They will sip no wine before it’s time for this interview to end.
Meet the "wives": Jacqueline Laurita, Teresa Guiduce, Danielle Staub, Dina Manzo and Caroline Manzo.
That’s a lesson "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" learned the hard way.
"I didn’t drink for years prior to this, and to do the interviews [for the show] I definitely had to," says Danielle Staub, chuckling as she describes how wine did more than calm her jitters. "It was like truth serum."
Since the sneak preview of "RHONJ" aired, she says, even the "Real Housewives of Orange County" — the "mother housewives" from the original Bravo series — offered the newcomers this advice: Don’t drink and do reality TV.
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"Now you tell me!" Teresa Giudice pipes in, laughing.
On this afternoon, she, Staub and Jacqueline Laurita — three of the five new "housewives" — are seated together on a plush sofa in Laurita’s sprawling home in Franklin Lakes. It’s a little over a week before their show’s official debut (the show moves to its regular 10 p.m. slot on May 19), but already, they — and Laurita’s sisters-in-law, Dina Manzo and Caroline Manzo, also of Franklin Lakes, who later weighed in by phone — have gotten a taste of fame. Some might say infamy.
"Everybody saw the same preview, but everybody has different opinions about it already," says Laurita, who’s pregnant with her third child, due next month.
Staub, who lives a few miles away, in Wayne, says, "I think they’ll hold their first impressions in their mind, expecting to see what’s going to unfold behind each one of those moments that caught their attention and hooked them."
The preview, which drew record high ratings for Bravo, had plenty of those moments, which have had viewers buzzing.
There were, for example, quotes like: "Happy wife, happy life!" (Giudice’s explanation for her husband’s indulgence at the jewelry store); "Let me tell you something about my family: We are thick as thieves. We protect each other to the end" (Caroline Manzo); "In my opinion, street smarts will get you farther in this world than book smarts" (Caroline again).
Staub, a divorced single mother of two daughters, talks on camera about a phone-sex relationship she’s having and the nude photos of herself on her phone. Giudice, in coming attractions, is seen angrily overturning a dining table. "I wasn’t acting at all" is all she’ll say about that. Nor will she elaborate on her hard-to-miss "new boobies" (her term).
She’d clearly rather talk about her "delicious" husband, Joe — whom she met when they were growing up in Paterson, both children of Italian immigrants — and their three daughters. And though Giudice dragged her heels for months about signing on (her husband initially didn’t want to be in it, and family and friends cautioned her about putting her "whole life out there"), the show was a "great experience," she says.
"You know what’s great about it? My whole life’s not out there," Giudice says.
"What I wanted them to know, they knew. And what made it fun was that I was doing it with my friends." (Staub is the only one she didn’t know before the show.)
It all started at Chateau the Art of Beauty in Franklin Lakes (seen in the first episode), where close pals Laurita and Staub met, and where everyone but Montville resident Giudice is a regular. The production company had scouted that salon/spa as a potential location, and owner Victor Castro says he recommended "this group of fabulous ladies."
"It’s all his fault," jokes Dina Manzo, an interior designer and event planner who says she wanted to do "Real Housewives" to draw attention to her Project Ladybug, which helps sick children.
She had previously appeared in 2007 on a VH1 reality show, "The Fabulous Life Presents: My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding," which documented her million-dollar-plus wedding to Tommy Manzo, whom she’s known since the age of 9. He co-owns the Brownstone in Paterson with his brother, Albert Manzo — to whom Dina’s older sister, Caroline Manzo, has been married for almost 25 years.
Having done a reality show before, Dina Manzo knew not to read what bloggers wrote about her.
"I learned that lesson with the wedding show," she says, noting that with that show, she did read them and even responded to some.
"I learned this time, if somebody is that unhappy that they have to sit at the computer at night and rip someone they don’t know apart, then I take anything they say with a grain of salt."
Caroline Manzo also chooses not to read bloggers’ comments, many of which liken the "housewives" to the "Sopranos" women.
"I know who we are as a family and I know who I am as a person and I know what my husband has built over the years, and I can be nothing but proud of that," she says. "
Laurita, who’s married to the Manzo sisters’ brother, Chris, says that as "kind of a homebody," she’s been insulated from the buzz — except for criticism of the snippet in which she appears to call Jersey "the armpit of the earth."
Actually, she explains, that was part of a story about how she used to tease her husband when he first tried to coax her to move here from Las Vegas.
Says Staub, "That was taken out of context. But you knew it was gonna be."
Not knowing how they’d come across was why Dina Manzo watched the preview alone.
"I kind of had my covers right below my eyes," she says. "It’s painful enough to see yourself on TV — you’re always ripping yourself apart — but also, the unknown is pretty scary."
And?
"So far, it seems to be on track," she says. "There’s five women, and there’s only six episodes, so there’s no way in the world they can show how well-rounded we all are. It’s only going to be a little bit of what makes the best TV. I’m prepared for that. I know we’re looking to make a great show, and that’s what it’s all about. So I’ll take the good with the bad."
Does anyone wish she could take something back?
"No. I wish I had done more," says Staub, who concedes that she’s been getting some "funny looks" at Sunday Mass lately.
Yes, Staub is a devout Catholic, who’s "very involved" with her parish and her daughters’ parochial school.
"My priest is well aware of all of this. I do heavy-duty confessions, and I have received absolution until the end of all time," Staub says, laughing.
"I’m allowing people to come into my life. And if they want to be critical of me, I did allow them in. It’s OK. I have thick skin. But I would ask one thing: Just reserve judgment until the end, because you really don’t have the whole story. Watch and see."
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