Not so long ago, Heather Gay was a middle-aged mother of three, struggling to reclaim her sense of self. She’d spent most of her adult life embodying the “Molly Mormon” stereotype — a devoted wife, mother and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then her marriage fell apart, and with it her entire identity. Financially dependent on her ex-husband, she was determined to get her medspa business off the ground. Becoming famous was hardly an option.

“I was just set out to pasture. I had no plausible hope for the future. I was just trying to be a good mom and morally upright citizen, turn my face to the wall and die. That, literally, was the plan,” she recalls.

Then Bravo came calling. Gay was cast in “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” which premiered in 2020 and distinguished itself by looking at how the women in the cast were influenced by organized religion, particularly the LDS church. Gay instantly became the show’s breakout star — the smart, self-aware and hyper-relatable one who was quick to share her insecurities or crack a self-deprecating joke. She wasn’t model thin, didn’t dress in head-to-toe Chanel or travel with a glam team. She did, however, get very excited about eating meat on a stick and sometimes wound up with her head in the toilet after drinking too many espresso martinis.

Reality TV can be a lot of things — a bid for attention, a cash grab. But for Gay, it turned out to be a calling.

“It’s the most important work I’ve ever done,” she says, perched at the bar of a hotel in midtown Manhattan. Gay is in town for a watch party for Season 5 of “RHOSLC.” With her taut jawline, blazing white teeth and recently slimmed-down physique, she has embraced the prototypical Housewife look.

“‘Housewives’ rescued me. It gave me a second lease on life,” she says. “It scooped me up and pulled me out of the church, pulled me into financial independence and fame.”

Gay has leveraged her popularity by writing a bestselling memoir, “Bad Mormon,” with a second book, “Good Time Girl,” due in December. She has faced some ups and downs, including a rough patch when she exasperated fans with her unflinching loyalty to castmate Jen Shah, who went to prison last year for her role in a telemarketing scam, and may have given Gay a black eye. But she cemented her place in the pantheon of “Real Housewives” greats last season by confronting cast member Monica Garcia, linking her to a social media account that trashed her co-stars. A clip of Gay’s tirade went viral, particularly the line, “Receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots.” It has been quoted by congressional lawmakers, spoofed by Marvel and slyly referenced on “Jeopardy.”

She has also undergone another dramatic transformation, losing more than 25 pounds by taking Ozempic. She has approached the subject with her typical candor, speaking openly about using the weight-loss drug.

“This last year has been the best year of my life,” she says, sipping a glass of lime and basil infused water. (No, she has not given up her beloved espresso martinis; the bar is not yet open.)

Now, with Season 5 underway, Gay is at a crossroads: Can she enjoy the fruits of her “Housewives” celebrity while also maintaining the down-to-earth appeal that made her a fan favorite? Based on our conversation, which includes digressions about “Degrassi High,” “The Parent Trap” and her $29 ring from Zara, Gay appears determined to remain a friendly proxy for Bravo’s pop culture-obsessed audience.

“The most rewarding part of this job is taking someone, and watching them go from obscurity to really finding their voice and taking the opportunity and soaring. Heather is an amazing example of that,” says executive producer Lisa Shannon. “Heather serves as the voice of the audience because she’s so honest. She’s very observant, she doesn’t sit back on her opinions, and her opinions are usually correct.”

“The most rewarding part of this job is taking someone, and watching them go from obscurity to really finding their voice and taking the opportunity and soaring. Heather is an amazing example of that,” says “Housewives” executive producer Lisa Shannon.

(Sean Dougherty / For The Times)

Co-star Meredith Marks says that Gay “uses humor to deflect from her own pain.” She met Gay while working together on an event at the Sundance Film Festival but bonded with her on the way home from a cast trip to Zion National Park in Utah. Marks had just lost her father and believed some of her co-stars were making light of his death. “It was really hurtful, and I was in a lot of pain. I was terrified to get on the Sprinter van,” Marks says. “Heather grabbed me, and she’s like, ‘Come sit with me.’ I sat in the back with her, and she had me laughing the entire ride home. That is Heather. She knows how to take a tough situation and make you smile and laugh and pull you through.”

For her part, Gay suggests her relatability stems from the fact that she was a fan — of reality TV in general, but especially ‘The Real Housewives” — before she became one herself.

I ask her to elaborate, and she tears up (one of several times in our conversation). “You want me to cry?” she says, doing just that as she remembers getting hooked on early seasons of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”

She lived vicariously through women like Tamra Judge (formerly Barney), as she bluntly told her then-husband she wanted a divorce. “I wanted a divorce when I saw that scene, but I could never say that out loud. I could never even think it to myself,” Gay says. “I’m grateful to these women for putting their lives on television, for showing the good, the bad and the ugly, for giving me escape and … showing me a life that I never would have seen because my bubble was so insular.”

Before “RHOSLC,” Gay was what she calls a “PIMO”; physically in, mentally out of the LDS church. She had a Keurig but would leave only hot chocolate pods out, lest her family or neighbors think she was drinking coffee. “That’s an absurd thing for a divorced adult woman to be concerned with,” she says now.

Participating in the show finally enabled her to leave the church for good. Without it, she thinks she’d still be a “PIMO.” But “Housewives” notoriety also contributed to Gay’s estrangement from most of her family.

If she had chosen to walk away from the church in private, they would have been upset but accepted it, Gay says. “But I’ve done it loudly and proudly, and I’m unapologetic about it. I’m also successful, which is even scarier if I were in the streets, addicted to drugs, or all the things they promised would happen to me if I left,” she says.

Like Gay, most of the original “RHOSLC” cast has ties to the LDS church. Between the crazy Sprinter van rides, it has also broken new ground by exploring heavy subjects such as excommunication and religious trauma.

It also helped kick the door open for “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a hit Hulu reality series that debuted in September and follows a clique of young Utah influencers whose modern choices (divorce, swinging) don’t always conform to church teachings. Its debut coincided with deafening discourse about the “trad wife” phenomenon, epitomized by LDS influencer and mother of eight Hannah Neeleman, a.k.a. “Ballerina Farm.”

The cultural fascination with pressures faced by women in the church is “incredibly validating,” Gay says. “It’s what I’ve been screaming from the rafters. I’m like, ’Thank you, women, for showing up and showing how we’re manipulated in our marriages, how we are exclusive in who can attend our religious events, and how we have double standards.’”

Gay hopes the conversation continues: Despite the accountability faced by many institutions in the wake of movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, the LDS church “remains unchanged,” she says. “No one’s tearing down statues of Brigham Young even though, historically, he’s done much worse than Christopher Columbus.”

Heather Gay finds the recent fascination with Mormon women validating: “I’m like, ’Thank you, women, for showing up and showing how we’re manipulated in our marriages, how we are exclusive in who can attend our religious events, and how we have double standards.’”

(Sean Dougherty / For The Times)

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Like elite athletes, Housewives have good seasons and bad seasons. Gay’s popularity took a hit in Season 3, as she stood by Shah, who repeatedly denied involvement in the telemarketing scheme only to plead guilty just before she was set to go to trial.

Gay’s allegiance to Shah was so blind, she even refused to say how she’d ended up with a black eye after a night of partying in San Diego. She dodged questions for months; then in the Season 4 finale, alleged that Shah caused the injury, as many viewers already suspected. (For the record, Gay tells me she doesn’t remember the incident and knows how she got the black eye only because Shah told her. Shah has denied responsibility.)

Gay sees a connection between her devotion to Shah and a religious upbringing that “taught me to protect everybody but myself,” she says. “I thought my only way to contribute was to put my head down and be loyal. That was behavior I learned from decades of Mormonism: put up, shut up, don’t criticize, don’t look for evidence of fault,” she says, tears again welling up in her eyes. “I was f— up. I came out of a cult after 40 years and suddenly I had money, freedom and opportunity. I didn’t want to mess that up.”

Shah’s betrayal is part of what made Garcia’s relatively minor violation — setting up a troll account that few people were even aware of — so activating. “Her refusal to be accountable reminded me a lot of when we would confront Jen with things,” she says. To Gay, it also felt like Garcia was betting against her own team and had violated the cardinal rule of reality TV: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Gay has taken the zeal and devotion she once felt for the LDS church and brought it to her role as a housewife. “I traded the church for the cult of reality television,” she jokes.

But being on TV comes with downsides, like scrutiny over her physical appearance. Co-stars have called Gay names such as “Shrek” and likened her body to that of a Lego figurine. Viewers have said even worse. “There’s a weird, cruel irony: Just when our bodies are giving out, we’re on TV. We’re not supermodels. We’re aging, middle-aged women,” Gay says.

The second-season glow-up has become something of a trope on “The Real Housewives,” with many veteran cast members radically altering their appearance after seeing themselves on TV. But Gay’s was belated; she focused on her “emotional glow-up” first. She is one of a few “Housewives” stars who have admitted to taking a weight-loss drug, though many others have been suspected.

“Listen, everybody and their dog is on it,” she says. “I’m grateful that it worked. But if it hadn’t, I would still be here. I just wouldn’t be wearing shorts.”

Gay was recently quoted saying that losing weight helped her realize that body positivity was “a big lie.” The point she was trying to make, that people treat you better when you’re thinner, got lost in the click-bait furor that ensued. “I wish it wasn’t that way,” she says. “I’ve been fat and I’ve been thin. I liked myself either way, but the way people respond to me is different.”

Gay has to leave soon for the premiere watch party. As our conversation winds down, she describes the wild emotional roller coaster ride that each new season brings. Usually, she gets to see the episodes just a day or two before they air on Bravo, and fans render their verdict — loudly and passionately — on social media.

“It’s 16 weeks of not knowing whether you live or die by the sort of the episode. You could have a week of wonderful reviews, and then you are slaughtered the next,” she says. It’s nauseating, but exhilarating. “I f— love it. At my age and at this stage of life, where else would I ever get this type of adrenaline?”