Alicia Carmody Says ‘RHORI’ Season 2 Is Completely Different: ‘We’re Growing’

Alicia Carmody became a reality television darling in Season 1 of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, and with filming for Season 2 underway this summer, she’s excited for viewers to learn even more about her in the next installment.

“I will always be ditzy, and when I try not to be ditzy, I mess up even harder. But I feel like I’m also very smart, too, with a lot of things, and I’m very intuitive,” Carmody, who’s partnering with Ziploc® for the brand’s new Lunch Confessions campaign, tells TV Insider. “I feel like there’s a lot of things [people] didn’t see [in Season 1]. I’m a great mom. I’m a great dance mom. I organized my entire house with [my fiancé] Billy and his business. I’m definitely ditzy. It’s just who I am. But there’s more to me than dolls, ditz, and crackers.”

Carmody says there’s been a lot of “growth” with her and her castmates in Season 2 so far. “We started off Season 1 literally never knowing what we were doing on a reality TV show,” she explains. “Maybe Ashley [Iaconetti] did becuase she was on a show, but I was like, ‘I’m 40 years old and living in this small state’ … so you saw us being very raw, like, is this going to happen? Is it even going to air? Season 2, we’re like, ‘OK, it’s happening.’ I feel like we’re growing and I think that’s going to be cool for everyone to see.”

Specifically, Carmody points to “relationships” between the castmates growing, along with “the drama that’s still happening and how we’re still trying to figure out how to navigate with our husbands and boyfriends. And how to keep our mouths shut!”

Courtesy of Ziploc

The latter, of course, will not be easy. “When people talk about your family, they say things, and sometimes you don’t even know you would react like that,” she points out. “And then people would be like, ‘Oh, they’re doing it because the cameras are there.’ But when the cameras are there all day long, after a while, you don’t see them anymore.”

Carmody says she “didn’t have any hesitations” about returning for Season 2, but admits she’s more cautious about some of her actions. “I was more worried about, like, ‘Oh my God, I want to hide some of the things that I did,’ like [loving] crackers,” she laughs. “I don’t want people to think I’m performative. So I was more worried about that.”

Looking back at Season 1, Carmody says it was “hard” to relive some of the feelings that came up during filming. “It’s things that you say that you can’t take back, that all of [Billy’s] family could see and my family could see,” she explains. “So, I kind of have to be more aware of that, but it’s like … I don’t know how to fake it.”

Idris Solomon/Bravo

Her favorite moment from the first season was the moment she presented Billy with new ideas for their restaurant Pizza Mamma. “It was a family moment and I felt like it was emotional, it was fun, and it actually all came true,” she shares. “Everything that I did and that board all happened and I stuck with it and we saw results and I’m proud of myself. I can do it. And I don’t care if I didn’t do it on a computer presentation the way I was supposed to. I did it old school and it got the message through.”

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Amid filming Season 2, Alicia is working with Ziploc® for Lunch Confessions, “a new campaign designed to take the pressure off parents and celebrate the honest, practical ways families pack lunch.”

Carody’s personal lunch confession is that she favors “a lot of pre-made meals,” such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, frozen waffles, cheese sticks, pepperoni, and crackers. “It doesn’t always have to be perfect and my daughter’s happy with it anyway,” she notes, adding that other parents can share their own lunch confessions on Reddit as a way to “embrace the systems that already work in their homes.”