Star gives her side

“Real Housewives of Orange County” star Gretchen Rossi is firing back this week against the organizer of the Miss Newport Beach Pageant, who dropped the reality show celebrity from hosting the event after she claims she was bombarded with negative e-mails and phone calls.

Rossi released a letter to pageant organizer Caren Lancona through her publicist Wednesday, claiming Lancona is trying to drum up publicity for her pageant by smearing Rossi.

“I am disgusted by the way you choose to handle this situation,” Rossi said in the letter. “You practically begged me to be the emcee of this event for you because you did not want to do it. I agreed to it more as a favor than anything for someone I thought was a friend. I had no idea you would use it against me or use it to your advantage in order to stir up some ‘interest’ as you called it for your pageant.”

Lancona estimates she received about 100 negative e-mails and several phone calls attacking Rossi’s character after she ran an advertisement for the pageant in the Daily Pilot that included a photograph of Rossi. One caller threatened to picket the pageant if Rossi emceed the event April 24, Lancona claims.

Season four of the cable reality series “The Real Housewives of Orange County,” follows the life of Rossi, a tan, blond 30-year-old engaged to Jeff Beitzel, a wealthy man 23 years her senior.

Beitzel died last year after a lengthy struggle with leukemia.

Rossi is depicted on the show drinking, shopping and dancing while her fiance battles cancer.

Lancona announced last week she was dropping Rossi from the event because of the negative feedback she had received.

Lancona said she tried to break the news gently to Rossi in an e-mail that her services as an emcee were no longer needed.

“I was trying to protect her feelings from what everyone was saying, so I worded it in a way that said I was removing her because I needed to create more interest in the pageant,” Lancona said.

Rossi’s “Real Housewives” appearances have garnered mostly positive feedback from the show’s million-plus viewers, and Lancona’s claims are exaggerated, her publicist, Marcel Pariseau claims.

“Caren says she’s getting a hundred negative e-mails, then produce them,” Pariseau said.

Lancona supplied numerous e-mails to the Daily Pilot attacking Rossi’s character she said she received after announcing the reality star as the host of the pageant.

“Everything I said was true,” she said.

Lancona is still searching for a new host for the pageant. She’s considering former Miss USA and Miss Universe title holder Shawn Weatherly to emcee the event, but nothing has been finalized, she said