“I got this letter from an attorney for the Dubrow family reminding me I made a statement that may sound like truth, when in fact it was a joke and for that, I am offering my sincere apology,” the former reality star, 45, said via her Instagram Story on Tuesday, July 6.

Kelly previously said that she caught COVID-19 from Heather’s son, Nicholas, 17. However, she revealed on Tuesday that she didn’t mean her statement to be taken seriously.

“I did get COVID at a party New Year’s Eve, and Heather Dubrow’s son and his friends were all there. And while I had information leading us all to believe we could’ve gotten COVID from them, because we all — like, 24 of us — got COVID that night, we obviously have no way of proving or knowing for sure he or his friends were the source of our infection,” she said. “And for that, I apologize. I’m going on the record right now to be very clear: Rick and I don’t know how we caught the virus, and we’re both very very sorry for any trouble we caused the Dubrow family.”

The Positive Beverage cofounder made her original comment after revealing she and her husband, Rick Leventhal, were getting vaccinated after contracting the virus earlier this year. The former Bravolebrity previously came under fire for calling the coronavirus “God’s way of thinning the herd” in April 2020.

Months later, Heather, 52, slammed Kelly for her controversial comments.

“I mean, you know, cancel culture is such a tricky thing because when there’s gray area it’s hard ’cause [it] can ruin people’s lives and careers and whatnot. Having said that, and having not seen exactly what was said, I’ll tell you this: a leopard doesn’t change its spots, right?,” the Jenny alum said during a January appearance on her 17-year-old daughter Max‘s “I’ll Give It to You Straightish” podcast. ”People show you who they are. And at some point, you have to listen.”

Kelly revealed last month that she was fired from RHOC after joining the series in 2016.

“You want somebody to love to hate you, or you want people to really love you, but I have a million followers and they are diehard, like, fans, and they love me. And then I have, then I have this little group of people that are the cancel culture that hate me,” she noted during a June appearance on SiriusXM’s Jeff Lewis Live. “And so they’re the loud ones. They’re the, actually the ones that can’t afford to. The woke, broke people. They love to hate me.”

Heather, meanwhile, will be rejoining the show after her 2016 exit.

“Honestly, a year ago or two years ago, I might’ve said no,” she said during a June episode of her “Heather Dubrow’s World” podcast. “Now, things are a little bit different, right? My family’s in a different place, my kids are a little bit older, the [coronavirus] pandemic has sort of given me a different perspective on things. Then I started thinking about, ‘OK, how many times do you get to go back and try something again?’”

This story originally appeared on: US Magazine - Author:Sophia Vilensky