Even though there were a bunch of things I wanted to fix and change, I was proud of how I’d shown up as myself. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been an honest person before The Housewives. It was that I hadn’t allowed myself to shine. I no longer had to pretend. I didn’t have anything other than myself. I’d consciously or unconsciously tried to always do the right thing for other people in my life and now I could do what was best for me. I’d been playing the roles of mom and wife and daughter and society woman for about fifty years. Little did I know how all these roles would prepare me for my role as a cast member of The Real Housewives of New York City.
The Dorinda on the show is me, but it’s an exaggerated version of me. By watching myself on television, I came to understand myself in a new way. And this went a lot deeper than the external stuff. Experiencing this exaggerated version of myself allowed me to feel more deeply into the contours of my identity. It gave me a better sense of who I was, both on- and off-screen.
After watching the first episode, I got the call from Bravo. It was time to start doing promos.
What was a promo, exactly?
That’s how naïve I was. I barely understood what a promo entailed. My first appearance ever, if I remember correctly, was on a daytime talk show. Teresa Giudice from The Real Housewives of New Jersey was also a guest. I remember feeling, well, very much like a beginner. Answering questions about my life necessitated an entirely different set of skills from the ones I’d used to be filmed for the show. I wasn’t just living my regular life. I was trying to sell the show to viewers, so I wanted to be entertaining. In order to do this well, you sort of have to adopt a persona, but I didn’t get that yet. I was just happy to be there and amazed that anyone was asking me questions about my life at all. I felt a little bit famous and I liked it.
I obviously saw how fame had affected my castmates who’d been on the show for a while. They were known entities around the city. But somehow, I still couldn’t quite grasp what it really meant to become famous or how thoroughly it would change my life.
Don’t try to make an apple into an orange.
Chapter Eight HOUSEWIVES
Every morning, I would take my dog Lucy out for a walk in pajama pants and a sweatshirt. My routine was to hit the fruit stand for a banana and then Starbucks for a coffee. The morning after the show premiered, I walked out of my apartment complex and two women in Lululemon spandex were standing on the street.
“Oh my God, it’s Dorinda Medley!” one of them said.
“Can we take a picture with you?” the other one asked.
That was the moment I realized I couldn’t walk around in pajamas anymore. I wasn’t just Dorinda anymore. I was Dorinda the Real Housewife of New York City.
I knew that people in their apartments were watching the show, but I had no idea how many people until they stopped me, yelled out to me, or just smiled at me in a way that said, I know you. I was no longer anonymous. The Lululemon-clad women were who I imagined as the audience, but it turned out many people from all walks of life had seen the show: cabdrivers, pharmacists, salespeople, my dentist. It was such a stark change for me. One day I was just like anybody else walking down the street, and the next day people were screaming out, “Dorinda!”
Fame is, in a nutshell, very strange. It’s the most enticing mistress you’ll ever bring into your life. It’s like a fantastic martini. You know you should only have one or two. But it’s so delicious that you want to keep drinking it. If you do that, though, you get drunk. So, you have to keep it to two martinis. Otherwise, you start to believe in your own hype, and that leads to disaster.
Along with screaming my name, people would also scream the name of the show: “Housewives!” For fans, we’re an integral part of the city. I felt proud to represent New York as a Housewife because it’s such an aspirational place. I think it’s also, for many people, a mysterious place, so to give them an inside look at my life in the city felt rewarding. I might be biased, but in my opinion, the New York City Housewives are special because of the city we live in. New York truly is our playground. It’s a pedestrian city, so running into friends on the street happens all the time, especially on the Upper East Side. As Iman once famously said, “New York is not a city. It’s a world.” I love being a part of that in life and I loved being a part of that on-screen.
The New York Housewives are great reality stars because we’re all unique. While we have many similarities—lifestyle, age, location—we’re all quirky in our own ways. Think about each Housewife as an ingredient in a cake. Some ingredients are stronger than others and some are less so, but you need them all. If one of the ingredients is missing, then the cake is a failure.
I became known as the voice of reason; the truth teller; the giver of wisdom; the quick-witted, call it like I see it, transparent one. I let it all hang out and told it like I saw it. And this is how I am in real life, too. When fans meet me, they always say, “You’re just like you are on the show!” Or they ask, “When can I come to Blue Stone Manor?”
When you’re on reality television, the audience has seen you brushing your teeth and arguing with your friends. They’ve seen you in your real life, and therefore they think they really know you. You’re kind of on a pedestal because you’re on television, but your pedestal isn’t that high. Sharing your intimate details on-screen makes you accessible, and a lot of people feel totally comfortable asking when they can come over to your house and sharing their opinions about your life with you.
After a while, I started to understand that if I was going to go out into the streets of New York I needed to be ready to greet people: “Hello, I’m so happy to see you!” I didn’t want to be the type of person who was going to walk by, sunglasses on and head down. I love my fans and want to be accessible to them. That’s my whole thing: being accessible, authentic, and relatable.
Along with the people who shouted nice things at me, there were also the people who shouted things that weren’t so nice, both in person and on the internet.
“I hate you!”
“You’ve got a big nose!”
“You’re ugly!”
“You’re old!”
“You’re fat!”
Becoming known as a Housewife was confusing, electrifying, and completely disorienting. I didn’t know which way to turn.
I was on The Real Housewives of New York City for six seasons. Although I knew most of the girls in my personal life and had been invited to film many times, as I mentioned earlier, I was mainly in the background and therefore not really engaged. I attended the filmed events as an insider, but not as a major participant. There is a perennial wall between the castmates and the people who are invited to be in the background, as I originally was. You can feel that wall and you respect it, which means you avoid getting too close to the camera or approaching the cast too closely. Filming is work. It’s also an adrenaline rush. You have to be on your A game while you’re being filmed.
With each season, you have to bring something new. You have to peel away the layers and reveal more and more of who you are each year, like an onion. If that is done correctly, the audience will develop a deep relationship with you. They will come to “know you” better with each passing year. And knowing you will include a vast array of emotions. Sometimes they’ll love you; sometimes they’ll hate you. Sometimes they’ll cheer you on and sometimes they’ll tear you down. But, at the end of the day, no matter what emotions they’re feeling, they will be invested in your role as a Housewife. Here’s a metaphor: Housewives are like oysters, spitting out a new pearl each year. Over the years, a necklace is strung together. This is your greater story arc.
When I became a castmate in Season 7, I was already part of the world of the show. I’d known most of the girls for years. One of those girls was Carole Radziwill. Something unexpected happened during my first season of being a castmate. Carole named my house, and this moment was actually caught on-camera. We were in the Berkshires, sitting around the dining table, and
Carole was talking about how beautiful the house was and how it wasn’t really even a house; it was more like an estate or a manor.
“You should give it a name,” she said. Her reasoning was that homes with names tend to be recognized more fully and they also sell better—in case I ever planned on selling.
We continued talking about my great-grandfather and how he used the blue stone that was found on the property to do some of the masonry work. And Carole said, “You should call it Blue Stone Manor.”
And that was that. The name was not only fitting but it also had a melodic ring to it. And it was a tribute to my great-grandfather and my grandfather, who’d both worked on its construction.
In Season 7, the audience was introduced to an independent woman who’d been married and divorced and then married and widowed. My reputation after that first year as a castmate was as the sassy fun one who took the audience by storm with her one-liners. People were beginning to warm to me, and nothing too terribly dramatic had happened yet.
For the next five seasons, I continued to get smarter, both on- and off-camera. There are so many idiosyncratic odds and ends that come with being a reality TV star, and unfortunately, nobody gives you a handbook. Through trial and error and by paying attention to what my castmates were doing, I sort of just figured it out.
Off-screen, I got more comfortable doing appearances and I learned how to use social media, which I knew nothing about before The Housewives. I started spending more time with old friends who wanted the best for me and less time with people I wasn’t sure I trusted. When I went out in public, I was aware that I was a public figure, and so I went out prepared to meet and greet fans.
On-screen, too, I wised up. I showed up for my second season ready to play the game, because now I understood that it was a game. I arrived for my first season thinking we were just filming our real lives, and now I understood that, yes, we were filming our real lives—for entertainment. And the best way to entertain is with dramatic action, because ultimately, that’s what viewers want to see. The more drama, the better. And I’m not talking about teary-eyed drama either. Sometimes that’s fine, but what the audience really wants is excitement.
By the time I started filming for Season 8, I had stronger bonds with both the girls I’d known from before and the girls I’d been introduced to on the show. My new alliances were tested over the course of the season, and a lot of it had to go with my relationship with my then-boyfriend, John, who’d begun to appear more frequently on the show. Some people liked John. Some people didn’t. This—having a romantic relationship scrutinized and examined by first my castmates and then the audience—was totally new to me, and ultimately it forced me to develop a little bit of a thicker skin.
Think about the famous moment in the kitchen of Blue Stone Manor: “I cooked; I decorated; I made it nice!” Since this book is called Make It Nice and since the theme behind this statement is at the heart of how I live my life, I’m going to tell you in detail about the events leading up to me saying this line.
In Season 8, I had invited the ladies to Blue Stone Manor for the weekend during Christmastime. I do this every single year, show or not, and every single year, no matter who the guests are, I go above and beyond by planning a wonderful stay for them. I get to the house three or four days early with a team of people to help me transform the space into a winter wonderland. I buy all the food; I pick out the wines and the china; I write out my menus. I assign places at the dinner table for my guests, along with rooms. Each guest gets a candle by their bed and a little welcome gift with their name on it. I create an atmosphere, and all I ask of my guests is that they present themselves in a way that’s appropriate to the atmosphere.
“You can do whatever you want all day, but at six o’clock at night I want you in my living room for cocktail hour. Then we’ll have dinner.”
This is what I tell everyone who comes to visit. It’s not that hard, right? Just show up at six!
For me, entertaining is a performance art. It’s how I express myself. And it’s not just the meal. It’s the whole thing. I love it. Too much is never enough. I just bought myself a new set of Christian Lacroix china with butterflies on it for Christmas. “Why do we need more china?” Hannah asked, to which I said, “Why don’t we need it?”
The look of a child when they see Santa Claus is the way I want people to feel when they walk into my house during the holidays. I want to evoke a feeling. I want people to want to be there, and I want people to talk about it afterwards. I think many of us get so lost on the treadmill of life that we forget to stop and honor tradition. For me, hosting a weekend like this is not only artful, it’s also about marking time with big celebrations.
In my mind, getting an invitation is a big deal. You take it seriously. Hello, you’ve been invited! When I was a kid, Sunday lunches were very important in my house and there was no reason not to show up—unless you were literally dying. If you were sick, you still went to Sunday lunch. If you didn’t feel like eating, you still went to Sunday lunch. So, this is all to say that I like an event with a capital E. I don’t like a loosey-goosey situation. (And that, by the way, is why Brooklyn doesn’t work for me.)
My house in the Berkshires is a special place. Just as I honor tradition, I honor my house. It’s old. It has history. And I’ve spent a lot of time perfecting all the small details inside it. If I invite you over to my house, it’s a big deal. You should feel honored.
The other tradition within the tradition of Christmastime is that every year, because my birthday is in December, my mother bakes me a traditional homemade vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. It can’t be replicated by anyone else. I look forward to it every year. It’s the same cake she’s baked for me since I was a little girl, and obviously you know it’s very important to me.
So, now you have a sense of how I was feeling before that fateful holiday weekend during Season 8 when my castmates arrived—and immediately got into their squabbles. Luann and Bethenny were at odds about Luann’s dating life. Carole was pissed at Luann for calling her a pedophile and then forgetting about it. Everybody ended up in little groups in different rooms talking about one another. So, we were off to a rough start. I was getting increasingly annoyed and feeling totally underappreciated after all the work I’d put into creating a nice weekend.
And then the ladies started making fun of my mom’s cake.
Crushed, I got upset. I was unhappy I was being taken for granted. So I shouted several things, culminating with the now-famous, “I cooked; I decorated; I made it nice!”
Of course I didn’t know at the time that anybody would care about this sentence. I had no idea that this line would even make it into the show—until six months later, when it spread quickly through the internet. The clip got millions of views in three days. It stunned me. Before I knew it, I was walking down the street and people were shouting at me, “You made it nice!”
This happened in London. And in New York. It happened at the hair salon and in the park. It was happening all the time. I’d be checking out at the grocery store and the cashier would say, “By the way, you made it nice.”
And I would say, “I really did! Thank you!”
I think the reason this line had such an impact was that it’s so relatable. It was everything that people feel but often don’t have the courage to say. When you put a huge amount of effort into something and no one appreciates it, it’s a letdown. I think it’s very human to want to be acknowledged, and frankly, I don’t think women who run households get acknowledged enough for their hard work. Taking care of a home is a real job and doing it well requires a lot of energy.
“Make it nice” has kind of become my trademark saying. It’s often used when people introduce me. It’s written on the mugs and bags I sell in my online shop. It’s the name of my book! At this point, I think they should probably put “Make it nice” on my gravestone.
In Seasons 9, 10, and 11, I really found my stride on the show. I felt more co
mfortable and like I was truly an integral member of the cast. I’d been officially labeled a Housewife, and I loved it. I felt that it was a badge of honor that, on some level, will live with me forever. No matter what happens for the rest of my life, I will probably always be known as a Housewife. This makes me feel proud because it takes a strong and confident woman to show up honestly and be filmed. The viewers had become more attached to me, and many of them supported me through the good times and the bad. I can’t tell you how many times someone on the street has come up to me and told me how they were inspired by something I said on the show, and that to me has been incredibly rewarding.
During these seasons, I doled out some new one-liners, which became known as Dorinda-isms. There was the time I said, “Say it, forget it; write it, regret it” (which is odd, since I’m now writing this book). And there was the time Candace Bushnell asked me how I was doing and I said, “I’ll tell you how I’m doing: not well, bitch.” Poor Candace was truly in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had no idea what was going on, nor could she have known that she would later become part of an iconic moment on reality television.
Of course, there was also the time, I said, “Clip, clip, clip.” I remember this scene vividly.
We had all decided to go to the Bronx and have a girls gangster lunch. Up to this point Sonja and I had been sparring back and forth throughout the season about divorce versus death. Was her divorce as horrible as my widowhood? Strangely, I felt it had not really been taken into account that I had been both divorced and widowed by that point.
Anyway, after a date night with John I woke up early to go to the Bronx to film. I was exhausted when I arrived and in a bad mood. Quite frankly, I wanted to cancel, but I felt the right thing to do was show up.
Make It Nice Page 13
