September 3, 2019 • 26 mins
From an award-winning documentary to international fame, the Siegel family seemed to have it all. Jackie Siegel, known as the “Queen of Versailles,” and her family made international headlines for building their Florida mega-mansion with the hope that it would be the biggest house in the country.
Ten years later, their dreams came crumbling down when the financial crisis hit and brought construction to a halt. But that was nothing compared to the nightmare that would follow. In June 2015 their daughter Victoria had died of an overdose of methadone and antidepressants. In this interview, Jackie explains why she has made it her mission to speak out against the opioid crisis in America and how she plans on keeping the memory of her daughter alive.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A few years went by, and I keep hearing this
in my head and reading when I read her diary
that she wanted me to publish this, and the drug epidemic,
with as much as everyone's doing, has gotten worse, and
I really felt that, Um, I'm getting goose like chills
right now. I feel like, you know, my daughter's presence
(00:23):
is here, and we felt that we need to get
out there, and there was time to publish this book. Hi,
I'm Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz podcast.
She's known as the Queen of Versailles. Jackie Segal and
her family made international headlines for building their Florida mega
mansion with the hope that it would become the biggest
(00:43):
house in the country. From award winning documentary at International Fame,
the Segull family seemed to have it all. Ten years later,
their dreams came crumbling down when the financial crisis hit,
bringing construction to a halt. But that was nothing compared
to the nightmare that would follow. In June two fift
their daughter Victoria had died of an overdose of method
dome and any depressants. The day. Jackie has made it
(01:05):
her mission to speak out against the opioid crisis in
America and to keep the memory of her daughter alive
for about four years since you lost your daughter, I know,
it's very harder than to hear that introduction. I thank
you very much for being here and taking the painful
journey back with us, you know, and thank you so
much for inviting me. I mean, it's it's an honor
to be here. And um, you know, I was thinking,
(01:27):
like people are saying, you know, why would you bring
out like your daughter's diary and share it with the
rest of the world. You know, it's something so private
and intimate, and um, the thing is, she left a
text that she wanted me to publish her diary and
share with the rest of the world because I think
she felt that it was it could help save lives
with people that are to other teams that are struggling
(01:50):
with the drug addiction and you know, anxiety and things
that the typical teens go to. Can we go back
to that text? I actually have it, and don't I
wanted to ask you about it it So this is
a text I guess she said it to her boyfriend
initially yes, and said take my journal in my nights
dand drawer, the fat one I always use. I've never
shown anyone my journal, but there's no one else I
(02:10):
would rather pass it on to than you. My business
is everyone else's business down And I'm okay with that, Mom,
And maybe you can publish my teenage journal and bump
up your career. Yeah, but UM, like, oh that sounds strange.
But right after that it goes on to say that
she would be so proud of me and UM, and
(02:31):
that she hopes that I get an award and and
that she'll be there with her peaceful presence on stage.
And the thing is, UM, she always like UM. She
loved me and knew that I loved to be in
the spotlight and she would It was actually a positive thing.
And the um after she passed away, I did not
(02:52):
come right out and published the diary. It was very
difficult for me to do, I think, to relive. I'm
sure that the whole whole thing, and I struggled with it,
and I the press was very mean to me when
she passed away, to me and our family, like they
were calling the New York Post like calling her the
doomed princess, and like um with some of the morning
(03:16):
shows are saying that I look like I was dressed
for the Kentucky Derby because I had a black hat on.
But we lived in Florida in the middle of the
summer and it's hot when we were burying her and stuff.
So what happened was back then, about a hundred fifty
people a day, we're dying from the drug epidemic. And UM,
(03:37):
my husband and I we were like a bit of
a very recluse at that time for several months, and
we um read a lot online, learned about the drug epidemic.
We went up then we went up to Washington, d C.
Your daughter after we lost our daughter. Yeah, we um
didn't really go out and socialize anymore. And UM, it
(04:01):
kind of like dropped out of society. My husband he
still went to work, but he's he's said on his
desk he had two piles of papers. Well, one pile
that's work related that makes money, and the other pile
of the drug educational papers that he was trying to learn.
And he says, this one, this pile will save lives.
(04:22):
So he took the other pipe pile, gave it to
his executives, and he says, I'm going to focus the
rest of my life on saving lives. So a few
years went by, and I keep hearing this in my
head and reading when I read her diary that she
wanted me to publish this, and the drug epidemic, with
as much as everyone's doing, has gotten worse. Now We're
(04:46):
up to about two fifty people a day dying of
a drug overdose. And I really felt that, Um, I'm
getting goose like chills right now. I feel like, you know,
my daughter's presence is here, and and um, we felt
that we need to get out there and keep the
conversation going and doing as much as we can, and
(05:07):
it was time to publish this book to try to
keep the epidemic from getting any worse. Well, let's get
into the book a little bit, because you're very honest
walking us through what happened in your family. But if
you can't want to go back to the time bit more.
I actually saw the original documentary The Queen of Versailles.
You made some decisions just to allow the documentary to
(05:28):
be made that put the entire family in the middle
of a spotlight, which is good and bad. Well, right,
there's sometime wies that do it, and it's actually now
now correct, please correct it then, Okay, So what happened was, Um,
I was out at the Versati opening in California over
Road Dale Drive, and I was on on the A
list and this photographer comes up to me, and it
(05:51):
was all movie stars like Demi Moore, Beyonce or you know,
like all those people. And this photographer comes up and
she says, who are you? Why are you here? Like
you're here, you know, an A list person, And so
she got intrigued by that, and I said, oh, you know,
I'm um. I'm married to a timeshare billionaire and we're
(06:14):
building a very large home. And I says, and I
had happened at my Christmas card in my purse with
all of my eight kids, and the cover of the
Christmas card it's me and my husband in front of
one of our private chats with all the kids sitting
on the wing and I, you know, so she could
see that we had money and I wasn't making it up,
and so it kind of like she got my information
(06:35):
and she says, well, maybe I'll come visit you sometime.
So anyways, a few months goes by, I forgot all
about it, and um, her name is Lauren. She comes
to my house and um, and she said, I like
to see the house that you're building, and I said sure,
So we went over there, and UM, she says, you know,
(06:58):
I have an idea if um she could film the
house being bill as a um, the construction, that then
she would like document that for us, and we'd have
free footage, we wouldn't have to hire our own photographers,
and it might be a nice thing for our family.
And and she said, and then she would be able
to probably put it on h G t V for
(07:19):
like one episode of you know, like those home makeover
shows or something. So that's what it was. And I
signed the release, and you know, David said that's fine.
You know, he always likes things for free. The economy
took a turn for the worse in two thousand and eight.
It was a worldwide like recession or economic crisis that
everyone fell on every level, and we stopped construction on
(07:41):
the house. So now she figured she didn't have the
TV show, you know, for that episode. And but she
still really um liked me. And and she said she
started showing up at the house with the camera crew
when they were in town. And I'm a ham and
you know, I just you know, opened the door let
her in, and you know, they're all, you know, following
(08:02):
me around, and my husband was getting very irritated with
the like there don't be Like he'd be sitting there
trying to watch TV and he'd look and there be
a boom over his head. So he'd kick them all
out out the front door, and then I let him
in through the back door. So it was kind of
like a circus for a while. And um, we didn't
know that it and I don't think she knew that
(08:23):
it was going to turn into a documentary until towards
the end when she realized that she actually really had something.
And in fact, when it was in the Sundance Film Festival,
I didn't even know. I wasn't even invited to the
premiere or anything. And it was the opening of the
Sundance Film Festival. It was packed and they sold the
movie that night. Lauren had mentioned to me that it
(08:45):
was going on, so I flew out there and I
was lucky to get a couple of tickets for me
at my friends. There's lots more when we come back.
So the movie comes out. You become very well known,
in part because of the ups and downs life's not
just about success the infect Your success is defined by
how you do a failure. Your kids are in this um,
(09:08):
there's a per amount of notoriety. I mean, we all
know families that have done really, really well when they've
gotten enough attention that they get above the clutter. Now
you actually are on the A list, and not just
because the rastace guys like you are, because you actually
are are notable. And this affects the family. So how
did the difference you've got experiment patriotish of kids? Yeah,
(09:29):
we have eight kids exactly, So how did it affect
all of them? And that I want to get into
this issue of the openated crisis and your daughter because
obviously touched you in a very personal way. Well, um,
the kids after that, UM had like a phobia of cameras.
Like even after that, I got offers to do TV
(09:49):
shows and things like that, but they wanted like more
of what the Queen of Versailles was like following the
family around in the dynamics with that, And at that
point I I just turned everything down because the kids
didn't want any part of it. Like there they were
like even if I take pictures of them. Now there's
mom don't post that, you know. You know, they're like
(10:12):
still traumatized from from the negativity that they got at
the schools of Victoria. Like, she didn't want people to
know that she was from a wealthy family and my
husband's one of the richest men in central Florida. But
she went to a public school. That's what she wanted
to do. We had her in private school with them.
She wanted to switch to public and she started getting
(10:33):
um kind of picked on once, like people found out
about her father, and I think people started becoming friends
with her for the wrong reasons, and she didn't know
who her friends are, and she got um. But she
wanted to fit in and she started hanging around with
just a bad crowd. But my my daughter, UM, she
(10:54):
always has the philosophies, Like she was like kind of believing,
like kind of the Buddhist philosophy that you should always
look in the good of people. And she thought that
she could make them change, you know, they make the
bad people change. But unfortunately they didn't they made her change.
(11:14):
As you look back on the decision to to allow
the photographer to enter your home, do you have any
regrets if I had to go back, Um, I would
have had I known it was going to be like
a big movie, and I wouldn't have had the kids
in it at all. I would still like to have
been in and have just been focused more on us.
(11:38):
But the thing is, since the movie came out, I mean,
I wouldn't be here today talking to you. Because of
the fame that this movie has brought. I can use
and now use that fame two get in the door
to promote the book and and be able to have
the conversations about people doing the the opioids and heroin
(12:00):
and all that. So Victoria is going to public school,
She's hanging with some mixed bag of people, many many kids.
Do you have any inkling at all that she was
suffering with drugs or depression or something that would have
culminated in when they're happening. Okay, this is what's crazy.
People say, how could you not know? I mean, this
(12:21):
happened right under our noses. The teenagers are very good
at they're great actors, and they they they're great liars
and a lot of this, Like if she said she
was tired and she'd go and locked herself in the room,
I figured she's just sleeping. She was probably in there
doing drugs, and a lot of the time she'd be
(12:42):
over sleeping at friends houses. Maybe the parents were out
of town and they'd be doing it over there. And
that's why I think that this book is also good
for parents. It has her personal diary. It's it's straightforward.
Nothing thing has been edited except me blurred out some
people's names. Sure, see, So I want parents to know
(13:02):
when they read this, this could be going on in
their child's mind behind closed doors, you know, with um
feeling the anxiety or being bullied at school and and
turning to the drugs behind their parents back, just kind
of like they're self medicating themselves. She was taking prescription medications.
How did she get access to them? Okay, So at
(13:25):
um one point she um came to me and and
her father and she says, you know, I've got I'm
suffering with anxiety. And of course we didn't want her
to turn to street drugs, so we took her to
a psychiatrist. He evaluated her, and he gave her a
prescription for Zanex, and then she went for another month
(13:48):
in yeah, about sixteen, I'd say, so. Then then she
never asked for anymore Zannex. So I figured she was cured.
Maybe she was just going through something at school and
she didn't need it anymore. Well, so like a year
and a half goes by and um she comes to
(14:08):
me and she says, Mom, she says, I need to
go to rehab. This is um A about a month
and a half before she passed away. And I said,
are you you need to go to rehab. I've never
seen you do any drugs and she says, Mom, you
don't understand. And so what had happened is she had
(14:29):
done an overdose on xan x, like a couple of
days before, and that's when she sent the text. But
I never found out about the text. So she realized
that she thought she had overdosed that night, and but
she woke up in the morning not expecting to and
she comes straight to me and says, mom, I need rehab.
So not really understanding why she needed to rehab, Me
(14:50):
and my grandmother supported her and we took her to
the rehab center where they cleansed, they wash out their system,
or you know, wean them off. What had happened is
she was getting her zan x for all these years
at school. At school, the school had a pill that
one of the kids had a pill press and made
Zanni bars, which is like four pills in one, and
(15:13):
so she was addicted to the Zanni bars and she
you know, with if you don't have a break from
xan x, which is addictive, it's builds your resistance builds up.
So she was labeled like by the end, I don't
know how many pills, but like probably a handful of pills.
You know, after going to rehab, was your sense that
she was now in recovery. Okay, So what happened in rehab?
(15:36):
She went in there because she was serious. She realized
she had a problem. She almost died, and she wanted
to come clean. While she was in rehab, she met
a twenty six year old man that was a Heroin
addict that was in there pretty much by core order,
like either he needs he'd go to jail, or he's
got a show that he's cleaning up his act for
(15:58):
his probation. But he was only there because of that
because he was forced to and he had no intentions
of quitting heroin when he came out. So she was
in there and she um fell in love with him
in the nine days that she was there. When they
came out. He introduced her to heroin and they started
(16:23):
running around together. And he also gave her a bottle
of methadone and and she had gotten I guess in
the rehab some um um anti depression pills, some zoolof
I think they prescribed that for and so on their
one month anniversary, um, which was a big deal to her.
(16:45):
This was like her first love. It was a grown man.
You know, we weren't we were We didn't like him
to begin with, but but we didn't know about the
heroine part. We found out after and um when we
went through her after she passed away, we went through
her text um so. Anyways and the so so a
(17:06):
month later, So she did the drug overdose. They were
in a fight and he was sleeping with another girl
and then the girl text Victoria and said he's just
using you for your money, and she's effing him right
now and they're doing heroin together and and Victoria just
she was by herself and she overdose. She took a
(17:26):
bottle of the method zone and zoloft. Oh my goodness. Yeah,
So who found her? Then nanny found her, and the
nanny of course called nine one one, which brings another
point that I wanted to bring up. UM. We're big
n lock zone advocates and UM back when she passed away,
(17:50):
if our nanny had had had an a lock zone,
she could have been saved. And no one really knew
what NA lock zone was four years ago. And what
we've done, we mean, alos has been around since the sixties.
Now the paramedics they know what it is because they
use it all the time in the hospitals and UM.
(18:11):
So we went up to Washington, d C. We went
to some like Heroin walks and and things. And while
we were up there, we found about this um Kara Act,
which is a comprehensive something. It's a like a bill
that's like really thick and it's and in there. This
act was about UM the narcan being distributed across America.
(18:33):
And this had been sitting on the shelf for three years.
So what we did we got ahold of the bill
and my husband and I went around and we brought
it in front of Congress and we got the bill passed.
And we've UM gotten the government to give UM to
budget two billion dollars to put in a lock zone
(18:53):
all over the country. Now because of us going up there.
Every police car has an a lock zone and they're
putting on college campuses and um just in my town,
I had lunch with the chief of police and he
told me, he says, because of what me and David
have done, just in our community, they've used the naloxone
(19:13):
that we've gotten provided two thousand times in Orlando. So
we know in there, you know, inside some of those
people may have lived without it, but like somewhere in there,
we know we've spared some you know, someone's lives. More
questions after the break. So the show has been and
I've been very active machine care on the bill throw
(19:35):
just to make sure people have mental health services one
of the things. So you know about the act, all
about it. We were one of the earliest and most
of aciferous supporters. We actually did several big events, but
what did one in the Mall in Washington, iconic location
where Pardoner the King gave us I have a dream
speeches and we would get all these musicians to come perform,
trying to get people to realize that recovery is real.
But one of the ways you've realized that you hit
(19:56):
rock bottom is when you die and if you have
something like nacks want to pull you back up again
and it helps. What's most troubling about your your daughter
victorious story is that she did hit rock bottom, she
almost died. She goes to rehab, rehab fails here, which
is the other big crisis we're facing now in America,
which is that rehab is not what is cooked up
to be. When done correctly, it's unbelievably impactful, and I
know people who do it well, but there are all
(20:18):
kinds of mills out there. Did you go back to
the rehab facility that she was in, because obviously she
wasn't treated effectively there. Well that that's um funny you
say that about the rehab. There's a lot of rehabs
out there that they actually don't want the people to
um come clean because that they want to repeat customers, right,
(20:38):
and the insurance people who have insurance, it only covers
about UM I think only thirty days, and in reality,
no one gets cured in thirty days. They need to
I would say at least three months, maybe nine, maybe
a year, but but we don't even have enough support
to get people in the ninety days there, folks, are
thirty days are people waiting? I know, for many many
(20:59):
families who have lost loved ones while they're waiting to
get their kids in the rehab. But I'm even questioning
if rehab is done right along. No, we have a
personal family friend who's daughter died a week after coming
out of rehab. That's the thing. When they come out
of rehab, now their body, their resistance to the drugs
is down. And when that what happened to her? Yeah, yeah,
and when they do relapse and take the drug, they
(21:22):
take the amount that their body was used to from
the month before, you know, from before rehab, and that's
when so many of the overdoses happen because the body.
So maybe maybe they should not be allowed to release
someone from rehab without some LUs. How do you say
it's available, you probably should take it with you when
(21:42):
you leave it, yeah, you know, because it's dangerous. I
was at an event out in UM Las Vegas last
week and it was like a recovery charity and UM.
At this party, they had the Emergence Emergency the lock
zone life saving kits where that you keep it on
your key chain, and they passed it out. That was
(22:05):
the party favor, and I thought, my god, you know, UM,
that's a great idea. I'd like to find out. I
want to start passing these out. Well, there are many
communities now where it is prescribed for everybody. They used
to be a prescription. I mean, my goodness, making the
life saving drug prescription only. How did your your other
children react to losing Victoria? Oh my god, it was
(22:26):
such a such a difficult time. It's like I felt
like in our house, um, before she passed away. Um,
someone asked me, like, you have everything like we've got.
We had a football team, private jets. My husband's company
is back on top about the Las Vegas Hilton, and
(22:46):
we build in the big one of the biggest homes
in America. And we just did a TV show, So
I got on TV. I traveled the world. I have
eight beautiful children. I mean we did Wife Swap, just
an episode of Wife Swap, and and so it's like
and I like, I've been everywhere I pretty much wanted
to be. And someone said, you know, um, and eight
beautiful children, and we were on top. And and when Victoria,
(23:12):
when we got that phone call for that she passed away,
it felt like the whole world the carpet was pulled
out from under us, and nothing else mattered anymore. I mean,
we even like didn't even go over to versaid of finish.
It's still it's getting finished, but like we didn't even
go there for several months. We didn't care about it.
In fact, we kind of wish that we'd never started it.
(23:33):
But at this point, because all our memories are in
the house that we're in now, which is a beautiful home.
It's a square foot home on a private island in
the middle of a lake. So but your kids, they
grew up with Victoria, they they must have. I want
to think that someone that may have had inklings that
there was something not right, that she was at risk.
(23:54):
I'm just curious how they managed the recovery after losing
their sister. It was the kids. I was maybe it
bring us all closer together, but in a way, we
kind of like, just like like one of the kids
they painted their room black and put blackout curtains and
we all got kind of depressed. We probably should have seeked,
(24:16):
um counseling and stuff, but for me, it was just
so painful that um, we we did get a counselor
in the beginning, and it was just reliving the memory
was too hard for me. Ideal better, like when I
blocked my emotions and the thing for four years. How
(24:36):
the kids so now well, kids can be pretty resilient,
and they, um, we'll never touch a drug. They realized
this is for real. It's like playing Russian roulette when
you go out there. They've watched since then, other UM
kids in their high school in the community have passed away.
(24:57):
We just lost another one a week and a half ago.
And they see this, and they also see there is
UM this marijuana. It was a synthetic marijuana k too.
And they've seen a couple of kids they do it
one time and it does so much brain damage that
they can't function like as a regular human being anymore.
(25:20):
Like it's mine altering have a devastating effect on folks.
I know it's been hard to go through this at
a personal level in order tell your daughter's story. I'm
proud of you for doing it. Recovery is real, but
so is death if we don't face up to the
reality of what opiates have done to our nation. And
I also mentioned that UM during this process after Victoria
passed away, I UM did UM make like a documentary
(25:45):
just something from my own personal thing that I have
on my website, Um that if I can say my website,
it's it's called the Real Queen of Versaide dot com.
And there's a an option there that you can click
on to see what I put together. Because everyone, whenever
I see anyone, they say what happened? You know, like
(26:07):
they want to say more? And this is I was
thinking that when I watched the documentary on a long play,
right one thing, this one is called the print, this
one is. Yeah, so the documentary that I made as
the Princess of Versailles about Victoria passing away. And um, also, um,
we are based on this book. We already have a
movie deal, so we're making a scripted movie based on
(26:30):
this story. So there will be more to come. You
can hear a bunch more about Jackie story and Victoria's voice,
our daughter's dying wish to share her diary and save
lives from drugs. Well stated, thanks you be here, Thank
you so much. Let's save lives
A few years went by, and I keep hearing this
in my head and reading when I read her diary
that she wanted me to publish this, and the drug epidemic,
with as much as everyone's doing, has gotten worse, and
I really felt that, Um, I'm getting goose like chills
right now. I feel like, you know, my daughter's presence
(00:23):
is here, and we felt that we need to get
out there, and there was time to publish this book. Hi,
I'm Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz podcast.
She's known as the Queen of Versailles. Jackie Segal and
her family made international headlines for building their Florida mega
mansion with the hope that it would become the biggest
(00:43):
house in the country. From award winning documentary at International Fame,
the Segull family seemed to have it all. Ten years later,
their dreams came crumbling down when the financial crisis hit,
bringing construction to a halt. But that was nothing compared
to the nightmare that would follow. In June two fift
their daughter Victoria had died of an overdose of method
dome and any depressants. The day. Jackie has made it
(01:05):
her mission to speak out against the opioid crisis in
America and to keep the memory of her daughter alive
for about four years since you lost your daughter, I know,
it's very harder than to hear that introduction. I thank
you very much for being here and taking the painful
journey back with us, you know, and thank you so
much for inviting me. I mean, it's it's an honor
to be here. And um, you know, I was thinking,
(01:27):
like people are saying, you know, why would you bring
out like your daughter's diary and share it with the
rest of the world. You know, it's something so private
and intimate, and um, the thing is, she left a
text that she wanted me to publish her diary and
share with the rest of the world because I think
she felt that it was it could help save lives
with people that are to other teams that are struggling
(01:50):
with the drug addiction and you know, anxiety and things
that the typical teens go to. Can we go back
to that text? I actually have it, and don't I
wanted to ask you about it it So this is
a text I guess she said it to her boyfriend
initially yes, and said take my journal in my nights
dand drawer, the fat one I always use. I've never
shown anyone my journal, but there's no one else I
(02:10):
would rather pass it on to than you. My business
is everyone else's business down And I'm okay with that, Mom,
And maybe you can publish my teenage journal and bump
up your career. Yeah, but UM, like, oh that sounds strange.
But right after that it goes on to say that
she would be so proud of me and UM, and
(02:31):
that she hopes that I get an award and and
that she'll be there with her peaceful presence on stage.
And the thing is, UM, she always like UM. She
loved me and knew that I loved to be in
the spotlight and she would It was actually a positive thing.
And the um after she passed away, I did not
(02:52):
come right out and published the diary. It was very
difficult for me to do, I think, to relive. I'm
sure that the whole whole thing, and I struggled with it,
and I the press was very mean to me when
she passed away, to me and our family, like they
were calling the New York Post like calling her the
doomed princess, and like um with some of the morning
(03:16):
shows are saying that I look like I was dressed
for the Kentucky Derby because I had a black hat on.
But we lived in Florida in the middle of the
summer and it's hot when we were burying her and stuff.
So what happened was back then, about a hundred fifty
people a day, we're dying from the drug epidemic. And UM,
(03:37):
my husband and I we were like a bit of
a very recluse at that time for several months, and
we um read a lot online, learned about the drug epidemic.
We went up then we went up to Washington, d C.
Your daughter after we lost our daughter. Yeah, we um
didn't really go out and socialize anymore. And UM, it
(04:01):
kind of like dropped out of society. My husband he
still went to work, but he's he's said on his
desk he had two piles of papers. Well, one pile
that's work related that makes money, and the other pile
of the drug educational papers that he was trying to learn.
And he says, this one, this pile will save lives.
(04:22):
So he took the other pipe pile, gave it to
his executives, and he says, I'm going to focus the
rest of my life on saving lives. So a few
years went by, and I keep hearing this in my
head and reading when I read her diary that she
wanted me to publish this, and the drug epidemic, with
as much as everyone's doing, has gotten worse. Now We're
(04:46):
up to about two fifty people a day dying of
a drug overdose. And I really felt that, Um, I'm
getting goose like chills right now. I feel like, you know,
my daughter's presence is here, and and um, we felt
that we need to get out there and keep the
conversation going and doing as much as we can, and
(05:07):
it was time to publish this book to try to
keep the epidemic from getting any worse. Well, let's get
into the book a little bit, because you're very honest
walking us through what happened in your family. But if
you can't want to go back to the time bit more.
I actually saw the original documentary The Queen of Versailles.
You made some decisions just to allow the documentary to
(05:28):
be made that put the entire family in the middle
of a spotlight, which is good and bad. Well, right,
there's sometime wies that do it, and it's actually now
now correct, please correct it then, Okay, So what happened was, Um,
I was out at the Versati opening in California over
Road Dale Drive, and I was on on the A
list and this photographer comes up to me, and it
(05:51):
was all movie stars like Demi Moore, Beyonce or you know,
like all those people. And this photographer comes up and
she says, who are you? Why are you here? Like
you're here, you know, an A list person, And so
she got intrigued by that, and I said, oh, you know,
I'm um. I'm married to a timeshare billionaire and we're
(06:14):
building a very large home. And I says, and I
had happened at my Christmas card in my purse with
all of my eight kids, and the cover of the
Christmas card it's me and my husband in front of
one of our private chats with all the kids sitting
on the wing and I, you know, so she could
see that we had money and I wasn't making it up,
and so it kind of like she got my information
(06:35):
and she says, well, maybe I'll come visit you sometime.
So anyways, a few months goes by, I forgot all
about it, and um, her name is Lauren. She comes
to my house and um, and she said, I like
to see the house that you're building, and I said sure,
So we went over there, and UM, she says, you know,
(06:58):
I have an idea if um she could film the
house being bill as a um, the construction, that then
she would like document that for us, and we'd have
free footage, we wouldn't have to hire our own photographers,
and it might be a nice thing for our family.
And and she said, and then she would be able
to probably put it on h G t V for
(07:19):
like one episode of you know, like those home makeover
shows or something. So that's what it was. And I
signed the release, and you know, David said that's fine.
You know, he always likes things for free. The economy
took a turn for the worse in two thousand and eight.
It was a worldwide like recession or economic crisis that
everyone fell on every level, and we stopped construction on
(07:41):
the house. So now she figured she didn't have the
TV show, you know, for that episode. And but she
still really um liked me. And and she said she
started showing up at the house with the camera crew
when they were in town. And I'm a ham and
you know, I just you know, opened the door let
her in, and you know, they're all, you know, following
(08:02):
me around, and my husband was getting very irritated with
the like there don't be Like he'd be sitting there
trying to watch TV and he'd look and there be
a boom over his head. So he'd kick them all
out out the front door, and then I let him
in through the back door. So it was kind of
like a circus for a while. And um, we didn't
know that it and I don't think she knew that
(08:23):
it was going to turn into a documentary until towards
the end when she realized that she actually really had something.
And in fact, when it was in the Sundance Film Festival,
I didn't even know. I wasn't even invited to the
premiere or anything. And it was the opening of the
Sundance Film Festival. It was packed and they sold the
movie that night. Lauren had mentioned to me that it
(08:45):
was going on, so I flew out there and I
was lucky to get a couple of tickets for me
at my friends. There's lots more when we come back.
So the movie comes out. You become very well known,
in part because of the ups and downs life's not
just about success the infect Your success is defined by
how you do a failure. Your kids are in this um,
(09:08):
there's a per amount of notoriety. I mean, we all
know families that have done really, really well when they've
gotten enough attention that they get above the clutter. Now
you actually are on the A list, and not just
because the rastace guys like you are, because you actually
are are notable. And this affects the family. So how
did the difference you've got experiment patriotish of kids? Yeah,
(09:29):
we have eight kids exactly, So how did it affect
all of them? And that I want to get into
this issue of the openated crisis and your daughter because
obviously touched you in a very personal way. Well, um,
the kids after that, UM had like a phobia of cameras.
Like even after that, I got offers to do TV
(09:49):
shows and things like that, but they wanted like more
of what the Queen of Versailles was like following the
family around in the dynamics with that, And at that
point I I just turned everything down because the kids
didn't want any part of it. Like there they were
like even if I take pictures of them. Now there's
mom don't post that, you know. You know, they're like
(10:12):
still traumatized from from the negativity that they got at
the schools of Victoria. Like, she didn't want people to
know that she was from a wealthy family and my
husband's one of the richest men in central Florida. But
she went to a public school. That's what she wanted
to do. We had her in private school with them.
She wanted to switch to public and she started getting
(10:33):
um kind of picked on once, like people found out
about her father, and I think people started becoming friends
with her for the wrong reasons, and she didn't know
who her friends are, and she got um. But she
wanted to fit in and she started hanging around with
just a bad crowd. But my my daughter, UM, she
(10:54):
always has the philosophies, Like she was like kind of believing,
like kind of the Buddhist philosophy that you should always
look in the good of people. And she thought that
she could make them change, you know, they make the
bad people change. But unfortunately they didn't they made her change.
(11:14):
As you look back on the decision to to allow
the photographer to enter your home, do you have any
regrets if I had to go back, Um, I would
have had I known it was going to be like
a big movie, and I wouldn't have had the kids
in it at all. I would still like to have
been in and have just been focused more on us.
(11:38):
But the thing is, since the movie came out, I mean,
I wouldn't be here today talking to you. Because of
the fame that this movie has brought. I can use
and now use that fame two get in the door
to promote the book and and be able to have
the conversations about people doing the the opioids and heroin
(12:00):
and all that. So Victoria is going to public school,
She's hanging with some mixed bag of people, many many kids.
Do you have any inkling at all that she was
suffering with drugs or depression or something that would have
culminated in when they're happening. Okay, this is what's crazy.
People say, how could you not know? I mean, this
(12:21):
happened right under our noses. The teenagers are very good
at they're great actors, and they they they're great liars
and a lot of this, Like if she said she
was tired and she'd go and locked herself in the room,
I figured she's just sleeping. She was probably in there
doing drugs, and a lot of the time she'd be
(12:42):
over sleeping at friends houses. Maybe the parents were out
of town and they'd be doing it over there. And
that's why I think that this book is also good
for parents. It has her personal diary. It's it's straightforward.
Nothing thing has been edited except me blurred out some
people's names. Sure, see, So I want parents to know
(13:02):
when they read this, this could be going on in
their child's mind behind closed doors, you know, with um
feeling the anxiety or being bullied at school and and
turning to the drugs behind their parents back, just kind
of like they're self medicating themselves. She was taking prescription medications.
How did she get access to them? Okay, So at
(13:25):
um one point she um came to me and and
her father and she says, you know, I've got I'm
suffering with anxiety. And of course we didn't want her
to turn to street drugs, so we took her to
a psychiatrist. He evaluated her, and he gave her a
prescription for Zanex, and then she went for another month
(13:48):
in yeah, about sixteen, I'd say, so. Then then she
never asked for anymore Zannex. So I figured she was cured.
Maybe she was just going through something at school and
she didn't need it anymore. Well, so like a year
and a half goes by and um she comes to
(14:08):
me and she says, Mom, she says, I need to
go to rehab. This is um A about a month
and a half before she passed away. And I said,
are you you need to go to rehab. I've never
seen you do any drugs and she says, Mom, you
don't understand. And so what had happened is she had
(14:29):
done an overdose on xan x, like a couple of
days before, and that's when she sent the text. But
I never found out about the text. So she realized
that she thought she had overdosed that night, and but
she woke up in the morning not expecting to and
she comes straight to me and says, mom, I need rehab.
So not really understanding why she needed to rehab, Me
(14:50):
and my grandmother supported her and we took her to
the rehab center where they cleansed, they wash out their system,
or you know, wean them off. What had happened is
she was getting her zan x for all these years
at school. At school, the school had a pill that
one of the kids had a pill press and made
Zanni bars, which is like four pills in one, and
(15:13):
so she was addicted to the Zanni bars and she
you know, with if you don't have a break from
xan x, which is addictive, it's builds your resistance builds up.
So she was labeled like by the end, I don't
know how many pills, but like probably a handful of pills.
You know, after going to rehab, was your sense that
she was now in recovery. Okay, So what happened in rehab?
(15:36):
She went in there because she was serious. She realized
she had a problem. She almost died, and she wanted
to come clean. While she was in rehab, she met
a twenty six year old man that was a Heroin
addict that was in there pretty much by core order,
like either he needs he'd go to jail, or he's
got a show that he's cleaning up his act for
(15:58):
his probation. But he was only there because of that
because he was forced to and he had no intentions
of quitting heroin when he came out. So she was
in there and she um fell in love with him
in the nine days that she was there. When they
came out. He introduced her to heroin and they started
(16:23):
running around together. And he also gave her a bottle
of methadone and and she had gotten I guess in
the rehab some um um anti depression pills, some zoolof
I think they prescribed that for and so on their
one month anniversary, um, which was a big deal to her.
(16:45):
This was like her first love. It was a grown man.
You know, we weren't we were We didn't like him
to begin with, but but we didn't know about the
heroine part. We found out after and um when we
went through her after she passed away, we went through
her text um so. Anyways and the so so a
(17:06):
month later, So she did the drug overdose. They were
in a fight and he was sleeping with another girl
and then the girl text Victoria and said he's just
using you for your money, and she's effing him right
now and they're doing heroin together and and Victoria just
she was by herself and she overdose. She took a
(17:26):
bottle of the method zone and zoloft. Oh my goodness. Yeah,
So who found her? Then nanny found her, and the
nanny of course called nine one one, which brings another
point that I wanted to bring up. UM. We're big
n lock zone advocates and UM back when she passed away,
(17:50):
if our nanny had had had an a lock zone,
she could have been saved. And no one really knew
what NA lock zone was four years ago. And what
we've done, we mean, alos has been around since the sixties.
Now the paramedics they know what it is because they
use it all the time in the hospitals and UM.
(18:11):
So we went up to Washington, d C. We went
to some like Heroin walks and and things. And while
we were up there, we found about this um Kara Act,
which is a comprehensive something. It's a like a bill
that's like really thick and it's and in there. This
act was about UM the narcan being distributed across America.
(18:33):
And this had been sitting on the shelf for three years.
So what we did we got ahold of the bill
and my husband and I went around and we brought
it in front of Congress and we got the bill passed.
And we've UM gotten the government to give UM to
budget two billion dollars to put in a lock zone
(18:53):
all over the country. Now because of us going up there.
Every police car has an a lock zone and they're
putting on college campuses and um just in my town,
I had lunch with the chief of police and he
told me, he says, because of what me and David
have done, just in our community, they've used the naloxone
(19:13):
that we've gotten provided two thousand times in Orlando. So
we know in there, you know, inside some of those
people may have lived without it, but like somewhere in there,
we know we've spared some you know, someone's lives. More
questions after the break. So the show has been and
I've been very active machine care on the bill throw
(19:35):
just to make sure people have mental health services one
of the things. So you know about the act, all
about it. We were one of the earliest and most
of aciferous supporters. We actually did several big events, but
what did one in the Mall in Washington, iconic location
where Pardoner the King gave us I have a dream
speeches and we would get all these musicians to come perform,
trying to get people to realize that recovery is real.
But one of the ways you've realized that you hit
(19:56):
rock bottom is when you die and if you have
something like nacks want to pull you back up again
and it helps. What's most troubling about your your daughter
victorious story is that she did hit rock bottom, she
almost died. She goes to rehab, rehab fails here, which
is the other big crisis we're facing now in America,
which is that rehab is not what is cooked up
to be. When done correctly, it's unbelievably impactful, and I
know people who do it well, but there are all
(20:18):
kinds of mills out there. Did you go back to
the rehab facility that she was in, because obviously she
wasn't treated effectively there. Well that that's um funny you
say that about the rehab. There's a lot of rehabs
out there that they actually don't want the people to
um come clean because that they want to repeat customers, right,
(20:38):
and the insurance people who have insurance, it only covers
about UM I think only thirty days, and in reality,
no one gets cured in thirty days. They need to
I would say at least three months, maybe nine, maybe
a year, but but we don't even have enough support
to get people in the ninety days there, folks, are
thirty days are people waiting? I know, for many many
(20:59):
families who have lost loved ones while they're waiting to
get their kids in the rehab. But I'm even questioning
if rehab is done right along. No, we have a
personal family friend who's daughter died a week after coming
out of rehab. That's the thing. When they come out
of rehab, now their body, their resistance to the drugs
is down. And when that what happened to her? Yeah, yeah,
and when they do relapse and take the drug, they
(21:22):
take the amount that their body was used to from
the month before, you know, from before rehab, and that's
when so many of the overdoses happen because the body.
So maybe maybe they should not be allowed to release
someone from rehab without some LUs. How do you say
it's available, you probably should take it with you when
(21:42):
you leave it, yeah, you know, because it's dangerous. I
was at an event out in UM Las Vegas last
week and it was like a recovery charity and UM.
At this party, they had the Emergence Emergency the lock
zone life saving kits where that you keep it on
your key chain, and they passed it out. That was
(22:05):
the party favor, and I thought, my god, you know, UM,
that's a great idea. I'd like to find out. I
want to start passing these out. Well, there are many
communities now where it is prescribed for everybody. They used
to be a prescription. I mean, my goodness, making the
life saving drug prescription only. How did your your other
children react to losing Victoria? Oh my god, it was
(22:26):
such a such a difficult time. It's like I felt
like in our house, um, before she passed away. Um,
someone asked me, like, you have everything like we've got.
We had a football team, private jets. My husband's company
is back on top about the Las Vegas Hilton, and
(22:46):
we build in the big one of the biggest homes
in America. And we just did a TV show, So
I got on TV. I traveled the world. I have
eight beautiful children. I mean we did Wife Swap, just
an episode of Wife Swap, and and so it's like
and I like, I've been everywhere I pretty much wanted
to be. And someone said, you know, um, and eight
beautiful children, and we were on top. And and when Victoria,
(23:12):
when we got that phone call for that she passed away,
it felt like the whole world the carpet was pulled
out from under us, and nothing else mattered anymore. I mean,
we even like didn't even go over to versaid of finish.
It's still it's getting finished, but like we didn't even
go there for several months. We didn't care about it.
In fact, we kind of wish that we'd never started it.
(23:33):
But at this point, because all our memories are in
the house that we're in now, which is a beautiful home.
It's a square foot home on a private island in
the middle of a lake. So but your kids, they
grew up with Victoria, they they must have. I want
to think that someone that may have had inklings that
there was something not right, that she was at risk.
(23:54):
I'm just curious how they managed the recovery after losing
their sister. It was the kids. I was maybe it
bring us all closer together, but in a way, we
kind of like, just like like one of the kids
they painted their room black and put blackout curtains and
we all got kind of depressed. We probably should have seeked,
(24:16):
um counseling and stuff, but for me, it was just
so painful that um, we we did get a counselor
in the beginning, and it was just reliving the memory
was too hard for me. Ideal better, like when I
blocked my emotions and the thing for four years. How
(24:36):
the kids so now well, kids can be pretty resilient,
and they, um, we'll never touch a drug. They realized
this is for real. It's like playing Russian roulette when
you go out there. They've watched since then, other UM
kids in their high school in the community have passed away.
(24:57):
We just lost another one a week and a half ago.
And they see this, and they also see there is
UM this marijuana. It was a synthetic marijuana k too.
And they've seen a couple of kids they do it
one time and it does so much brain damage that
they can't function like as a regular human being anymore.
(25:20):
Like it's mine altering have a devastating effect on folks.
I know it's been hard to go through this at
a personal level in order tell your daughter's story. I'm
proud of you for doing it. Recovery is real, but
so is death if we don't face up to the
reality of what opiates have done to our nation. And
I also mentioned that UM during this process after Victoria
passed away, I UM did UM make like a documentary
(25:45):
just something from my own personal thing that I have
on my website, Um that if I can say my website,
it's it's called the Real Queen of Versaide dot com.
And there's a an option there that you can click
on to see what I put together. Because everyone, whenever
I see anyone, they say what happened? You know, like
(26:07):
they want to say more? And this is I was
thinking that when I watched the documentary on a long play,
right one thing, this one is called the print, this
one is. Yeah, so the documentary that I made as
the Princess of Versailles about Victoria passing away. And um, also, um,
we are based on this book. We already have a
movie deal, so we're making a scripted movie based on
(26:30):
this story. So there will be more to come. You
can hear a bunch more about Jackie story and Victoria's voice,
our daughter's dying wish to share her diary and save
lives from drugs. Well stated, thanks you be here, Thank
you so much. Let's save lives
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