Carole Radziwill is one of those unique housewives that I always wondered why she did the show. Successful in her own right, Carole was an esteemed journalist and author. And most notably, she was a Princess, much to the chagrin of Luann de Lesseps, who was only a Countess. Carole explained that she was married to Anthony Radziwill, an actual Polish prince. He also happened to be John F. Kennedy Jr.’s cousin and close friend. Anthony died of cancer in 1999. Not long thereafter, JFK Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, who Carole counted as her best friend, died in a plane crash.
Carole wrote a best selling memoir about her experience losing her husband and close friends in such a short period of time. I read it and whether you like Carole or not, it was a beautiful and heartbreaking read. But Carole wanted to make sure that if she joined RHONY, she wasn’t going to use those family connections to promote the show in any way. In fact, she even had a clause in her contract with Bravo to make sure that didn’t happen.
As reported by Showbiz CheatSheet, Carole recently appeared on the podcast Behind The Velvet Rope With David Yontef. Carole said she agreed to join the cast but “I was not going to go in and exploit my late husband’s family or the Kennedy family.” She continued, “So I never, except for the history package, like in the first season or the second season, when you had to explain kind of who you were, I never said anything about the Kennedy family. In fact, I think Sonja [Morgan] was the one that brought it up a bunch of times. And I just stayed away from it. In fact so much so that in my first-year contract, there’s a clause.”
Carole revealed of the contract, “It’s like five paragraphs. How Bravo can not use my Kennedy connection to promote their show. They cannot call me Kennedy cousin, Carole Radziwill. They can not use photos of John Kennedy, Caroline, Jackie [Kennedy], Lee [Radziwill]. Any photos, even public photos, without my permission. It was really detailed out. Cause I wanted it to be really protective over that. And I thought that would be a deal-breaker, but they agreed to that. So honestly, by the time I signed the contract, I felt comfortable with what I was going to do on the show.”
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Unfortunately, the rest of the cast wasn’t always so respectful. Said Carole, “I remember Sonja one year was saying, I partied with John John or some stupid thing. And like, I don’t like to hear that because A it’s not true. And B no one who knew him really called him John John. That’s like the first thing, nobody. It was made up in the press, nobody in his family, nobody, none of his friends. That was just a made-up thing in the press.” She added, “So if you didn’t know him, you might think that everyone called him that. And this is a man who had died, you know, 10, 12 years earlier. Like, so you don’t really talk about like partying with him.”
Carole continued, “I just found the whole thing really unfortunate. So I didn’t really talk about it.” As for the network, Carole said, “I didn’t trust them. And you know what, to their credit, they never used the Kennedy name in that way. They didn’t use photographs that I didn’t give them permission to use.”
But ultimately, the network honored the contract. Carole revealed, “They really stuck to it. Obviously they had to because it was a legal contract. I never told anyone that. I don’t think anyone knows that because I think there’s this perception I exploited that. But in fact, I never talked about it. I never talked about.”
Carole concluded, “You know another really interesting thing, I thought if the other women bring it up, Sonja did bring it up in that silly, dumb way, but not to me. So I didn’t know until I was like the audience, I saw it when it aired.”
RELATED: Andy Cohen Says Carole Radziwill Is Not The Woman He Used To Know
TELL US – DID YOU THINK CAROLE WAS SMART TO HAVE A CLAUSE NOT TO MENTION HER FAMILY? DO YOU THINK SONJA WAS WRONG FOR BRINGING IT UP? DO YOU THINK SONJA EVER PARTIED WITH JFK JR.? WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CAROLE BACK ON RHONY?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
