. ET.
Quick on the heels of famously sassy, phrase-turning R&B singer and reality TV star Tamar Braxton’s announcement her recently released album, “Bluebird of Happiness,” will be her last — at least for a while — and news that her husband, music executive husband Vincent Herbert, founder of Streamline Records, was legally ordered to pay Sony more than $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit over a 2013 advance, the couple hoisted their grandly proportioned and glamorously appointed Mediterranean mansion in Calabasas, Calif., up for sale at $15 million.
The Herbert-Braxtons, married in late 2007 after about five years together, purchased the 13,716-square-foot mansion inside the double-gated Estates at The Oaks enclave in April 2013 for $10.5 million and public records show since then there have been several notices of default filed and subsequently canceled against the two-acre spread that provides a total of seven bedrooms and nine full and two half bathrooms between the main house and poolside guesthouse.
Wrought iron and glass front doors open to an entry vestibule and foyer with black and white floral-patterned inlaid floor and a floating, wrought iron railed staircase that curves up to the bedrooms on the second floor. The main living and entertaining space makes a great sweep across the rear of the residence with gleaming wide-plank hardwood floors laid in a classy chevron pattern.
A central gallery with glossy grand piano is flanked to one side by a lounge with semi-circular sofa in front of an ornate fireplace and to the other by a “champagne bar” modeled after The Dorchester Hotel in London with tufted velvet sofas and a stately wood-paneled ceiling.
Arched French doors open the vast space to an immense, stone-paved loggia with retractable canvas shade awnings and a bowling alley-length dining table that easily seats at least two-dozen al fresco diners. With elaborately carved cabinetry, granite countertops and a super-sized commercial-style range under a hand-hammered copper hood, the kitchen is open to a spacious informal dining area that, in turn, opens to a family room with fireplace and French doors to the backyard.
The three-story mansion’s creature comfort also include a home theater, a game room, an office, a wine cellar with tasting room and, unsurprisingly, a recording studio along with an elevator, an camera-equipped security system, a gentlemen’s lounge with authentic barber chair, a mirror-walled gym and a subterranean parking garage that will accommodate over a dozen cars. The mansion makes a U-shaped embrace around a broad and grassy courtyard with swimming pool and spa beyond which a soccer pitch-sized lawn gives way to a panoramic view over rugged ravines and undeveloped mountaintops.
Some of the other, equally sized and similarly luxurious estates in The Estates sections of The Oaks are owned by reality television’s Kourtney and Khloé Kardashian, Michael Jackson’s mother Katherine Jackson, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and Jay McGraw, elder son of extraordinarily well-compensated TV therapist Dr. Phil McGraw, and his Playboy model wife Erica Dahm.