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Would Dorinda Medley return to The Real Housewives of New York City if she was asked back?
Amid calls for her return, as well as the returns of Bethenny Frankel and Tinsley Mortimer, Dorinda shared her thoughts about a needed change to the existing cast before explaining why she feels “lucky” about being left out of season 13, revealing her ideas for a spinoff series, and more.
“I just don’t know,” Dorinda admitted when asked about a potential return on the August 17 episode of Access Hollywood‘s “Housewives Nightcap.”
“We are in such ever-changing times and I don’t even think they know,” she continued. “I would definitely be open to it because I love the show. I just think there’s a lot of moving parts on the show now. I would like to have a bigger cast. [The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills] works so great because there’s so many of them.”
Looking back at the six seasons she spent on RHONY, Dorinda applauded her performance.
“I did a good job. I was a good Housewife so if I ever went back, I’m sure I would be able to do it again. If I didn’t, my time was really good there. Like, they’re not forgetting my time there,” she noted.
Although Dorinda was surely sad to leave RHONY ahead of season 13, she knows it would have been challenging to film amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was lucky because I felt like it would have been a lot harder if it were a full fall in New York. But because it was COVID and everything was quiet, I strangely felt like if there were a year to take a pause, boy did I get lucky,” she shared. “Because there wasn’t much going on and I think the girls, you’ve gotta give them credit, [had] a really hard season to film.”
While Dorinda’s possible return to RHONY remains up-in-the-air, she said she was open to other concepts, including two potential spinoff shows.
“I think they should do something at Bluestone Manor. Like, doing crazy dinner parties or having wacky guests or having wacky visitors,” she suggested.
She then threw out a second idea, saying, “I think they should bring all the old girls back. Throw everybody in a room. Let people have fun. Just close the doors and come back 20 hours later and you’ll have a show.”
As RHONY fans may know, Dorinda wrote a book, Make It Nice, during her “pause” from the show.
“It’s such a hard disciple. It’s something that requires you to be very isolated and quiet and those are things I don’t like,” she said of the process, adding that it was “terribly hard” to relive the loss of her late husband, Richard Medley.
“I’ve had a bunch of interviews about it and I started almost crying,” she confessed.
Luckily, as she recalled the highs and lows of their relationship, Dorinda had the help of her daughter.
“[Hannah Lynch] helped me so much to go deep. She literally would go through the chapters with me and say, ‘You need to talk about it more. You’re talking about it in your head and you want to tell the story verbally but remember, the audience needs to hear what you’re thinking,’” Dorinda revealed.
Dorinda’s new book, Make It Nice, is available now.