The newest ‘Real Housewives of Orange County’ star had a fairy-tale life. Then it fell apart.

Noella Bergener looked at her fairy-tale Orange County life and liked what she saw.

She had an adorable toddler, Little James, to distinguish him from his father, Sweet James, the attorney of Southern California billboard fame. She lived in a fabulous home in the Crystal Cove area of Newport Beach.

Her friends even included a few local celebrities, Vicki Gunvalson and Braunwyn Windham-Burke, women who’d found fame on “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”

So when the reality TV series invited her to be a new housewife on the 16th season that debuts Wednesday, Dec. 1, Bergener says she couldn’t imagine any reason not to accept.

“I thought, ‘Well, this would just be really cool, because everything is so amazing in my life,” she says. “What could go wrong?”

She laughs. It’s probably a good sign that she’s able to. Not long into shooting “The Real Housewives,” her husband filed for divorce.

“And our marriage was, you know, seemingly great,” she says.

Her first instinct when the bad news about her marriage landed was to bail on the show before she got in too deep. But she says the support she received from the production company persuaded her to stick it out.

“The show was giving me the strength, and empowering me, really, to look deep into it,” Bergener says. “It was giving me strength, really, for the first time in my marriage to be like, “No, that doesn’t make sense to me.’ If it doesn’t make sense to me, it’s not gonna make sense to America, or, you know, these ladies.”

Talking TV

Bergener says she offers things that “The Real Housewives of Orange County” has been missing.

“I’m a very opinionated person,” she says. “I have a strong personality”

She also thinks her family background adds new elements to the show.

“I’m biracial,” Bergener continues. “But my father is black and conservative, my mother’s white and liberal. I just live this amazing life that is kind of unbelievable.

“You really just sit down and peel it apart, like the onion it is,” she says. “So there was something where I knew I was adding a different story that’s not been told before. And I thought that that was important to show.”

Bergener says she’s fine with the curves that life, and the series, have thrown her in recent months.

Fellow housewives Shannon Storms Beador and Gina Kirschenheiter, both of whom have gone through splits on past seasons, were supportive.

“They were kind of like my little angels in that moment to get me out of my head, out of the shame and embarrassment, that you just want to crawl into a hole, really, and realize that I can do this.”

Bergener, 38, also has a 7-year-old daughter, Coco, who won’t be seen on the show out of respect for her father’s wishes, Bergener says.

Bergener herself was raised by a single mother. Her father, the former KNBC Channel 4 weatherman Christopher Nance was not part of her life, and only in the last two years did Bergener elect to reach out to him. On Oct. 6 of this year, she posted on her Instagram that he’d passed away.

“We did reconnect about two years ago, and I’m happy about that,” she says. “I would have regretted that my entire life if I never got to have those moments.”

Watching what happens

As for how she fit in with the other women in the cast, she and Shannon hit off immediately, while she and Heather Dubrow are teased in the trailer as two strong personalities on course for a head-on collision.

“I’m a very much an in-the-moment girl,” Bergener says. “I’m sure it’s gonna be very cathartic to watch, because even parts of the trailer that I saw, I’m like, ‘I don’t remember that.’

“I mean, I’m sure I meant it,” she says. “But especially when you throw in some tequila, and some stress and some sleepless nights, and, you know, a bevy of big personalities around you.”

That’s just who she is, she says.

“What you see is what you get. So I’m sure I’m going to have some apology muffin baskets going out. Going to have to explain some things. I’m very much unfiltered, and I don’t think that’s going to change.

“I’d rather just apologize later than ask for permission beforehand,” she says. “You know, you’ve got to stay present, it’s the only way to be.”