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Carole Radziwill addressed her friendship with Jeffrey Epstein‘s girlfriend and alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, as her conditions for returning to The Real Housewives of New York City were revealed.
In an interview last week, Carole opened up about her relationship with Ghislaine, sharing, “Imagine knowing someone… and then they turn out to be, like, a monster.”
“I was friends with her in the early 2000s, I don’t know, like, for five or six years,” she also stated to The New York Times.
Carole insisted Ghislaine didn’t strike her or her friend group as someone who would be capable of allegedly participating in such horrific crimes.
“The thing about her that made it easy for me to spend any time with her at all was that she was very intelligent, she was educated,” Carole revealed. “If you lined up 10 women, and you asked, like, pick the woman who would be involved in an international sex trafficking ring, it would not be her.”
Ghislaine and Carole were so close that she took the photograph of Carole for her first book, What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love.
Carole’s name also appeared in the infamous Epstein files, although she was insistent she was connected to him only due to her friendship with Ghislaine. She also explained her relationship with Ghislaine ended a long time before her alleged crimes became public knowledge.
While Carole is gearing up to return to RHONY for the first time since 2018, the conditions she gave Andy Cohen to return were also outed in her conversation with The New York Times.
“To go back to something that I was such a big part of, you know, is a bit of a risk for me,” she said. “Andy said that I could film as much or as little as I want.”
For his part, Andy insisted Carole returning to the franchise for the upcoming sixteenth season “made a lot of people really happy, including me.”
“My pitch was essentially to join us in a way that should be light, fun, additive to the show,” he elaborated. “And, hopefully, somehow, to her life.”
Bravo first confirmed Carole’s return via Instagram on March 2.
“In the marathon of life, loyalty is everything,” they wrote at the time. “And because of Bravo fans’ loyalty, Carole Radziwill is returning to #RHONY as a friend-of for Season 16!!!”
While Carole was out of the Bravosphere for a while, she ended up going to BravoCon in 2025.
“I thought when I left eight years ago, I could go quietly into the night,” she shared at the time. “There is a sisterhood here.”
“I might not have a lot in common with all the women,” she added. “Some, I’ve met for the first time tonight. But there’s a sisterhood on the stage. It’s really powerful.”