Ashley Darby, 32, has been a staple on Real Housewives of Potomac since day 1 — but she recently admitted she almost quit the Bravo series four seasons in. “I actually almost didn’t do the show because I was feeling like there was no way I could share [my postpartum depression battle],” Ashley revealed to HollywoodLife in an Aug. 17 episode of TVTalk. “There’s no way that I could let a camera crew into my house. I was feeling so anti. It took a little bit of convincing for me to get back on the train, but now I’m on full swing, choo choo, but I almost wasn’t,” she went on, confessing how she came to the decision to stay on the show for the drama-filled fifth season.
“It was a lot of people. I didn’t realize how much support I had and how strong my tribe was until I expressed what I was going through and yes, all of the ladies reached out to me almost and my husband was supportive, my mom, my friends,” the Maryland native said. “I actually get emotional thinking about it because those people care about me more than I even knew and it spoke volumes. When I couldn’t give anything in return, they were all giving to me and that meant so much to me,” Ashley — who welcomed her son Dean with husband Michael Darby in July 2019 — explained.
Despite being open about her struggles, Ashley also said she’s not “nervous” to share what she went through with Bravo viewers. “I’m not nervous to relive it because I’ve made a lot of progress with it,” she went on. “I’m not going to lie, quarantine, while the circumstances are not great, the fact that I get to be with my son every day all day and I get to do interviews virtually and everything, it really is a silver lining for me, but it was real,” she also said. Just five months after giving birth, Ashley revealed her incredible weight loss at BravoCon and looked better than ever.
“After Dean was born, I lived in this euphoric, just so happy state and then once real life hit and I realized that I had to function like an adult and I had all these other responsibilities, it all just became very overwhelming,” the RHOP star also revealed. “I started feeling like I wasn’t able to balance being a woman and a mother. I felt like I was only a mother and it was just the most all consuming fear for my child about everything else that could happen. In the newborn bubble, people respect that you are together when it’s just you and the baby but then real life hits and they expect you to be out and open and that was very challenging for me,” she explained.