Carole Radziwill Is Leaving 'Real Housewives of New York'

Carole Radziwill has announced that she is leaving Real Housewives of New York, and I am shocked.

When Carole first joined the cast, I loved her. It was the summer of 2012, and the cast included returning wives Sonja, Ramona, LuAnn, and newcomers Carole, Heather, and Aviva. Carole represented a type of New Yorker we hadn’t seen on the show. She was downtown chic and had already lived a hell of a life. She was technically a Polish princess (take that, Countess), a widow, a writer, and a journalist.

She clearly had money, but also had endless amounts of free time. She was basically a real-life Carrie Bradshaw on a show overpopulated by wannabe Samanthas and Charlottes.

For her first couple of seasons on the show, she brought the drama and earned her paycheck through infamous Book Gate, her fight with LuAnn over Adam, and a hilarious friendship with Heather. We watched her work on her second book, Shack Up with her boyfriend, abandon plans to write a cookbook, and run a marathon.

When Bethenny returned to RHONY in season 7, I was worried about how two of my favorite wives would get along, but I didn’t need to be. The two smart women felt each other out and developed an authentic friendship... didn’t they? When season 10 started, they weren’t really friends anymore, but neither of them could tell us why. Sure, friends grow apart all the time in real life, but you’re not forced to go to dinners and vacations afterward... which is a good thing because watching Carole and Bethenny navigate the situation is awkward.

This brings me to the reason why I think Carole has made the right decision. Carole doesn’t want to air her dirty laundry on TV, and who can blame her?! The women who successfully continue to star on RHONY have given a huge chunk of their lives to us. We’ve seen them drunk, sobbing, in handcuffs, naked, swearing, and screaming. We’ve seen them getting caught in lies, getting divorced, getting too drunk, and getting sober. We’ve seen these women at lows that many of our friends and family members would hide, even from us. But that’s what makes them so great at their jobs. It takes a certain kind of person to give so much of themselves to the public, and I don’t think Carole is that kind of person.

Think about her tenure on RHONY. What is the lowest point at which we’ve ever seen her? Sure, she’s made some catty comments and cried a couple times—mostly over her late husband—but if she does experience rage, depression, ecstasy, or other intense emotions, we haven’t seen it, because she doesn’t want us to.

This year, she’s had some stressful changes in her life, and she doesn’t want to address them on camera. She and Adam seem to have officially broken up, and she lost a close friend in Bethenny. She’s not showing us her pain, as is her right, and I think she has realized that she had no desire to live her life in front of a national audience. Carole is trying to, as she advises Tinsley, “keep it cute.”

This might be the clearest when it comes to her fight with Bethenny. Bethenny, a reality TV MVP, wants to have the friendship conversation captured by Bravo cameras, and Carole doesn’t. Bethenny cries, yells, and panics freely and openly, and Carole responds to her on the defense with her guard way up.

This season, she keeps those walls up at all times. It’s not just that she doesn’t want us to see her at her worst—she won’t show us her best either. She doesn’t get lost in the moment. Instead, you can see her wondering why she’s wasting her time at dinner with a group of women she doesn’t particularly enjoy. And that’s a fair question.

I love Carole, and of all the housewives she’s someone I think I could be friends with, but I’m glad she’s stepping back. I wish her all the best, and whoever is going to replace her has some tiny Jordache jeans and some huge Carrie Bradshaw shoes to fill. Good luck!