Carole Radziwill is officially back on The Real Housewives of New York City, and as expected, her new costars want to know everything about the late Carolyn Bessette Kennedy.
“I am dying to talk to you about Love Story,” Daisy Toye told Carole, 63, at a group brunch during the Tuesday, September 15, episode. “I have so many questions.”
Jessel Taank chimed in next, saying, “Just ask the question: Was she a bitch?”
Carole turned to her in shock before Daisy, 44, clarified that she simply wanted to know, “Was she fun? Like, would she vibe with us?”
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According to Carole — who was married to John F. Kennedy Jr.‘s late cousin Anthony Radziwill — Carolyn was “very fun.”
“She’s a girl’s girl, like, before there was a thing called girl’s girls,” Carole said. “I don’t know what she’s like on [Love Story], because I haven’t watched the show.”
Though Jessel couldn’t understand why Carole wouldn’t be tuning in to the FX drama inspired by her late friends’ relationship, which became an overnight success after it premiered in February, Carole explained her perspective.
“I watched about four minutes of it the other night with my best friend, ’cause she’s like, ‘Well, let’s just try to watch it together.’ And it’s too much,” she said.
The questions didn’t stop there. Jessel went on to ask Carole what she thought about the “Carolyn Bessette Summer” trend, which has social media users paying homage to her sense of style — and the returning Housewife wasn’t impressed.
“Yeah, I don’t love that,” Carole admitted. “I don’t think you should do that.”
Around the table, the pair’s costars cringed as they watched the awkward back and forth, but Jessel stood her ground.
“Carole is, like, a walking human vibe diffuser,” she said in a confessional. “Listen, if I passed away — God forbid — and someone said ‘Jessel Taank Summer’ and wore the most outrageous couture and jewels and looked fabulous all the time, I’d be like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s go.’”
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Back at brunch, Jessel continued to share her thoughts about the Kennedy family, who Carole grew close with throughout her relationship with her late husband. (Anthony died from cancer at the age of 40 in August 1999, just weeks after JFK Jr. and Carolyn were killed in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard. JFK Jr. was 38, while Carolyn was 33.)
“Do you not think the family is, like, cursed?” Jessel asked the group. “The dad gets assassinated, then the mother has cancer and then they both die.”
An appalled Erin Lichy wondered in a confessional how Jessel couldn’t “read the frickin’ room” and see that the conversation was making Carole uncomfortable.
Carole, meanwhile, shared her own unfiltered thoughts with the Bravo cameras. “It doesn’t register to her? That the tragic deaths of my cousins and best friend might be very upsetting to me?” she said, adding, “I want to strangle her.”
Before the episode aired on Tuesday, Jessel attempted to clarify her remarks during an interview on SiriusXM’s Page Six Radio.
“It’s only because from fashion girl to fashion girl, like, we are a little bit bitchy, you know, and cold and … I don’t know, obviously, Carolyn Bessette personally, so I was just curious, like, ‘Did she have a demeanor where she was sort of cold and maybe a little bit of a fashion diva?’” Jessel explained, admitting, “I maybe shouldn’t have gone with the B-word.”
The Real Housewives of New York City airs on Bravo Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
