September 8, 2025 • 49 mins
Bravo fanatics know Carole Radziwill as the “voice of reason” during her time on the Real Housewives of New York. But before answering that call from Andy Cohen, Radziwill was an Emmy-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. She was also married to Jackie O’s nephew Anthony Radziwill and was close friends with his cousin JFK Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette. We’re joined by Vulture writer and Real Housewives anthropologist Brian Moylan to break down Carole’s Kennedy connections and chat about her triumphant years in the Real Housewives universe.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
What's the first thing you think of? What I say,
Carol Radswell.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I think of Real Housewives of New York. I think
of ghost Writer. I think of her coming down to
Lomit with the commoners. There was some sort of Lee
Radwell house Twitter account at some point. It was just
giving cultural and political point of view and commentary from
what you would imagine sort of an upity older woman,
and her husband was a Kennedy of some sort. She
(00:37):
was best friends with Caroline Bassett and JFK.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Junior.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I'm George Saveris, I'm Lyra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about her cultural fascination with
the Kennedy Dynasty. Each week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about
Carol Radswell.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
If you're a Bravo fan, then you've definitely heard of her.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
If not, don't worry, right.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
So, for the Brava holics out there, you know her
as a cast member of the Real Housewives of New
York during.
Speaker 6 (01:17):
Its heyday from twenty twelve to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I've heard about this miss Carol Radswell, and I'm surprised.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
I haven't met her before.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
With her Kennedy ties, Carol was also in the inner
circle of the Kennedy family. In the nineties, she married
Jackie O's nephew, Anthony Radswell, and was very close friends
with JFK. Junior and Carolyn Bissett.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Anthony was the son of Lee Bouvier Radswell, so he
was JFK. Junior's first cousin, and by all counts, Anthony
and John were very close. They were each best man
at the other's wedding.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Carol worked in broadcast journalism for almost two decades. She
started as a twenty twenty intern DN worked on the
show Close Up, and then moved to ABC News, where
she produced shows on hefty topics like abortion and gun control.
She was stationed in Iraq during the Gulf War and
won an Emmy for a story on the land mines
(02:06):
in Cambodia.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
One of three Emmys that Carol has, in fact, along
with a Peabody and a glad Media Award, and these
accolades have a way of coming up when Carol talks
about her past. But she met Anthony while they were
both producers at ABC News, and when they started dating,
she was immediately swept into the Kennedy world. Her and
Carolyn Bessett became best friends, and in Carol's memoir, she
says of Carolyn, she made me believe I was captivating.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Anthony suffered a long bout with cancer during his marriage
to Carol, and sadly, he passed away just three weeks
after the fatal nineteen ninety nine plane crash that killed
JFK Junior, Carolyn, and Carolyne's sister Lauren. In fact, Carol
was the one who had to call Carolyn and Lauren's
mother to explain that both of her daughters were gone.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
So Carol lost the three people closest to her in
the span of one month. It was an unimaginable series
of tragedies for her to go through, and it's what
she chronicled in her two thousand and five New York
Times best selling memoir What Remains.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
That's a crash course on all things Carol Radswell, and
we'll get into some of them with our guests, but
we will also get pretty into the weeds on all
things Real Housewives. So fair warning, this one is for
the real bravoheads.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Without further ado, Here with us today is author and
Real Housewives anthropologist Brian Moylin. He is the author of Housewives,
The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives, and he's also
a writer at Vulture. Brian, thank you so much for
joining us. I'm so excited to be here. So Brian,
let's get right into it. You are obviously one of
the foremost Housewives experts. Yes, just off the bat, what
(03:43):
is your relationship to Carol radswell Well.
Speaker 6 (03:46):
Chol radswell is one of my favorite.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
Housewives and I've had brunch with her a couple times
and met her out in the wild. Seriously, the housewives
that I'm nice too that want to hang out with me.
And I've kept in touch with Carol and talked in
Fire Island. We once did a Housewives Dragged dinner and
everyone had to go dress as a real housewife and
(04:10):
I went as Carol Radziwell and she yelled at me
because my hair wasn't good enough, and so.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
Did she also go as a different housewife. No, she
wasn't there. It was just a bunch of boys.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
I mean, it was easy to be nice to her
because she was so funny on Housewives and she's from
the ultimate cast.
Speaker 7 (04:30):
Yes, and she was the voice of reason more often
than not. And so I think that's usually like the
audience's way in right, and that's the one who we
are kind of siding with and being like, yeah, Carol's
the one who's right and sane amongst this cast of
absolute crazies.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
I think also because that was my introduction to Housewives
was Rony and with Carol, and Carol made me laugh.
And it was always kind of interesting the way when
people who'd never seen and the show, who didn't really understand,
like they're like housewives, what's the story? What are they
doing all day? But then my example would always be like, well,
she's a Peabody Award winning news journalist. She's very as
(05:12):
a very interesting backstory.
Speaker 7 (05:15):
So yeah, yes, I always remind people that housewives and
real housewives are different things, right, Like a housewives of
like Donna read at home with the vacuum cleaner, and
like a real housewife, you know, has a job and has.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
Cool friends and is interesting and you know whatever. And
Carol also, you know, all the.
Speaker 7 (05:34):
Other ladies were very upper East side but and down
want to be socialites, and Carol was like the cool
downtown one with like interesting friends, and she actually knew
and be you know, before, and that's why she was
on the show.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
And so she was kind of always set.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
Apart, I think from everybody else, and it always seemed
a little bit like the Housewives needed Carol more than
Carol needed the Housewives, which I think is a great
way to position it, because you know, you never like
those ladies who are desperate, like clawing on to the experience.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Yeah, there was almost this is a you know, a
very controversial comparison to make, but there's almost a general
lionce quality where like, yeah, General Lions was like an
existing entity. If you were in certain circles in New York,
you already knew who she was. She did not have
to prove herself, and she could almost sort of remain
above it while participating in this, which is funny because
Carol in a different era, someone like Carol Radswell would
(06:29):
be seen as like, I don't know, like it would
be seen as not classy that she's like taking advantage
of her Kennedy connection to write a memoir and that
she's like giving interviews about them whatever. But because the
Housewives are so far in the other direction, she could
then be the chic one, like she could be like
the smart one, the voice of reason. Even though if
you were to ask my mom, what do you think
(06:51):
of Carol Radswell, she'd probably roll her eyes and be like.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
Oh, she's just a social climber.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
But in the context of the Housewives, Carol was basically
Princess Diana.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
Yes, absolute well, and that was you know, like the
big quote unquote fight was that, you know, leu Anne
was a countess, but Carol was a princess, so you know,
she could one up even the countess.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
I mean, there were so many instances where just Carol
being there just illuminated how ridiculous their claims of authority were.
And I always think about Sonia crying about how she
used to party with John John and it's like, well,
John John was the best man at Carol's wedding.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
It's like there's no comparison.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
And Carol also tells Sonia nobody who knows him calls
him that like he did not like it, like this
is like what we said. And so by Sonya even
saying like I used to party with John John on
the yacht, she's betraying the fact that she.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Didn't really know him.
Speaker 7 (07:46):
Or know, the real version of him that Carol knew
and you know, but also, oh god, bless Sonya and
her delusions. I know.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
And you know what, someone I know just met Sonya
at some pool party and they were like it was
literally like the camera's there's no undress, like an act
she puts up when it's done.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
No.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
I have interviewed Sonya multiple times for multiple stories.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
It's just like I hit.
Speaker 7 (08:09):
Record and then let Sonya ramble on for half an
hour and then mine not for quotes like that's the
best you're going to get with Sonya, And that's what
you know. People always ask me like, oh, what are
they like in real life? And they're exactly like they
are on the show. Down to a person, including Carol,
like she's cool, she's smart, she's dishy, she's a little
bit bitchy in a fun way, like just like she's
(08:31):
on the show, she is.
Speaker 6 (08:33):
Like in real life.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
And I think that that's what makes a great housewife,
as someone who's not playing it up or trying to
be someone they're not.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
It's just they're just being themselves.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, and you touched on something that I also think
is important, which is that she was always sort of
the smart one.
Speaker 6 (08:46):
There was something. It's like she used to be a journalist.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
She has Emmys, but also like she can read and write,
and she's able to like do a little quip that
isn't if she has a little insult or a little
shade that she's throwing. It's never like calling someone a whore.
It's a little more sophisticated than that.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
It's like whyting them know that Puerto Rico is in
a country? You know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
It's like the baseline brows wise is so in the
basement that you know, they have no idea what's going
on it.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Carol just goes like, yeah, no, that's how you pronounce
this word.
Speaker 7 (09:17):
And she looks like she has seven PhDs and speaks
ninety languages, you know.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
Right exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
She almost has this like Sarah Jessica Parker quality of
being able to be both high and low. Like she's
actually able to really play in the Housewives, play a pen.
It's not like she's like on the corner being like,
oh god, these women are so like you know, ghosh.
Like she's able to like keep up but then also maintain.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
The sort of level of superiority.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Absolutely, and I think that essentially she never like back
down from a fight, you know, and when people came
for her like a Viva did about her book, or
when she and Bethy Frankel eventually had their falling out,
It's like Carol can.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Go toe to toe with the best of them, you know.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
But she wasn't one who was necessary early dramatic or
like inciting the kind of drama. She was usually one
responding to it, which I think is I would like
to hope the business for most of us would find
ourselves in if we were on a Housewives show. You know,
like I'm not gonna throw wine at anybody, but if
someone throws wine in me, you better watch the fuck out,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6 (10:17):
And that's what Carol gave.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
So we mentioned John John a little bit. This is
obviously a podcast about the Kennedy's. I'm sure there are
some people that have started listening to this that are
not Housewives fans that are already like who who's speaking?
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, So tell us basically, at the most basic level,
what is Carol's relationship to the Kennedy family.
Speaker 7 (10:55):
So I think to put it in like Housewives context,
you know, the Housewives of New York City was the
second franchise and kind of the first like standout, you know,
like they started with Orange County, and then once you
got to New York, the media started povering in a
different way because it was happening in their own backyards.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
They started getting in the gossip colls whatever. It kind
of took off.
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Bezie Frankel was the biggest star that it launched, and
she started skinnygro Margaritas, which she sold reportedly for one
hundred million dollars, and that kind of proved like the
cachet of the Whole Housewives machine, as it were. After
Bethany left, the show kind of took a turn for
the worst and they fired half the cast and re
hired three new women as a kind of soft three
(11:37):
boot at, one of whom was Carol.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
Radswell, and she was married to Anthony.
Speaker 7 (11:44):
Radzowell, who is Lee Radzwell's only son, whose father was
a Polish prince of some sort. I don't know how
Polish aristocracy works. I only know what I was sold
in those lives, and that's what we were told, sing
so Lea.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Radswell's husband was the Prince Yami Radswell of course is
Jackie's sister exactly.
Speaker 7 (12:05):
And so Anthony's first cousins are John and Caroline Kennedy. Yes,
and so not all the Kennedy's not the vaccine that
I are. Kennedy's just the you know, good Kennedy's.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
The classic set, Yes, that's true. Yes, the classic set.
And they were very close. They were very good friends.
Speaker 7 (12:23):
And Carol and Anthony were very good friends with John
and Carolyn beset Kennedy, and so they were kind of
like a foursome who would hang out a lot. And
right around the same time that they died of the
plane crash, Anthony died of cancer at a very young age.
And so Carol wrote a memoir called What Remains, which
(12:43):
is about her dealing with the grief of losing not
only her husband but also her two best friends as well, and.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
How she dealt with this. And it was a huge success, very.
Speaker 7 (12:53):
Well regarded in terms of the writing of it is
actually a great book, and she went on Oprah to
talk about it was a huge success and that kind
of made her name.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
She she had started as a journalist for ABC News.
Speaker 7 (13:05):
That's where she met Anthony, who was also a journalist,
and yeah, so she had this kind of pedigree as
being both a writer and a journalist and a smart
person connected with the Kennedy's a princess whatever. So as
they're trying to reboot Housewives, that is you know, what
they were looking for is somebody with all of those
deep connections and deep kind of New York City experience
(13:30):
to bring the show to a new love. Joining her
on the cast were Heather Thompson, who was a fashion
signer who worked with j Lo p Ded amongst others,
and Heather kind of became her best sie on the show.
And then the other newbie was Aviva Dresser, who was
an unhinged want to be socialite with.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
One leg and I mean, ooh girl that Aviva Dresser.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
And Aviva kind of became Carol's biggest antagonist during her
kind of early years on the show.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Which I felt so bad for Aviva because it's like,
you do not have the chops to go up against
this person who is very intelligent, very quick and is
not gonna, you know, use a leg as a prop
like that was so shocking and weird and far from
like Carol's mindset.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
Yes, and for.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Anyone who is in the Housewives viewer, Aviva did take
off her leg and throw it.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
Yes, and her fast scene ever on the Housewive Aviva
through a leg everybody and it was crazy. Also, I
forgot to mention when Carol started on the show, she
was dating one of the band members of Aerosmith. She
was connected to Aerosmith, and so on their first cash
trip as a group, they go to Saint Arts and
he's there like with Aerosmith, like doing a concert.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Russ Irwin a singer, songwriter, producer, and Carol was in
the video for his twenty twelve song called Manhattan.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
Yes as she would be. And so the first season,
you know, Carol's a voice of reason.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
She's kind of chilling with the new lady.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
She's a little bit in the background, being funny, commenting
on it, adjacent to the drama, but not part of it,
which was a great place for her to start and
a good way for fans to connect with her. Her
second season, she's right in the middle of it. When Aviva,
the leg throw or Extraordinaire, brings back this rumor she
heard that Carol used a ghostwriter on her book, which
(15:24):
is a storyline that fans referred to as Bookgate and
Aviva says, you didn't write your book, and Carol's like,
what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 6 (15:33):
Of course I wrote this book. It's about my grief whatever.
And there are a lot.
Speaker 7 (15:37):
Of accusations waged by housewives against each other. They usually
involve like renting one's house instead of owning, a husband,
who cheat, borrowing clothes and not buying them, you know,
kind of.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
The petty bullshit housewives.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
Cater said that we all love and it's nice and
light and who cares who's right, who cares who's wrong?
To me was like a really big deal, especially as
a writer and a journalist, for someone to say, like you,
you can't do the thing that you are known for.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Also her incredibly personal story. Yes, yes, it's an insane accusation.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
Yes, and I mean.
Speaker 7 (16:14):
Obviously anybody who works as a writer knows there's a team.
She has editors, she had copy editors. But never in
my mind did I doubt that Carol had her fingers
on the keyboard, like, you know, writing the book.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
And you know, I've ghost to Annah housewives, Mama, no.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Shame in the game, you know, And I'm good on
the women who know that they need the help, but
Carol obviously didn't need it, and so you know, and
it was basically like Carol's word against Aviva's word. And
she even did the scene where she goes to her
book at Nerve Records with her the book etter says, no,
you didn't use a ghost writer whatever, but a Viva
kept banging on this draw and banging on this drub
(16:53):
and you know, there's a famous part. It's a reunion
for that season, I believe as season six, and Carol
calls her something and there says something not very funny,
and Aviva says, why don't you use your words write
or gnral So that's kind of what like fans often
refer to Carol Radzewell as writer Girl thanks to Aviva's
(17:14):
even worse put down of Carol.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
Something I was surprised about on the show because I
guess when I was watching this, I didn't realize how
close she was to the Kennedy So she is a
part of us, you know, is a part of the
Kennedy family. And what are some of the more intimate
details that she talks about with her relationship with Carolyn
and JFK.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Junior.
Speaker 7 (17:36):
She doesn't actually talk a lot about it on the show.
I think on the show Ghost, first little thing You've
got is she has Lee Radzwell's old couch, old tiger
print couch that's been really beat up. And she has
this crazy apartment downtown and the stairs are like in
the wall and there's no railing and it looks like
(17:56):
a death trap. And then she has Lee Radzowell's couch,
and so, yeah, she talks about how she had a
good relationship with her mother in law and it continued
after Anthony's death. They weren't especially close, but they were
still in good said with each other. Yeah, but that
she has Lee's couch, that's how close they were. It's
like she's taking her cast off furniture and she didn't
(18:19):
want to reupholster the couch because it was Lee's. But
then eventually she does, which becomes like a storyline on.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
The Housewives because that's what we do. People.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
We're talking about redesigned projects and thrown legs.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
I mean, reupholstering Lee Radswell's couch is as good a
Housewife storyline as any I've heard.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I loved it.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Yeah, I want to just pause on the apartment of
it because there's something about her apartment it's like she
almost lives this bachelor lifestyle. Even the tiger print couch
like it's like, in the same way that when you
look at the Upper east Side ones, their houses look
like the gossip girl version of what you think in
Upper east Side townhouses, her apartment is almost comically like
if someone did like very broad set design in a
(19:01):
movie about what like a sexy widow who's dating a
twenty seven year old's apartment might.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
Look like, yes, like it's not sex of the City.
It's like lipstick jungle exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
Yes, that's the feel you got for it, but it's also.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
Yeah, very real and very authentic, and I think that
you kind of like it. Her to Sarah Jisca Parker,
I were like in her more it's Kerrie Bradshaw where
she's this downtown writer girl, and then her storyline after
season six with book Gate, she breaks up with Russ,
the aerosmith guy, and she starts dating a much younger
gentleman named Adam, who's a vegan chef who was dating
(19:38):
Countess Lewane's niece.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
I believe it was no, it was not Victoria.
Speaker 7 (19:46):
It was the niece, and the niece was on the
Sarah Jessica Parker Art Show on Bravo.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
Do you remember this?
Speaker 7 (19:53):
There was one season Sara Jisca Parker produced Itick got
it and Lewanne's niece was She's an artist.
Speaker 6 (19:59):
Was on it and so oh yes.
Speaker 7 (20:01):
In Carol's selling of the story, I think it was
called work of art, work of art. You were correct, yes,
And in Carol's selling of the story, Adam had broken
up with the niece a long time ago and Luanne
hired him to be a chef at her house when
all the women were in the Hamptons. That's where Carol
met him started dating him. And then Luyne accuses Carol
(20:22):
of breaking girl code by dating this guy, who Luanne
says was still together with her niece at this time
and if that wasn't the case, even if she wasn't,
and Luenne's basically kind of like, you're dating the help,
and Jael's like, well, I don't.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
Give a shit. He's young and h and he's Adam,
and he's a vegan.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
Chef, and so that kind of plays in also to her.
Very like Carrie Bradshaw mystique I.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
Guess, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
She has this quality of being able to both do
something so definitionally tacky as dating her friend's niece's twenty
seven year old ex boyfriend, but then also is the
veagan chef who's a vegan chef, but also so like
staying above it and speaks in the softer voices anyone
and just being like, why is Luanne being so annoying
right now? Like I'm just trying to live my life.
(21:06):
Like she really is able to have it both ways.
I think she's a charisma that enables her to somehow
pull that off. I think other people could not pull
that off.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
I think Carrie Bradshaw in and just like that basically
wrote that book like it's on her bookshelf No.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 7 (21:21):
And I think, like speaking to Carol's charisma, a lot
of stuff on The Housewife comes down till she said
versus she said right. Carol says she wrote the book
of Viva says she does it. Carol says they were
broken up, Louyenne says they weren't. And I think that
because Carol is the sane one, because she's the voice
of the reason, She's the one at least I always believed.
It's like, well, if Carol says it's true, you know,
(21:42):
because the other women are crazy and they make shit
up and they're bending the truth and they're trying to
make drama, and Carol is just always such like a
straight shooter that you never questioned at least I.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
Did her version of.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
The truth, and so like you were saying, she had
I remember the Lee Radswell. That was really I think
how I learned how closely connected she was to the Kennedy's.
But then also pretty recently she did the Moth story
about Jackie O's watch.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Did you listen to that or watch that?
Speaker 7 (22:13):
No? I did not, But I know what my first
YouTube is going to be after we're done.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Okay, when I was when I turned thirty, my husband
gave me a Cartier tank watch that had once belonged
to his aunt, Jackie Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
It's really fascinating and it really sort of relates to
a lot of our interests over here at the United
States of Kennedy, mostly supernatural curses that afflict the Kennedy family.
So the story is basically that Carol was gifted Jackie
Kennedy's Cardier tank that she had worn kind of her
whole life. It was a gift to her, and then
she wrote her whole life. She was, I believe wearing
(22:52):
it when JFK was assassinated, and then Carol started wearing it,
and then her husband, of course died of cancer. Then
started feeling as though there was a negative aura attached
to it, So she hid it in her drawer for
many years and didn't want to look at it. Then
she ended up gifting it to a friend of hers
named Cassandra, and then Cassandra's husband also died of cancer,
(23:14):
and so Carol was like, this watch is cursed. It
has belonged to three women, all of whom are widowed
in their thirties. I'm gonna put it up for sale
at Christie's and hopefully Cardia will buy it back and
I will never have to think of it again. And Lara,
do you want to tell us who ended up buying
the watch?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 6 (23:32):
Kim Kardashian ended up bidding on the watch and buying it.
You know why she's trying to kill Kaya. I did
have this thought where I was like, Kim, how old
is Kim? Kim?
Speaker 4 (23:42):
No, She's forty four. Okay, so she's managed to not
be widowed in her thirties. Sorry to be so Macab,
but Kanye is not doing well and this can't be
good to have the negative.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Yeah, her buying the watch I think did pre date
a lot of his more public mental health extreme issues,
and people do like it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
It to that it's destroying a merit.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
And then you sort of got back to Kim that
this watch was quote unquote cursed, and she in fact
returned it. She's not in possession of it. Cardia ended
up buying it back and it's now in the vault
in the basement of the Fifth Avenue store. Kim maybe
fully paid for it and just didn't want it in
her possession. It's not like she returned it for the
money that she paid. That's how much she was.
Speaker 7 (24:22):
She was like, get this motherfucker away from me. No, literally,
how much, see Carol get for it. You know, Carol
has this way of not quite.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Saying how much money she has, or how much money
she makes, or what her sort of financials are at
any given time.
Speaker 6 (24:35):
But I'm sure it was a pretty good check.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I'm sure you could liken it to other Jackie O.
Auction items.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
Yeah, I will.
Speaker 7 (24:42):
Say I don't think I've been sharing any confidence here,
But Carol has said multiple times that she went on
Housewives for the money, so I don't think she's like
sitting on some secret Polish prince fortune. She has an
apartment and she has a Jackie O watch. I think
she's comfortable, but ooh girl watch.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Yeah, I mean I know who.
Speaker 7 (25:19):
So eventually after Adam the Adam storyline, Carol befriended Bethy Frankel,
who was not just Roney's breakout star, but probably the
biggest Housewife star there is still a big star, though
she's not on Housewife anymore, like a big TikTok influencer
millions and millions of followers. They became very close and
then had a falling out, and Bethany attributed it to
(25:41):
Carol Is seeming to not want to spend as much
time with her and not paying a much tensure to her,
and Carol said, my best friend's husband was dying and
I was helping her her, so that kind of factors
into her events. The dissolution of her friendship with Bethany Frankel,
which becomes kind of Carol's last big story on the
Housewives before her exit.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
And then she exits basically saying she wants to go
back to journalism, but then also ends up having a
falling out with Andy Cohen which lasts like seven years.
They like don't talk for seven years, and it was
only recently squashed when she made a surprise appearance on
Watch What Happens Live, And she claims she's not gonna
re enter the Bravo universe, but who knows. And so
(26:24):
that's where Carol is now. And I will say I
found out just this morning that she's now on substack.
So she has the journalism dream is alive and well,
and I actually wrote down she has this great She's
only written one post and it was July thirty first,
so the clock is ticking. But she has this really
great bio of hers that she wrote. And to your
point about her not using a ghostwriter, she does have
(26:46):
a specific voice, like maybe someone spruced it up, but
there's a way she writes that is very like, it's
honestly like columnist voice. It is Carrie Bradshaw columnist voice.
There's a little aside, a little joke. Then she has
one sentence that sort of ties it all together. She
has this one part that I thought was fun in
her first post where she's like, I've decided to write
(27:06):
about my life here on substack, because well why not.
And then she goes expect musings parentheses a word people
use when they're not quite sure what they're saying. Yet
that's funny to make fun of the trope of saying musings.
And then my favorite thing is at the very end
she writes her bio. It's five paragraphs, I won three Emmys,
blah blah. And then at the end it goes Carol's
working on a bunch of writing projects that may or
may not ever see the light of day, but if
(27:28):
they do, she plans to sell them for an obscene
amount of money, buy a castle and Antwerp and fuck off.
And that's like the final sentence of her five paragraph bio.
It's like, sonya can't write.
Speaker 6 (27:39):
That, so on no Viva Charger certainly can't write that,
you know, not even with the ghost writer shit. So yeah, oh,
I'm good for Carol.
Speaker 7 (27:48):
Yeah, And she has said repeatedly, and this was before
her kind of cooling of things with it. So what
happened with Andy Kullen is so they were friendly before
the show. The story goes that Carol was friends with
Kelly Rippa and Marcus Willis, who are very good friends
with Andy Cohen. He met her at a dinner party
(28:09):
at Kelly Ripper's house, found out she was a princess,
found out the whole story was like you have to
be on Housewives, and really pursued her and convinced her
to do the show, not necessarily against her will, but
you know, took a lot of cajoling.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
And so then at.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
The final reunion, Carole felt like Andy was taking Bethany's
side in their argument, and that he was favoring her,
letting her speak more, getting in more sides, and Bethany
quicker than Carol and a lot more biting than Carol
and a lot meaner. And when she comes to somebody,
(28:42):
she really comes for somebody. And so there's a moment
in the reunion where Carol is basically, you know, fuck off,
like fuck you to Andy because she feels like he
wasn't having her back.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
And so that's what caused their feud.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
And then she went on and didn't really talk trash
about the housewives, but when she would do press or
do appearances, she talked about how she's never coming back.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
I'm never coming back to the show. I'm never going
to do it again. And I really believed her.
Speaker 7 (29:03):
And so the Housewives had this thing called Ultimate Girl's
Trip where they get a bunch of former housewives together
and they sent him on a trip and they filmed
it for a week, and they did one with all
former real house lives in New York. And Carol didn't
do that, and she said every time she's asked you,
she doesn't want to go back. So I can see
her now that relations have cooled between her and Handy
being an occasional guest on Watch What Happens Live showing
(29:24):
up to do the this or that kind of brabo
kind of thing. But yeah, I don't see her wanting
to be on another show. Probably wisely she left on top.
Yeah as a housewife.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Yeah, I mean the Bethany thing is funny because we've
talked a lot about how Carol was always above the fray,
but the friendship with Bethany from the beginning was a
taking time bomb because you knew if Bethany turns on you,
it's over. And Carol could not stand up to someone
as domineering as Bethany.
Speaker 7 (29:53):
But of all the people to go against Bethany, Carol
I think had the best chance. And I think that
because fans are always on their side, the fans believed her.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
And there's this famous scene in season.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
Three of brill Housewives where Ramona Singer and Bethany Franco
go on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and a
Ramona Singer says to Bethany, you don't have any friends,
none of your relationships last, like you can't whatever. And
we have seen that to be true over the course
of decades on reality's television, and Caro was just another
one of them. And Bethany blows up these friendships, you know,
(30:27):
And Bethany said Carol wasn't swending enough time with her.
Kara was saying Bethany is too domineering, she wants it
all to be about herself. It all has to be
on Bethany's terms, whatever, And that's exactly what we saw
of Bethany's character on the show. And so I was
always has stag team Carol as it were in the fight.
But yes, but Bethany's so smart, so quick, so mean
(30:48):
that plenty of people were coming for Bethany because she
was always the alpha, she was the rich one, She
was the one who proved herself and everyone always failed.
But Carol dies some damage, I think on her way
down and out of the show, show going sparring with Bethany,
just by showing Bethany how crazy she was.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
It also seems like Bethany just has the inner motivation
drive to inhabit the role of the Bravo celebrity that
Carol doesn't seem to happen.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
Always a shark.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
If Carol is a fabulous columnist, Bethany's an insult comic,
like she's gonna tear you down.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
Yes, well, and you're right.
Speaker 7 (31:24):
Bethany has always wanted to be famous in a way
where Carol was reluctantly famous, And I think that makes
a really good housewife is somebody who doesn't want it
too badly, doesn't want.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
The fame too much.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
And we don't see Carol going on celebrity wife swap,
we don't see her on Image Rehab, Reality Star edition.
Speaker 6 (31:46):
She's not has a celebrity being brother.
Speaker 7 (31:48):
She's left Housewives and kept it quiet, and so I
think that speaks to the difference between her and Bethany.
Bethany's all her own housewives, but she's always on TikTok.
She had another Bravo show, she was on a Shark Tank.
She's always trying to keep that fame alive in a
way that Carroll doesn't seem interested in.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Yeah, Carol, I think always wants to have one foot
in journalism. I don't think she's ready or willing or
being given the opportunity to go back and produce docuseries
and couble, but she wants to have a column. She
was at some point a contributing writer to Town and Country.
She wants to be seen as someone who writes for magazines,
whereas Bethanie wants to be a television start. Speaking of
(32:27):
the beauty of female friendship, we should talk a little
bit about Carol's friendship with Carolyn, which is a huge
part of the book. In my memory of the book,
the central love story is almost more Carol and Carolyn
than it is Carolyn and Anthony. There is just something
so magnetic about Carolyn, and Carol is so taken with it.
(32:47):
There's this amazing scene where their first ever interaction was
that they were staying in the house in the Hampton's
and it was the two couples, Carolyn Anthony, Carolyn and
JFK Jr. And Carolyn's first words to Carol can I
borrow your toothbrush? Because she had forgotten her toothbrush. But
it's like, what an incredible sort of like Dawming yeah
thing to say to someone we've just met. Can I
(33:09):
borrow your toothbrush? And it should actually be your honor
for me to use your toothbrush?
Speaker 6 (33:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (33:14):
Well, and I think that she seems to have a
lot of the same thing Carol hads, like downtown cool,
knows the right people go. Storry places those sorry things
in a way that Carol really vibed with. And you
see that too in the early days with Bethany or
her relationship before Bethy shows up on the scene with
(33:35):
Heather Thompson. Carol always found one person and that was
her bestie. And I think that it's almost like re
replicating that relationship we read about in the book that
she had with Carolyn.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Yeah, it's almost this comfort with being the supporting actress.
It's like I want to be best friends with the
head cheerleader and I'm safe because I'm under her protection.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Yeah, She's like the Judy your character in the rom
com exactly. She is like the cool, funny best friend.
She doesn't want to be the star of the rom com.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
Yes, and then maybe.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
And that is the nature of a journalist totally. The
mindset of a journalist is to be there. Yes, it's
to be as centrally located as possible, but not to
be the.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
Story right, to be close to power in this way, and.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
To be commenting on it and reporting on it in
a way that you saw her doing on the show,
and not to change the subject away from feal friendships.
But I think another thing we need to remark about
Carol's time on The Housewives is Housewives is inherently a
political place.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
We'd all often talk about politics.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
I would argue it is one of the few purple
things left in America where there are fans who are red,
there are fans who are blue, and everyone can agree
on these fighting women. However, Carol made it a big
storyline that she was going to go out canvassing for
Hillary clint In's twenty sixteen campaign, and she made that
kind of central to the storyline. She had a watch
(35:05):
party that she invited all these people to excited to
see the first female president be crowned, et cetera, and
we all know how that story ended.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I'm having an election party, but I'm really in my
mind getting ready to celebrate the first female president. All
my friends are coming, even my Republican friends, and I'm
looking forward to watching the polls come in. This election
has taken is toll on some friendships, so I am
glad that is finally coming to an end and we
(35:37):
can move on to bigger and better things.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
And that was a real almost like breaking the fourth
wall moment or something, because you are really just not
meant to think too hard about what these women's political
views are, and especially in that era of New York,
many of them, in fact, were Trump supporters.
Speaker 7 (35:55):
Like just bluntly, Ramona Singer hangs out at Marla go yeah,
and introduce Kelly Dodge to her husband, who's a Fox,
and these correspondent like, she is as red hat as
you're gonna get.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah, it's not surprising.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
The other aspect of the breaking of wourth wall for
me is that a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Of times The Housewives Live, you're.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Watching the show after the fact, but it's not necessarily
tied to a strict timeline. They exist in this kind
of amorphous universe where time is relative and they are
not a part of reality, and that's part of what
enables you to suspend reality.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And I don't know, just kind of check.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
It's meant to be escapism.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
They are meant to be these campy, draggy characters that
you can follow independent of what's going on in the world,
and you're not seeing them be like, did you get
the news notification from the New York Times?
Speaker 6 (36:47):
They have a brunch to.
Speaker 7 (36:48):
Attend, and I think the part of the secret to
the housewives enduring appeal is that they're always acquiring new.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
Fans and you can go back and watch it.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
Other than the styles and hair, clothing and decor and
maybe which restaurants they'll go to, there's nothing to tie
it to time.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
It could be last week, it could be twenty years ago.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
These relationships amongst women don't really change. So having this
political storyline is one of the few things that ties
it to a tiden place. And it's the first and
perhaps the last time that we have had a political
discussion on the Royal Housewives that I think part of
that has to do with the failure of Carol's toying
(37:29):
with this political storyline.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Brian, the first time we met actually was many, many
years ago when I was the engineer for Bitch Sesh
and you, yes, you were ghostwriting how so I have memoir?
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Can I?
Speaker 6 (38:01):
Yes? Can I say? You say? Who? Okay? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (38:05):
You were doing Erica Jane's memoir, which is very much
close to this in my mind of how the reality
of her and her politics and her ethics and her
husband in the news kind of ruined the being able
to let go of all that. For me, at least
(38:27):
watching the show, it was like, no, now, this is
really real.
Speaker 7 (38:30):
Yes, no, absolutely, And when I was arguing with Erica
it was before Yeah, all the stuff about her husband
came out.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
We didn't really talk about it a lot.
Speaker 7 (38:39):
I keep in touch with Erica a bit here and there,
But yeah, I think you're right. Social media and the
Internet have become more and more a part of the show,
and we are seeing the women filming in real time,
and we're knowing how they feel about things based on
what they post on the Internet, et cetera, et cetera.
Like their politics and how they act in the real
(38:59):
world has come onto the show. More and more, and
the harsh reality is a lot of them are a
lot more red than some of their Blue friends and
fans like myself would wats to believe. So yes, I'm
happy to keep the politics stuff off the like. As
long as they're not talking about it, I'm happy to
(39:20):
ignore it. But there was a big kerfuffle with Aaron
Leachy who was a new real housewife from New York
after Carol left, and she donated money to Trump and
then tried to deny it, and so it comes up
a little bit, but we never saw any of that
on the show. That's more of the social media and
the deeper corners of the fandom where they're going on
(39:43):
Reddit and talking about this kind of stuff as opposed
to you just watch the show you have no clue about.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Just to bring it back to Carolyn, that was something
I enjoyed. I know it goes against the form, but
I felt like I brought like a real legitimacy to.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
The car conflict that they had.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
Was to know that she really cared about this and
the other ones really didn't.
Speaker 7 (40:05):
Yes and right, And there was a whole fan thing
about how Tinsley Mortimer, who was kind of a socialite
at the time, didn't vote in the election, you know,
so then it was like people went and looked how
everybody voted or if they voted whatever, and Tinsley had
him voted, and so then they had Kenvin sort of vote.
Speaker 6 (40:21):
The next side or whatever.
Speaker 7 (40:22):
Yeah, but I also think that to the purpleness of Housewives,
that moment kind of played to both sides. Still, Like
those of us who were Hillary supporters are like, I
feel how you feel and going through it. You know,
it's usually six months, nine months after the events happened
that we see them on television, and so so you're
reminded of that night six to nine months later. Was
(40:47):
very difficult for a lot of us Blue people and
for a lot of the Red people. It was the
look at these liberal tears, like we're owning the Libs celebration.
And so even though it was clearly showing Carol's viewpoint
on a political matter, I think that for fans it
could still be read in different ways.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
I do think it is fitting that all three of
us are very pro Carol, because she does sort of
stroke the ego of a certain coastal liberal watching the
Real Housewives, wanting to think of it as not trash
TV and wanting to think of it as more sophisticated.
And you know, there's this trend over the last ten
years of people being like Real Housewives is actually like
Shakespearean and Bravo is actually not low culture and all
(41:29):
this stuff. And I think it's sort of like we
think of her almost like as an avatar for people
that are more like our friends, and they're like creatives
that live in New York City and live downtown and
whatever else.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
And so I do.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Think what she presents in the Housewives is like what
the Kennedys represent in American politics. It's like hope and
progress in this irredeemable milieu.
Speaker 6 (41:50):
So this is one of my hobby horses.
Speaker 7 (41:52):
So excuse me, but for all the Kennedy fans who
have listened this far about Housewives and are like, this
sounds stupid.
Speaker 6 (42:00):
It is trash TV. What the fuck are you guys
talking about?
Speaker 7 (42:02):
I do think that it is very biased in that
reality television, especially the Housewives, is a very female space,
and it is stories by, for and about women, and
those are often discounted, and we're told it's trash, We're
told it's guilty pleasures. We're told because they're about domestic
matters like marriages and divorces and friendships and kids whatever,
(42:25):
that those stories aren't worthy.
Speaker 6 (42:27):
And I think that that's bullshit.
Speaker 7 (42:29):
And I think that this is one of the few
places that we can see women of a certain age
interact with each other in groups. You're not getting that
in scripted television. You're not getting that anywhere else. And
people look down on it, and we enjoy it. It
is our escapism. It's something we love to talk about
in the same way football is something that people love
to talk about and people love to watch. Housewives never
(42:50):
given anyone cte. Okay, Football, on the other hand, violent, damaging, terrible,
promotes all of our zipples in America and it billion
dollar industry whatever, But that it's worse at Housewives. Housewives
deserves the veneration that football gets in American culture.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
And I will die on the tail, I will die
in the hill.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
And I've led to a different kind of rehab for
quite a few of.
Speaker 7 (43:16):
That, and fraud and person And I'm not saying it's
all good all the way.
Speaker 6 (43:21):
No, I'm just saying, yeah, no.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
And among the audiences, you know, the worst anyone has
ever gotten from Housewives is read it induced borderline personality disorder.
Speaker 5 (43:30):
Absolutely yes. To me, the big thing is the women
of a certain age. That's what draws me to it,
and that's what I find the most interesting. I can't
get in on the younger housewives. I like to see
the older women that I don't see anywhere else.
Speaker 6 (43:47):
Well and sick, get back to your watch.
Speaker 7 (43:49):
You know, there was a certain era when Carol was
on where I said that Real Housewives was a show
about people who are haunted.
Speaker 6 (43:57):
Carol has this curse. Watch.
Speaker 7 (43:58):
Drenda Medley has a red balloon that is the spirit
of her husband. Tinsley Mortimer is mourning the life.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
Of the socialite that she lost.
Speaker 7 (44:06):
Bethany Frankkell is mourning a disastrous marriage and her lonely childhood.
Speaker 6 (44:12):
You know, Sonia Morgan is.
Speaker 7 (44:14):
Haunted by the life of her ex husband that she
can't like go of. It's about these women who were
stuck in this place and for a while, Carol amongst
all the women, they're all single, they're all to forsas
or widows, and they're trying to live a life. To
get back to the Carrie Bradshaw metaphor, and just like
that before and just like that was, and just like
(44:34):
that and a much better version of it because it
was real and believable. While they were rich, they weren't
like a whole house in Grammercy rich.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
One of the sort of funny things that has been
popping up on my feeds over the last few years
is Carol Radswell's photos with Gilaine Maxwell. It's like this
thing that keeps coming up. And then she was on
some sort of Epstein contact list. Obviously the reason I'm
not accusing her. The reason is obviously just because she
was in circles with society people, and those people overlapped
(45:05):
with Gallaine and with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 6 (45:07):
But what is your takes? Yeah, Glenn Hook.
Speaker 7 (45:10):
Carol's at their photo for what remains her memoir about
the Kennedy's, Like the credit on it is Glenn Maxwell.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
And yeah, and so I don't think Carol knew of
any wrong. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 7 (45:24):
I haven't talked to Carol about it, but yeah, I
know people who knew her just from being around that
set of people, and they were friendly whatever.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
But yeah, Carol, I tell you, I bet she has
some stories for.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
Us, I know, I know, well, maybe now on her
substect she can expose Gallaine.
Speaker 6 (45:43):
Or does Glenn need to be exposed. I guess she
is already in prison.
Speaker 7 (45:49):
I would be curious to hear just Carol's take on it,
or being that close to it, or if there was
things then that she was like, Oh, that's a little weird,
and that now that she knows the full story, she
could look back on all of that wild.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
I did have one last question because this was where
I learned that she was the one who had to
make the phone calls when their plane was missing.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, was on Housewives that she discussed that.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
She talks about it in the memoir. She says that
Carolyn and JFK. Junior awarded this plane. They were going
to Hanna's port, and this guy named Pinky, who was
supposed to pick them up at the airport, calls Carol
and says they're not there, And so, you know, in
her own telling, her reporter instincts kick in and she
starts calling everyone who might have information about them, ultimately
(46:38):
ending and calling the Coastguard and becoming more and more panicked.
As she's making these calls. She talks about having all
these post it notes on the wall of the different
phone numbers she's calling, blah blah, and then ultimately she
is the one who calls Carolyn's mom, Carolyn and Lauren's
mom because of course Lauren, Carolyn's sister, was also on
the plane, and so Carol has to basically break the
(46:59):
news to Carol's mom that both of her daughters were
potentially in a fatal plane crash, which I really had
not realized. You've assumed someone like Carol massages the truth
when it comes to her proximity to these famous people.
She is, after all, a reality star, she's a memoirist, whatever,
but she was close enough that she's quite literally the
(47:19):
person who broke the news to Carolyn Bessett's mom. Yeah,
and there's all these other stories about Carolyn. Carolyn apparently
kept begging Carol to get a therapist because of everything
Carol was going through. But yeah, so this is something
she said in the show.
Speaker 5 (47:33):
La I have a memory of her saying it in
the show. But tell me if I'm wrong, Brian, because.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I feel like I want not about talking to their mother.
Speaker 5 (47:44):
But she is saying, she says she is the one
who made the calls made the phone.
Speaker 7 (47:49):
Calls, and that I believe. There's also an instident. I
don't know if you remember this, but Carol lived in
London for a bit and Derinda Medley, who was one
of her castmates whose husband died, also lived in London.
And they have a trip where they go back because
Carol interred Anthony's ashes in a church in England that
(48:09):
his father had built and they were tearing the church down,
and so she has to go back to London to
get the ashes, and there's this kind of famous scene
where Carol's like, you know, has this very emotional hearts
of heart discussion with Thorinda about being young widows and
how they dealt with all that, and she's lying on
the bed with thenav ashes next to her in her
headphones on, trying to collect herself. And it has become
(48:31):
like you know, for House Size Fan Gasilly meme. So
you see Carol even still on the show, like dealing
with this grief. And so amongst her fighting with Bethany Frankel,
writer girl, Adam the stupid chef whatever, there's still that
undercurrent of tragedy that you read about in the memoir
that carries on into the show and obviously affected her
(48:53):
proba selfexter this day. Hm.
Speaker 5 (48:56):
I mean that's like the secret magic of the show.
On the surface US it's silly, petty fights, but then
there really is. I mean, these are like women with
very full storied lives.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Yeah, it's speaking of Direnda. Dorenda'shusband also worked under Bill Clinton,
so there is a sort of blue versus Red alliance
happening there. Like when I think of Dirinda and Caroly,
I'm like, okay, I'm safe. Were in blue country.
Speaker 6 (49:19):
Yes, agree, agree, Bluestone manner. That's right, Bluestone manner, of course. Yeah, God,
bless it.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Thank you so much for coming on to talk to
us about Carol.
Speaker 6 (49:27):
Ratswell, no, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (49:30):
This was an absolute delight, and your breadth of knowledge
about the Housewives is truly you know, you deserve a
Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 5 (49:37):
That's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
Next week, we're talking chap Equitic, the film starring Kate Mara,
Jason Clark, and Ed Helms.
Speaker 5 (49:44):
So subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all
Things Kennedy every week
What's the first thing you think of? What I say,
Carol Radswell.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I think of Real Housewives of New York. I think
of ghost Writer. I think of her coming down to
Lomit with the commoners. There was some sort of Lee
Radwell house Twitter account at some point. It was just
giving cultural and political point of view and commentary from
what you would imagine sort of an upity older woman,
and her husband was a Kennedy of some sort. She
(00:37):
was best friends with Caroline Bassett and JFK.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Junior.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
I'm George Saveris, I'm Lyra Smith, and this is United
States of Kennedy, a podcast about her cultural fascination with
the Kennedy Dynasty. Each week we go into one aspect
of the Kennedy story, and today we are talking about
Carol Radswell.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
If you're a Bravo fan, then you've definitely heard of her.
Speaker 6 (01:10):
If not, don't worry, right.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
So, for the Brava holics out there, you know her
as a cast member of the Real Housewives of New
York during.
Speaker 6 (01:17):
Its heyday from twenty twelve to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
I've heard about this miss Carol Radswell, and I'm surprised.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
I haven't met her before.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
With her Kennedy ties, Carol was also in the inner
circle of the Kennedy family. In the nineties, she married
Jackie O's nephew, Anthony Radswell, and was very close friends
with JFK. Junior and Carolyn Bissett.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Anthony was the son of Lee Bouvier Radswell, so he
was JFK. Junior's first cousin, and by all counts, Anthony
and John were very close. They were each best man
at the other's wedding.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Carol worked in broadcast journalism for almost two decades. She
started as a twenty twenty intern DN worked on the
show Close Up, and then moved to ABC News, where
she produced shows on hefty topics like abortion and gun control.
She was stationed in Iraq during the Gulf War and
won an Emmy for a story on the land mines
(02:06):
in Cambodia.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
One of three Emmys that Carol has, in fact, along
with a Peabody and a glad Media Award, and these
accolades have a way of coming up when Carol talks
about her past. But she met Anthony while they were
both producers at ABC News, and when they started dating,
she was immediately swept into the Kennedy world. Her and
Carolyn Bessett became best friends, and in Carol's memoir, she
says of Carolyn, she made me believe I was captivating.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Anthony suffered a long bout with cancer during his marriage
to Carol, and sadly, he passed away just three weeks
after the fatal nineteen ninety nine plane crash that killed
JFK Junior, Carolyn, and Carolyne's sister Lauren. In fact, Carol
was the one who had to call Carolyn and Lauren's
mother to explain that both of her daughters were gone.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
So Carol lost the three people closest to her in
the span of one month. It was an unimaginable series
of tragedies for her to go through, and it's what
she chronicled in her two thousand and five New York
Times best selling memoir What Remains.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
That's a crash course on all things Carol Radswell, and
we'll get into some of them with our guests, but
we will also get pretty into the weeds on all
things Real Housewives. So fair warning, this one is for
the real bravoheads.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Without further ado, Here with us today is author and
Real Housewives anthropologist Brian Moylin. He is the author of Housewives,
The Real Story Behind the Real Housewives, and he's also
a writer at Vulture. Brian, thank you so much for
joining us. I'm so excited to be here. So Brian,
let's get right into it. You are obviously one of
the foremost Housewives experts. Yes, just off the bat, what
(03:43):
is your relationship to Carol radswell Well.
Speaker 6 (03:46):
Chol radswell is one of my favorite.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
Housewives and I've had brunch with her a couple times
and met her out in the wild. Seriously, the housewives
that I'm nice too that want to hang out with me.
And I've kept in touch with Carol and talked in
Fire Island. We once did a Housewives Dragged dinner and
everyone had to go dress as a real housewife and
(04:10):
I went as Carol Radziwell and she yelled at me
because my hair wasn't good enough, and so.
Speaker 6 (04:15):
Did she also go as a different housewife. No, she
wasn't there. It was just a bunch of boys.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
I mean, it was easy to be nice to her
because she was so funny on Housewives and she's from
the ultimate cast.
Speaker 7 (04:30):
Yes, and she was the voice of reason more often
than not. And so I think that's usually like the
audience's way in right, and that's the one who we
are kind of siding with and being like, yeah, Carol's
the one who's right and sane amongst this cast of
absolute crazies.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
I think also because that was my introduction to Housewives
was Rony and with Carol, and Carol made me laugh.
And it was always kind of interesting the way when
people who'd never seen and the show, who didn't really understand,
like they're like housewives, what's the story? What are they
doing all day? But then my example would always be like, well,
she's a Peabody Award winning news journalist. She's very as
(05:12):
a very interesting backstory.
Speaker 7 (05:15):
So yeah, yes, I always remind people that housewives and
real housewives are different things, right, Like a housewives of
like Donna read at home with the vacuum cleaner, and
like a real housewife, you know, has a job and has.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
Cool friends and is interesting and you know whatever. And
Carol also, you know, all the.
Speaker 7 (05:34):
Other ladies were very upper East side but and down
want to be socialites, and Carol was like the cool
downtown one with like interesting friends, and she actually knew
and be you know, before, and that's why she was
on the show.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
And so she was kind of always set.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
Apart, I think from everybody else, and it always seemed
a little bit like the Housewives needed Carol more than
Carol needed the Housewives, which I think is a great
way to position it, because you know, you never like
those ladies who are desperate, like clawing on to the experience.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
Yeah, there was almost this is a you know, a
very controversial comparison to make, but there's almost a general
lionce quality where like, yeah, General Lions was like an
existing entity. If you were in certain circles in New York,
you already knew who she was. She did not have
to prove herself, and she could almost sort of remain
above it while participating in this, which is funny because
Carol in a different era, someone like Carol Radswell would
(06:29):
be seen as like, I don't know, like it would
be seen as not classy that she's like taking advantage
of her Kennedy connection to write a memoir and that
she's like giving interviews about them whatever. But because the
Housewives are so far in the other direction, she could
then be the chic one, like she could be like
the smart one, the voice of reason. Even though if
you were to ask my mom, what do you think
(06:51):
of Carol Radswell, she'd probably roll her eyes and be like.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
Oh, she's just a social climber.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
But in the context of the Housewives, Carol was basically
Princess Diana.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
Yes, absolute well, and that was you know, like the
big quote unquote fight was that, you know, leu Anne
was a countess, but Carol was a princess, so you know,
she could one up even the countess.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
I mean, there were so many instances where just Carol
being there just illuminated how ridiculous their claims of authority were.
And I always think about Sonia crying about how she
used to party with John John and it's like, well,
John John was the best man at Carol's wedding.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
It's like there's no comparison.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
And Carol also tells Sonia nobody who knows him calls
him that like he did not like it, like this
is like what we said. And so by Sonya even
saying like I used to party with John John on
the yacht, she's betraying the fact that she.
Speaker 6 (07:45):
Didn't really know him.
Speaker 7 (07:46):
Or know, the real version of him that Carol knew
and you know, but also, oh god, bless Sonya and
her delusions. I know.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
And you know what, someone I know just met Sonya
at some pool party and they were like it was
literally like the camera's there's no undress, like an act
she puts up when it's done.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
No.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
I have interviewed Sonya multiple times for multiple stories.
Speaker 6 (08:08):
It's just like I hit.
Speaker 7 (08:09):
Record and then let Sonya ramble on for half an
hour and then mine not for quotes like that's the
best you're going to get with Sonya, And that's what
you know. People always ask me like, oh, what are
they like in real life? And they're exactly like they
are on the show. Down to a person, including Carol,
like she's cool, she's smart, she's dishy, she's a little
bit bitchy in a fun way, like just like she's
(08:31):
on the show, she is.
Speaker 6 (08:33):
Like in real life.
Speaker 7 (08:34):
And I think that that's what makes a great housewife,
as someone who's not playing it up or trying to
be someone they're not.
Speaker 6 (08:39):
It's just they're just being themselves.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, and you touched on something that I also think
is important, which is that she was always sort of
the smart one.
Speaker 6 (08:46):
There was something. It's like she used to be a journalist.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
She has Emmys, but also like she can read and write,
and she's able to like do a little quip that
isn't if she has a little insult or a little
shade that she's throwing. It's never like calling someone a whore.
It's a little more sophisticated than that.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
It's like whyting them know that Puerto Rico is in
a country? You know what I mean.
Speaker 7 (09:07):
It's like the baseline brows wise is so in the
basement that you know, they have no idea what's going
on it.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Carol just goes like, yeah, no, that's how you pronounce
this word.
Speaker 7 (09:17):
And she looks like she has seven PhDs and speaks
ninety languages, you know.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
Right exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
She almost has this like Sarah Jessica Parker quality of
being able to be both high and low. Like she's
actually able to really play in the Housewives, play a pen.
It's not like she's like on the corner being like,
oh god, these women are so like you know, ghosh.
Like she's able to like keep up but then also maintain.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
The sort of level of superiority.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
Absolutely, and I think that essentially she never like back
down from a fight, you know, and when people came
for her like a Viva did about her book, or
when she and Bethy Frankel eventually had their falling out,
It's like Carol can.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Go toe to toe with the best of them, you know.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
But she wasn't one who was necessary early dramatic or
like inciting the kind of drama. She was usually one
responding to it, which I think is I would like
to hope the business for most of us would find
ourselves in if we were on a Housewives show. You know,
like I'm not gonna throw wine at anybody, but if
someone throws wine in me, you better watch the fuck out,
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6 (10:17):
And that's what Carol gave.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
So we mentioned John John a little bit. This is
obviously a podcast about the Kennedy's. I'm sure there are
some people that have started listening to this that are
not Housewives fans that are already like who who's speaking?
Speaker 7 (10:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, So tell us basically, at the most basic level,
what is Carol's relationship to the Kennedy family.
Speaker 7 (10:55):
So I think to put it in like Housewives context,
you know, the Housewives of New York City was the
second franchise and kind of the first like standout, you know,
like they started with Orange County, and then once you
got to New York, the media started povering in a
different way because it was happening in their own backyards.
Speaker 6 (11:13):
They started getting in the gossip colls whatever. It kind
of took off.
Speaker 7 (11:16):
Bezie Frankel was the biggest star that it launched, and
she started skinnygro Margaritas, which she sold reportedly for one
hundred million dollars, and that kind of proved like the
cachet of the Whole Housewives machine, as it were. After
Bethany left, the show kind of took a turn for
the worst and they fired half the cast and re
hired three new women as a kind of soft three
(11:37):
boot at, one of whom was Carol.
Speaker 6 (11:39):
Radswell, and she was married to Anthony.
Speaker 7 (11:44):
Radzowell, who is Lee Radzwell's only son, whose father was
a Polish prince of some sort. I don't know how
Polish aristocracy works. I only know what I was sold
in those lives, and that's what we were told, sing
so Lea.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Radswell's husband was the Prince Yami Radswell of course is
Jackie's sister exactly.
Speaker 7 (12:05):
And so Anthony's first cousins are John and Caroline Kennedy. Yes,
and so not all the Kennedy's not the vaccine that
I are. Kennedy's just the you know, good Kennedy's.
Speaker 6 (12:16):
The classic set, Yes, that's true. Yes, the classic set.
And they were very close. They were very good friends.
Speaker 7 (12:23):
And Carol and Anthony were very good friends with John
and Carolyn beset Kennedy, and so they were kind of
like a foursome who would hang out a lot. And
right around the same time that they died of the
plane crash, Anthony died of cancer at a very young age.
And so Carol wrote a memoir called What Remains, which
(12:43):
is about her dealing with the grief of losing not
only her husband but also her two best friends as well, and.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
How she dealt with this. And it was a huge success, very.
Speaker 7 (12:53):
Well regarded in terms of the writing of it is
actually a great book, and she went on Oprah to
talk about it was a huge success and that kind
of made her name.
Speaker 6 (13:02):
She she had started as a journalist for ABC News.
Speaker 7 (13:05):
That's where she met Anthony, who was also a journalist,
and yeah, so she had this kind of pedigree as
being both a writer and a journalist and a smart
person connected with the Kennedy's a princess whatever. So as
they're trying to reboot Housewives, that is you know, what
they were looking for is somebody with all of those
deep connections and deep kind of New York City experience
(13:30):
to bring the show to a new love. Joining her
on the cast were Heather Thompson, who was a fashion
signer who worked with j Lo p Ded amongst others,
and Heather kind of became her best sie on the show.
And then the other newbie was Aviva Dresser, who was
an unhinged want to be socialite with.
Speaker 6 (13:49):
One leg and I mean, ooh girl that Aviva Dresser.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
And Aviva kind of became Carol's biggest antagonist during her
kind of early years on the show.
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Which I felt so bad for Aviva because it's like,
you do not have the chops to go up against
this person who is very intelligent, very quick and is
not gonna, you know, use a leg as a prop
like that was so shocking and weird and far from
like Carol's mindset.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
Yes, and for.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Anyone who is in the Housewives viewer, Aviva did take
off her leg and throw it.
Speaker 7 (14:25):
Yes, and her fast scene ever on the Housewive Aviva
through a leg everybody and it was crazy. Also, I
forgot to mention when Carol started on the show, she
was dating one of the band members of Aerosmith. She
was connected to Aerosmith, and so on their first cash
trip as a group, they go to Saint Arts and
he's there like with Aerosmith, like doing a concert.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Russ Irwin a singer, songwriter, producer, and Carol was in
the video for his twenty twelve song called Manhattan.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
Yes as she would be. And so the first season,
you know, Carol's a voice of reason.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
She's kind of chilling with the new lady.
Speaker 7 (15:03):
She's a little bit in the background, being funny, commenting
on it, adjacent to the drama, but not part of it,
which was a great place for her to start and
a good way for fans to connect with her. Her
second season, she's right in the middle of it. When Aviva,
the leg throw or Extraordinaire, brings back this rumor she
heard that Carol used a ghostwriter on her book, which
(15:24):
is a storyline that fans referred to as Bookgate and
Aviva says, you didn't write your book, and Carol's like,
what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 6 (15:33):
Of course I wrote this book. It's about my grief whatever.
And there are a lot.
Speaker 7 (15:37):
Of accusations waged by housewives against each other. They usually
involve like renting one's house instead of owning, a husband,
who cheat, borrowing clothes and not buying them, you know,
kind of.
Speaker 6 (15:50):
The petty bullshit housewives.
Speaker 7 (15:52):
Cater said that we all love and it's nice and
light and who cares who's right, who cares who's wrong?
To me was like a really big deal, especially as
a writer and a journalist, for someone to say, like you,
you can't do the thing that you are known for.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
Also her incredibly personal story. Yes, yes, it's an insane accusation.
Speaker 6 (16:13):
Yes, and I mean.
Speaker 7 (16:14):
Obviously anybody who works as a writer knows there's a team.
She has editors, she had copy editors. But never in
my mind did I doubt that Carol had her fingers
on the keyboard, like, you know, writing the book.
Speaker 6 (16:27):
And you know, I've ghost to Annah housewives, Mama, no.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Shame in the game, you know, And I'm good on
the women who know that they need the help, but
Carol obviously didn't need it, and so you know, and
it was basically like Carol's word against Aviva's word. And
she even did the scene where she goes to her
book at Nerve Records with her the book etter says, no,
you didn't use a ghost writer whatever, but a Viva
kept banging on this draw and banging on this drub
(16:53):
and you know, there's a famous part. It's a reunion
for that season, I believe as season six, and Carol
calls her something and there says something not very funny,
and Aviva says, why don't you use your words write
or gnral So that's kind of what like fans often
refer to Carol Radzewell as writer Girl thanks to Aviva's
(17:14):
even worse put down of Carol.
Speaker 5 (17:18):
Something I was surprised about on the show because I
guess when I was watching this, I didn't realize how
close she was to the Kennedy So she is a
part of us, you know, is a part of the
Kennedy family. And what are some of the more intimate
details that she talks about with her relationship with Carolyn
and JFK.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Junior.
Speaker 7 (17:36):
She doesn't actually talk a lot about it on the show.
I think on the show Ghost, first little thing You've
got is she has Lee Radzwell's old couch, old tiger
print couch that's been really beat up. And she has
this crazy apartment downtown and the stairs are like in
the wall and there's no railing and it looks like
(17:56):
a death trap. And then she has Lee Radzowell's couch,
and so, yeah, she talks about how she had a
good relationship with her mother in law and it continued
after Anthony's death. They weren't especially close, but they were
still in good said with each other. Yeah, but that
she has Lee's couch, that's how close they were. It's
like she's taking her cast off furniture and she didn't
(18:19):
want to reupholster the couch because it was Lee's. But
then eventually she does, which becomes like a storyline on.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
The Housewives because that's what we do. People.
Speaker 7 (18:28):
We're talking about redesigned projects and thrown legs.
Speaker 6 (18:32):
I mean, reupholstering Lee Radswell's couch is as good a
Housewife storyline as any I've heard.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
I loved it.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Yeah, I want to just pause on the apartment of
it because there's something about her apartment it's like she
almost lives this bachelor lifestyle. Even the tiger print couch
like it's like, in the same way that when you
look at the Upper east Side ones, their houses look
like the gossip girl version of what you think in
Upper east Side townhouses, her apartment is almost comically like
if someone did like very broad set design in a
(19:01):
movie about what like a sexy widow who's dating a
twenty seven year old's apartment might.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
Look like, yes, like it's not sex of the City.
It's like lipstick jungle exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
Yes, that's the feel you got for it, but it's also.
Speaker 7 (19:15):
Yeah, very real and very authentic, and I think that
you kind of like it. Her to Sarah Jisca Parker,
I were like in her more it's Kerrie Bradshaw where
she's this downtown writer girl, and then her storyline after
season six with book Gate, she breaks up with Russ,
the aerosmith guy, and she starts dating a much younger
gentleman named Adam, who's a vegan chef who was dating
(19:38):
Countess Lewane's niece.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
I believe it was no, it was not Victoria.
Speaker 7 (19:46):
It was the niece, and the niece was on the
Sarah Jessica Parker Art Show on Bravo.
Speaker 6 (19:53):
Do you remember this?
Speaker 7 (19:53):
There was one season Sara Jisca Parker produced Itick got
it and Lewanne's niece was She's an artist.
Speaker 6 (19:59):
Was on it and so oh yes.
Speaker 7 (20:01):
In Carol's selling of the story, I think it was
called work of art, work of art. You were correct, yes,
And in Carol's selling of the story, Adam had broken
up with the niece a long time ago and Luanne
hired him to be a chef at her house when
all the women were in the Hamptons. That's where Carol
met him started dating him. And then Luyne accuses Carol
(20:22):
of breaking girl code by dating this guy, who Luanne
says was still together with her niece at this time
and if that wasn't the case, even if she wasn't,
and Luenne's basically kind of like, you're dating the help,
and Jael's like, well, I don't.
Speaker 6 (20:35):
Give a shit. He's young and h and he's Adam,
and he's a vegan.
Speaker 7 (20:38):
Chef, and so that kind of plays in also to her.
Very like Carrie Bradshaw mystique I.
Speaker 6 (20:45):
Guess, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
She has this quality of being able to both do
something so definitionally tacky as dating her friend's niece's twenty
seven year old ex boyfriend, but then also is the
veagan chef who's a vegan chef, but also so like
staying above it and speaks in the softer voices anyone
and just being like, why is Luanne being so annoying
right now? Like I'm just trying to live my life.
(21:06):
Like she really is able to have it both ways.
I think she's a charisma that enables her to somehow
pull that off. I think other people could not pull
that off.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
I think Carrie Bradshaw in and just like that basically
wrote that book like it's on her bookshelf No.
Speaker 6 (21:20):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 7 (21:21):
And I think, like speaking to Carol's charisma, a lot
of stuff on The Housewife comes down till she said
versus she said right. Carol says she wrote the book
of Viva says she does it. Carol says they were
broken up, Louyenne says they weren't. And I think that
because Carol is the sane one, because she's the voice
of the reason, She's the one at least I always believed.
It's like, well, if Carol says it's true, you know,
(21:42):
because the other women are crazy and they make shit
up and they're bending the truth and they're trying to
make drama, and Carol is just always such like a
straight shooter that you never questioned at least I.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
Did her version of.
Speaker 5 (21:54):
The truth, and so like you were saying, she had
I remember the Lee Radswell. That was really I think
how I learned how closely connected she was to the Kennedy's.
But then also pretty recently she did the Moth story
about Jackie O's watch.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Did you listen to that or watch that?
Speaker 7 (22:13):
No? I did not, But I know what my first
YouTube is going to be after we're done.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Okay, when I was when I turned thirty, my husband
gave me a Cartier tank watch that had once belonged
to his aunt, Jackie Kennedy.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
It's really fascinating and it really sort of relates to
a lot of our interests over here at the United
States of Kennedy, mostly supernatural curses that afflict the Kennedy family.
So the story is basically that Carol was gifted Jackie
Kennedy's Cardier tank that she had worn kind of her
whole life. It was a gift to her, and then
she wrote her whole life. She was, I believe wearing
(22:52):
it when JFK was assassinated, and then Carol started wearing it,
and then her husband, of course died of cancer. Then
started feeling as though there was a negative aura attached
to it, So she hid it in her drawer for
many years and didn't want to look at it. Then
she ended up gifting it to a friend of hers
named Cassandra, and then Cassandra's husband also died of cancer,
(23:14):
and so Carol was like, this watch is cursed. It
has belonged to three women, all of whom are widowed
in their thirties. I'm gonna put it up for sale
at Christie's and hopefully Cardia will buy it back and
I will never have to think of it again. And Lara,
do you want to tell us who ended up buying
the watch?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 6 (23:32):
Kim Kardashian ended up bidding on the watch and buying it.
You know why she's trying to kill Kaya. I did
have this thought where I was like, Kim, how old
is Kim? Kim?
Speaker 4 (23:42):
No, She's forty four. Okay, so she's managed to not
be widowed in her thirties. Sorry to be so Macab,
but Kanye is not doing well and this can't be
good to have the negative.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Yeah, her buying the watch I think did pre date
a lot of his more public mental health extreme issues,
and people do like it.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
It to that it's destroying a merit.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
And then you sort of got back to Kim that
this watch was quote unquote cursed, and she in fact
returned it. She's not in possession of it. Cardia ended
up buying it back and it's now in the vault
in the basement of the Fifth Avenue store. Kim maybe
fully paid for it and just didn't want it in
her possession. It's not like she returned it for the
money that she paid. That's how much she was.
Speaker 7 (24:22):
She was like, get this motherfucker away from me. No, literally,
how much, see Carol get for it. You know, Carol
has this way of not quite.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Saying how much money she has, or how much money
she makes, or what her sort of financials are at
any given time.
Speaker 6 (24:35):
But I'm sure it was a pretty good check.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I'm sure you could liken it to other Jackie O.
Auction items.
Speaker 6 (24:41):
Yeah, I will.
Speaker 7 (24:42):
Say I don't think I've been sharing any confidence here,
But Carol has said multiple times that she went on
Housewives for the money, so I don't think she's like
sitting on some secret Polish prince fortune. She has an
apartment and she has a Jackie O watch. I think
she's comfortable, but ooh girl watch.
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Yeah, I mean I know who.
Speaker 7 (25:19):
So eventually after Adam the Adam storyline, Carol befriended Bethy Frankel,
who was not just Roney's breakout star, but probably the
biggest Housewife star there is still a big star, though
she's not on Housewife anymore, like a big TikTok influencer
millions and millions of followers. They became very close and
then had a falling out, and Bethany attributed it to
(25:41):
Carol Is seeming to not want to spend as much
time with her and not paying a much tensure to her,
and Carol said, my best friend's husband was dying and
I was helping her her, so that kind of factors
into her events. The dissolution of her friendship with Bethany Frankel,
which becomes kind of Carol's last big story on the
Housewives before her exit.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
And then she exits basically saying she wants to go
back to journalism, but then also ends up having a
falling out with Andy Cohen which lasts like seven years.
They like don't talk for seven years, and it was
only recently squashed when she made a surprise appearance on
Watch What Happens Live, And she claims she's not gonna
re enter the Bravo universe, but who knows. And so
(26:24):
that's where Carol is now. And I will say I
found out just this morning that she's now on substack.
So she has the journalism dream is alive and well,
and I actually wrote down she has this great She's
only written one post and it was July thirty first,
so the clock is ticking. But she has this really
great bio of hers that she wrote. And to your
point about her not using a ghostwriter, she does have
(26:46):
a specific voice, like maybe someone spruced it up, but
there's a way she writes that is very like, it's
honestly like columnist voice. It is Carrie Bradshaw columnist voice.
There's a little aside, a little joke. Then she has
one sentence that sort of ties it all together. She
has this one part that I thought was fun in
her first post where she's like, I've decided to write
(27:06):
about my life here on substack, because well why not.
And then she goes expect musings parentheses a word people
use when they're not quite sure what they're saying. Yet
that's funny to make fun of the trope of saying musings.
And then my favorite thing is at the very end
she writes her bio. It's five paragraphs, I won three Emmys,
blah blah. And then at the end it goes Carol's
working on a bunch of writing projects that may or
may not ever see the light of day, but if
(27:28):
they do, she plans to sell them for an obscene
amount of money, buy a castle and Antwerp and fuck off.
And that's like the final sentence of her five paragraph bio.
It's like, sonya can't write.
Speaker 6 (27:39):
That, so on no Viva Charger certainly can't write that,
you know, not even with the ghost writer shit. So yeah, oh,
I'm good for Carol.
Speaker 7 (27:48):
Yeah, And she has said repeatedly, and this was before
her kind of cooling of things with it. So what
happened with Andy Kullen is so they were friendly before
the show. The story goes that Carol was friends with
Kelly Rippa and Marcus Willis, who are very good friends
with Andy Cohen. He met her at a dinner party
(28:09):
at Kelly Ripper's house, found out she was a princess,
found out the whole story was like you have to
be on Housewives, and really pursued her and convinced her
to do the show, not necessarily against her will, but
you know, took a lot of cajoling.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
And so then at.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
The final reunion, Carole felt like Andy was taking Bethany's
side in their argument, and that he was favoring her,
letting her speak more, getting in more sides, and Bethany
quicker than Carol and a lot more biting than Carol
and a lot meaner. And when she comes to somebody,
(28:42):
she really comes for somebody. And so there's a moment
in the reunion where Carol is basically, you know, fuck off,
like fuck you to Andy because she feels like he
wasn't having her back.
Speaker 6 (28:51):
And so that's what caused their feud.
Speaker 7 (28:53):
And then she went on and didn't really talk trash
about the housewives, but when she would do press or
do appearances, she talked about how she's never coming back.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
I'm never coming back to the show. I'm never going
to do it again. And I really believed her.
Speaker 7 (29:03):
And so the Housewives had this thing called Ultimate Girl's
Trip where they get a bunch of former housewives together
and they sent him on a trip and they filmed
it for a week, and they did one with all
former real house lives in New York. And Carol didn't
do that, and she said every time she's asked you,
she doesn't want to go back. So I can see
her now that relations have cooled between her and Handy
being an occasional guest on Watch What Happens Live showing
(29:24):
up to do the this or that kind of brabo
kind of thing. But yeah, I don't see her wanting
to be on another show. Probably wisely she left on top.
Yeah as a housewife.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
Yeah, I mean the Bethany thing is funny because we've
talked a lot about how Carol was always above the fray,
but the friendship with Bethany from the beginning was a
taking time bomb because you knew if Bethany turns on you,
it's over. And Carol could not stand up to someone
as domineering as Bethany.
Speaker 7 (29:53):
But of all the people to go against Bethany, Carol
I think had the best chance. And I think that
because fans are always on their side, the fans believed her.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
And there's this famous scene in season.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
Three of brill Housewives where Ramona Singer and Bethany Franco
go on a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and a
Ramona Singer says to Bethany, you don't have any friends,
none of your relationships last, like you can't whatever. And
we have seen that to be true over the course
of decades on reality's television, and Caro was just another
one of them. And Bethany blows up these friendships, you know,
(30:27):
And Bethany said Carol wasn't swending enough time with her.
Kara was saying Bethany is too domineering, she wants it
all to be about herself. It all has to be
on Bethany's terms, whatever, And that's exactly what we saw
of Bethany's character on the show. And so I was
always has stag team Carol as it were in the fight.
But yes, but Bethany's so smart, so quick, so mean
(30:48):
that plenty of people were coming for Bethany because she
was always the alpha, she was the rich one, She
was the one who proved herself and everyone always failed.
But Carol dies some damage, I think on her way
down and out of the show, show going sparring with Bethany,
just by showing Bethany how crazy she was.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
It also seems like Bethany just has the inner motivation
drive to inhabit the role of the Bravo celebrity that
Carol doesn't seem to happen.
Speaker 6 (31:16):
Always a shark.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
If Carol is a fabulous columnist, Bethany's an insult comic,
like she's gonna tear you down.
Speaker 6 (31:23):
Yes, well, and you're right.
Speaker 7 (31:24):
Bethany has always wanted to be famous in a way
where Carol was reluctantly famous, And I think that makes
a really good housewife is somebody who doesn't want it
too badly, doesn't want.
Speaker 6 (31:37):
The fame too much.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
And we don't see Carol going on celebrity wife swap,
we don't see her on Image Rehab, Reality Star edition.
Speaker 6 (31:46):
She's not has a celebrity being brother.
Speaker 7 (31:48):
She's left Housewives and kept it quiet, and so I
think that speaks to the difference between her and Bethany.
Bethany's all her own housewives, but she's always on TikTok.
She had another Bravo show, she was on a Shark Tank.
She's always trying to keep that fame alive in a
way that Carroll doesn't seem interested in.
Speaker 4 (32:06):
Yeah, Carol, I think always wants to have one foot
in journalism. I don't think she's ready or willing or
being given the opportunity to go back and produce docuseries
and couble, but she wants to have a column. She
was at some point a contributing writer to Town and Country.
She wants to be seen as someone who writes for magazines,
whereas Bethanie wants to be a television start. Speaking of
(32:27):
the beauty of female friendship, we should talk a little
bit about Carol's friendship with Carolyn, which is a huge
part of the book. In my memory of the book,
the central love story is almost more Carol and Carolyn
than it is Carolyn and Anthony. There is just something
so magnetic about Carolyn, and Carol is so taken with it.
(32:47):
There's this amazing scene where their first ever interaction was
that they were staying in the house in the Hampton's
and it was the two couples, Carolyn Anthony, Carolyn and
JFK Jr. And Carolyn's first words to Carol can I
borrow your toothbrush? Because she had forgotten her toothbrush. But
it's like, what an incredible sort of like Dawming yeah
thing to say to someone we've just met. Can I
(33:09):
borrow your toothbrush? And it should actually be your honor
for me to use your toothbrush?
Speaker 6 (33:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (33:14):
Well, and I think that she seems to have a
lot of the same thing Carol hads, like downtown cool,
knows the right people go. Storry places those sorry things
in a way that Carol really vibed with. And you
see that too in the early days with Bethany or
her relationship before Bethy shows up on the scene with
(33:35):
Heather Thompson. Carol always found one person and that was
her bestie. And I think that it's almost like re
replicating that relationship we read about in the book that
she had with Carolyn.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Yeah, it's almost this comfort with being the supporting actress.
It's like I want to be best friends with the
head cheerleader and I'm safe because I'm under her protection.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Yeah, She's like the Judy your character in the rom
com exactly. She is like the cool, funny best friend.
She doesn't want to be the star of the rom com.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
Yes, and then maybe.
Speaker 5 (34:09):
And that is the nature of a journalist totally. The
mindset of a journalist is to be there. Yes, it's
to be as centrally located as possible, but not to
be the.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
Story right, to be close to power in this way, and.
Speaker 7 (34:22):
To be commenting on it and reporting on it in
a way that you saw her doing on the show,
and not to change the subject away from feal friendships.
But I think another thing we need to remark about
Carol's time on The Housewives is Housewives is inherently a
political place.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
We'd all often talk about politics.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
I would argue it is one of the few purple
things left in America where there are fans who are red,
there are fans who are blue, and everyone can agree
on these fighting women. However, Carol made it a big
storyline that she was going to go out canvassing for
Hillary clint In's twenty sixteen campaign, and she made that
kind of central to the storyline. She had a watch
(35:05):
party that she invited all these people to excited to
see the first female president be crowned, et cetera, and
we all know how that story ended.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
I'm having an election party, but I'm really in my
mind getting ready to celebrate the first female president. All
my friends are coming, even my Republican friends, and I'm
looking forward to watching the polls come in. This election
has taken is toll on some friendships, so I am
glad that is finally coming to an end and we
(35:37):
can move on to bigger and better things.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
And that was a real almost like breaking the fourth
wall moment or something, because you are really just not
meant to think too hard about what these women's political
views are, and especially in that era of New York,
many of them, in fact, were Trump supporters.
Speaker 7 (35:55):
Like just bluntly, Ramona Singer hangs out at Marla go yeah,
and introduce Kelly Dodge to her husband, who's a Fox,
and these correspondent like, she is as red hat as
you're gonna get.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Yeah, it's not surprising.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
The other aspect of the breaking of wourth wall for
me is that a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Of times The Housewives Live, you're.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Watching the show after the fact, but it's not necessarily
tied to a strict timeline. They exist in this kind
of amorphous universe where time is relative and they are
not a part of reality, and that's part of what
enables you to suspend reality.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
And I don't know, just kind of check.
Speaker 6 (36:35):
It's meant to be escapism.
Speaker 4 (36:36):
They are meant to be these campy, draggy characters that
you can follow independent of what's going on in the world,
and you're not seeing them be like, did you get
the news notification from the New York Times?
Speaker 6 (36:47):
They have a brunch to.
Speaker 7 (36:48):
Attend, and I think the part of the secret to
the housewives enduring appeal is that they're always acquiring new.
Speaker 6 (36:54):
Fans and you can go back and watch it.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
Other than the styles and hair, clothing and decor and
maybe which restaurants they'll go to, there's nothing to tie
it to time.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
It could be last week, it could be twenty years ago.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
These relationships amongst women don't really change. So having this
political storyline is one of the few things that ties
it to a tiden place. And it's the first and
perhaps the last time that we have had a political
discussion on the Royal Housewives that I think part of
that has to do with the failure of Carol's toying
(37:29):
with this political storyline.
Speaker 5 (37:48):
Brian, the first time we met actually was many, many
years ago when I was the engineer for Bitch Sesh
and you, yes, you were ghostwriting how so I have memoir?
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Can I?
Speaker 6 (38:01):
Yes? Can I say? You say? Who? Okay? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (38:05):
You were doing Erica Jane's memoir, which is very much
close to this in my mind of how the reality
of her and her politics and her ethics and her
husband in the news kind of ruined the being able
to let go of all that. For me, at least
(38:27):
watching the show, it was like, no, now, this is
really real.
Speaker 7 (38:30):
Yes, no, absolutely, And when I was arguing with Erica
it was before Yeah, all the stuff about her husband
came out.
Speaker 6 (38:36):
We didn't really talk about it a lot.
Speaker 7 (38:39):
I keep in touch with Erica a bit here and there,
But yeah, I think you're right. Social media and the
Internet have become more and more a part of the show,
and we are seeing the women filming in real time,
and we're knowing how they feel about things based on
what they post on the Internet, et cetera, et cetera.
Like their politics and how they act in the real
(38:59):
world has come onto the show. More and more, and
the harsh reality is a lot of them are a
lot more red than some of their Blue friends and
fans like myself would wats to believe. So yes, I'm
happy to keep the politics stuff off the like. As
long as they're not talking about it, I'm happy to
(39:20):
ignore it. But there was a big kerfuffle with Aaron
Leachy who was a new real housewife from New York
after Carol left, and she donated money to Trump and
then tried to deny it, and so it comes up
a little bit, but we never saw any of that
on the show. That's more of the social media and
the deeper corners of the fandom where they're going on
(39:43):
Reddit and talking about this kind of stuff as opposed
to you just watch the show you have no clue about.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Just to bring it back to Carolyn, that was something
I enjoyed. I know it goes against the form, but
I felt like I brought like a real legitimacy to.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
The car conflict that they had.
Speaker 5 (40:01):
Was to know that she really cared about this and
the other ones really didn't.
Speaker 7 (40:05):
Yes and right, And there was a whole fan thing
about how Tinsley Mortimer, who was kind of a socialite
at the time, didn't vote in the election, you know,
so then it was like people went and looked how
everybody voted or if they voted whatever, and Tinsley had
him voted, and so then they had Kenvin sort of vote.
Speaker 6 (40:21):
The next side or whatever.
Speaker 7 (40:22):
Yeah, but I also think that to the purpleness of Housewives,
that moment kind of played to both sides. Still, Like
those of us who were Hillary supporters are like, I
feel how you feel and going through it. You know,
it's usually six months, nine months after the events happened
that we see them on television, and so so you're
reminded of that night six to nine months later. Was
(40:47):
very difficult for a lot of us Blue people and
for a lot of the Red people. It was the
look at these liberal tears, like we're owning the Libs celebration.
And so even though it was clearly showing Carol's viewpoint
on a political matter, I think that for fans it
could still be read in different ways.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
I do think it is fitting that all three of
us are very pro Carol, because she does sort of
stroke the ego of a certain coastal liberal watching the
Real Housewives, wanting to think of it as not trash
TV and wanting to think of it as more sophisticated.
And you know, there's this trend over the last ten
years of people being like Real Housewives is actually like
Shakespearean and Bravo is actually not low culture and all
(41:29):
this stuff. And I think it's sort of like we
think of her almost like as an avatar for people
that are more like our friends, and they're like creatives
that live in New York City and live downtown and
whatever else.
Speaker 6 (41:40):
And so I do.
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Think what she presents in the Housewives is like what
the Kennedys represent in American politics. It's like hope and
progress in this irredeemable milieu.
Speaker 6 (41:50):
So this is one of my hobby horses.
Speaker 7 (41:52):
So excuse me, but for all the Kennedy fans who
have listened this far about Housewives and are like, this
sounds stupid.
Speaker 6 (42:00):
It is trash TV. What the fuck are you guys
talking about?
Speaker 7 (42:02):
I do think that it is very biased in that
reality television, especially the Housewives, is a very female space,
and it is stories by, for and about women, and
those are often discounted, and we're told it's trash, We're
told it's guilty pleasures. We're told because they're about domestic
matters like marriages and divorces and friendships and kids whatever,
(42:25):
that those stories aren't worthy.
Speaker 6 (42:27):
And I think that that's bullshit.
Speaker 7 (42:29):
And I think that this is one of the few
places that we can see women of a certain age
interact with each other in groups. You're not getting that
in scripted television. You're not getting that anywhere else. And
people look down on it, and we enjoy it. It
is our escapism. It's something we love to talk about
in the same way football is something that people love
to talk about and people love to watch. Housewives never
(42:50):
given anyone cte. Okay, Football, on the other hand, violent, damaging, terrible,
promotes all of our zipples in America and it billion
dollar industry whatever, But that it's worse at Housewives. Housewives
deserves the veneration that football gets in American culture.
Speaker 6 (43:09):
And I will die on the tail, I will die
in the hill.
Speaker 5 (43:12):
And I've led to a different kind of rehab for
quite a few of.
Speaker 7 (43:16):
That, and fraud and person And I'm not saying it's
all good all the way.
Speaker 6 (43:21):
No, I'm just saying, yeah, no.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
And among the audiences, you know, the worst anyone has
ever gotten from Housewives is read it induced borderline personality disorder.
Speaker 5 (43:30):
Absolutely yes. To me, the big thing is the women
of a certain age. That's what draws me to it,
and that's what I find the most interesting. I can't
get in on the younger housewives. I like to see
the older women that I don't see anywhere else.
Speaker 6 (43:47):
Well and sick, get back to your watch.
Speaker 7 (43:49):
You know, there was a certain era when Carol was
on where I said that Real Housewives was a show
about people who are haunted.
Speaker 6 (43:57):
Carol has this curse. Watch.
Speaker 7 (43:58):
Drenda Medley has a red balloon that is the spirit
of her husband. Tinsley Mortimer is mourning the life.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
Of the socialite that she lost.
Speaker 7 (44:06):
Bethany Frankkell is mourning a disastrous marriage and her lonely childhood.
Speaker 6 (44:12):
You know, Sonia Morgan is.
Speaker 7 (44:14):
Haunted by the life of her ex husband that she
can't like go of. It's about these women who were
stuck in this place and for a while, Carol amongst
all the women, they're all single, they're all to forsas
or widows, and they're trying to live a life. To
get back to the Carrie Bradshaw metaphor, and just like
that before and just like that was, and just like
(44:34):
that and a much better version of it because it
was real and believable. While they were rich, they weren't
like a whole house in Grammercy rich.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
One of the sort of funny things that has been
popping up on my feeds over the last few years
is Carol Radswell's photos with Gilaine Maxwell. It's like this
thing that keeps coming up. And then she was on
some sort of Epstein contact list. Obviously the reason I'm
not accusing her. The reason is obviously just because she
was in circles with society people, and those people overlapped
(45:05):
with Gallaine and with Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 6 (45:07):
But what is your takes? Yeah, Glenn Hook.
Speaker 7 (45:10):
Carol's at their photo for what remains her memoir about
the Kennedy's, Like the credit on it is Glenn Maxwell.
Speaker 6 (45:19):
And yeah, and so I don't think Carol knew of
any wrong. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 7 (45:24):
I haven't talked to Carol about it, but yeah, I
know people who knew her just from being around that
set of people, and they were friendly whatever.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
But yeah, Carol, I tell you, I bet she has
some stories for.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
Us, I know, I know, well, maybe now on her
substect she can expose Gallaine.
Speaker 6 (45:43):
Or does Glenn need to be exposed. I guess she
is already in prison.
Speaker 7 (45:49):
I would be curious to hear just Carol's take on it,
or being that close to it, or if there was
things then that she was like, Oh, that's a little weird,
and that now that she knows the full story, she
could look back on all of that wild.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
I did have one last question because this was where
I learned that she was the one who had to
make the phone calls when their plane was missing.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Yeah, was on Housewives that she discussed that.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
She talks about it in the memoir. She says that
Carolyn and JFK. Junior awarded this plane. They were going
to Hanna's port, and this guy named Pinky, who was
supposed to pick them up at the airport, calls Carol
and says they're not there, And so, you know, in
her own telling, her reporter instincts kick in and she
starts calling everyone who might have information about them, ultimately
(46:38):
ending and calling the Coastguard and becoming more and more panicked.
As she's making these calls. She talks about having all
these post it notes on the wall of the different
phone numbers she's calling, blah blah, and then ultimately she
is the one who calls Carolyn's mom, Carolyn and Lauren's
mom because of course Lauren, Carolyn's sister, was also on
the plane, and so Carol has to basically break the
(46:59):
news to Carol's mom that both of her daughters were
potentially in a fatal plane crash, which I really had
not realized. You've assumed someone like Carol massages the truth
when it comes to her proximity to these famous people.
She is, after all, a reality star, she's a memoirist, whatever,
but she was close enough that she's quite literally the
(47:19):
person who broke the news to Carolyn Bessett's mom. Yeah,
and there's all these other stories about Carolyn. Carolyn apparently
kept begging Carol to get a therapist because of everything
Carol was going through. But yeah, so this is something
she said in the show.
Speaker 5 (47:33):
La I have a memory of her saying it in
the show. But tell me if I'm wrong, Brian, because.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I feel like I want not about talking to their mother.
Speaker 5 (47:44):
But she is saying, she says she is the one
who made the calls made the phone.
Speaker 7 (47:49):
Calls, and that I believe. There's also an instident. I
don't know if you remember this, but Carol lived in
London for a bit and Derinda Medley, who was one
of her castmates whose husband died, also lived in London.
And they have a trip where they go back because
Carol interred Anthony's ashes in a church in England that
(48:09):
his father had built and they were tearing the church down,
and so she has to go back to London to
get the ashes, and there's this kind of famous scene
where Carol's like, you know, has this very emotional hearts
of heart discussion with Thorinda about being young widows and
how they dealt with all that, and she's lying on
the bed with thenav ashes next to her in her
headphones on, trying to collect herself. And it has become
(48:31):
like you know, for House Size Fan Gasilly meme. So
you see Carol even still on the show, like dealing
with this grief. And so amongst her fighting with Bethany Frankel,
writer girl, Adam the stupid chef whatever, there's still that
undercurrent of tragedy that you read about in the memoir
that carries on into the show and obviously affected her
(48:53):
proba selfexter this day. Hm.
Speaker 5 (48:56):
I mean that's like the secret magic of the show.
On the surface US it's silly, petty fights, but then
there really is. I mean, these are like women with
very full storied lives.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
Yeah, it's speaking of Direnda. Dorenda'shusband also worked under Bill Clinton,
so there is a sort of blue versus Red alliance
happening there. Like when I think of Dirinda and Caroly,
I'm like, okay, I'm safe. Were in blue country.
Speaker 6 (49:19):
Yes, agree, agree, Bluestone manner. That's right, Bluestone manner, of course. Yeah, God,
bless it.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Thank you so much for coming on to talk to
us about Carol.
Speaker 6 (49:27):
Ratswell, no, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4 (49:30):
This was an absolute delight, and your breadth of knowledge
about the Housewives is truly you know, you deserve a
Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 5 (49:37):
That's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 4 (49:39):
Next week, we're talking chap Equitic, the film starring Kate Mara,
Jason Clark, and Ed Helms.
Speaker 5 (49:44):
So subscribe and follow United States of Kennedy for all
Things Kennedy every week
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