Drita D'Avanzo Dishes on Stepping Back Into the Spotlight and Winning 'House of Villains': 'I Feel So Blessed'

Drita D'Avanzo is back on the reality TV circuit!

After Mob Wives ended in 2016, the reality star stepped away from the public eye to focus on raising her daughters.

D'Avanzo speaks exclusively with OK! about her return, winning House of Villains Season 3, how she feels about her time on the VH1 series, her friendship with the late Angela Raiola, if she would ever do The Traitors and her appearance on the action-comedy stunt and reality-style TV series Sports Hurts.

Upon returning to the screen with her victorious run on the Peacock series, D’Avanzo was met with an outpouring of love from fans.

"It was nice because when it was announced that I was going to be on House of Villains, I started trending," she says while laughing. "My fans have been like, 'When are you coming back to TV?!' It's like having one huge family. I feel so blessed."

"It was really hard," the matriarch notes about the competition show. "Believe it or not, I'm such an introvert. Even though I'm outgoing, I am also very much to myself, but I was very shocked that I won. Before I said yes [to the show], I thought there were too many things I wouldn't do. It's funny because everyone knows me as being tough, but I'm the biggest chicken in the world when it comes to anything non-human, and I didn't know what the challenges were going to be. I was also in there with some real-deal winners. We had the winner of Survivor! I'm like, 'There's no way I'm winning this,' but the cards fell right where they should. Everything just worked out for me. It was perfect timing."

Although D'Avanzo spent six years on Mob Wives, she admits she struggled behind the scenes.

"When I was doing Mob Wives, I felt awful," she reveals. "I wasn't happy, but I look back now, and I think, 'Wow. I can't believe I endured all of that.'"

"I'm a fighter. I fight for what I believe in and I fear no one," the mother-of-two notes. "It's not like anyone's going to watch the Mob Wives and be like, 'Oh, poor Drita. She was being bullied.' It was more or less like, 'You just bullied Drita. You're going to get a beating now.' It was entertaining for the world, but for me, it was awful."

Despite all the drama on the reality series, D'Aanzo leaned on Raiola, who passed away after a battle with cancer in 2016.

"Thank god I had Ang," she emphasizes. "She was so happy. The show wouldn't work without her."

Following her House of Villains win, the matriarch isn't totally ruling out the possibility of being on The Traitors.

"That would be something else for me to be on that," D'Avanzo says. "I heard that's really hard to do. They [allegedly] don't even give you your phone. You know what it's like to take someone's phone from them? That's why I'm saying these shows, they're not easy."

"There's more to come, by the way," she teases. "This won't be the last you see of me at all."

While there's plenty of exciting projects in D'Avanzo's future, she's making an appearance on an episode of the action-comedy stunt and reality-style TV series, Sports Hurts, featuring members of the original Jacka**.

"These people are lunatics," she explains. "By the way, that's coming from a lunatic. They're so funny. I'm also a huge sports fan. I think this show is going to be huge. It's so entertaining. I don't want to say what they asked me to do, but the fans and everyone will be in tears laughing."