The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City‘s Angie Katsanevas had way more than her mounds of luggage to unpack after participating in Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition.
During the Bravo crossover experiment, Angie swapped lives with off-the-grid homesteader Lindsay Flake, whose family lives in rural Challis, Idaho — without electricity, running water, and rules. After getting a taste (sometimes literally) of the family’s nature-centered lifestyle, Angie introduced the Flakes to her glam life.
Living off the land and a gag-inducing cleaning of the family’s composting toilet, for example, would be a jarring undertaking for any city dweller. As Angie explained in an exclusive, fourth wall-breaking interview with The Daily Dish, the experience was even more exhausting, given that she had just wrapped filming RHOSLC when she jetted off to rough it in Idaho.
“I was really tired,” she explained. “I mean, when you hit the end of the season, it’s 12 weeks of going hard. We had traveled to Greece, and that takes some recovery.”
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Angie acknowledged that her short week of respite between jobs, while also juggling family life with Shawn Trujillo and daughter Elektra is something “a lot of women” could relate to. Eventually meeting — and ultimately relating to — her Wife Swipe counterpart, Lindsay, at the end of the shoot only served to validate that point for her.
“I hadn’t fully caught my breath,” she added. “You think you’re the only one going through it … trying to keep your head above water.”
Angie Katsanevas details her Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition
When Angie pulled up to the Flake’s “simple” Idaho homestead, she immediately noted that she was “definitely overdressed and underprepared” and incorrectly guessed she wouldn’t have much to do there. Meanwhile in Utah, Lindsay’s assumption that Angie just “laid by the pool and drank margaritas all day,” also swiftly crumbled.
“To swap lives with another woman and [have] her get in my heels and me get in her work boots and to see how hard she works to keep that lifestyle up, which is completely opposite of mine, she is working so hard and tirelessly as a mother,” Angie continued, also crediting her “swap husband,” Tanner, as being “such a hard worker” to keep their property going for their family.
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“I feel like the world will see a different side of me,” Angie predicted. “Thank god I was raised by an immigrant who lived in a similar situation to where I was staying. … I was raised to work hard, I was raised to say yes to all opportunity, I was raised to get out there and do whatever I have to do. I’ve had a lot of hardships in my life, so I’m no stranger to hard work and I think that saved me.”
Plus, Angie “truly bonded on day one” with the Flake children — Bridger, 12, Wyatt, 9, and Hazel, 5 — as well as her “new husband.”
“Tanner was such an open heart that we instantly connected,” she said. “We’re both kind of a similar personality, very outgoing, so we got to know each other immediately. We’re both open hearts, we speak our minds, and we connected.”
What Angie Katsanevas learned on Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition
By the end, Angie said the Wife Swap experience “changed [her] life.”
“It was great to have that perspective on another woman’s life and the simplicity of life versus some of the ways in which I live at home,” she elaborated. “It just reminded me of the little that we need, what’s really important, and that’s family. I know all that, of course, but to do it so simply was really special.”
An end-of-episode update from one month after filming wrapped gave additional insight on how Angie put those lessons into practice.
Although she “made use of” the outdoor garden that Lindsay, Shawn and Elektra built, Angie “still has her olive oil shipped from Greece every month.”
Meanwhile Angie has also “made more of an effort to spend more time with the family… doing on-the-grid activities.”
As you await more Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition episodes, take a look inside Angie’s “dreamy” family life with Shawn and Elektra today.