REALITY TV NEWSCarole Radziwill Says 'RHONY' Cast Bombarding Her With Questions About JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Made All the 'Emotions' Come Back
Carole Radziwill grieved her friends all over again.
Sept. 10 2026, Published 4:59 p.m. ET
Carole Radziwill revealed that her return to The Real Housewives of New York City for Season 16 was deeply emotional, as her fellow castmates bombarded her with questions about her late friends John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
The cast's intense interest was sparked by the release of the FX drama Love Story, which premiered in February and dramatized Kennedy Jr.'s relationship with Bessette.
Filming for the new season of RHONY began right around the same time.
'I Hadn't Planned on Talking About It'
Carole Radziwill said Martha Stewart watched FX's 'Love Story.'
Radziwill noted that even though she didn't watch the series herself, she couldn't escape it.
"Martha Stewart watched it," she said to USA Today. "The other women on the cast watched it and were curious about this and that."
"It was very hard," the journalist turned Bravo star admitted. "I hadn't planned on talking about it."
The 'RHONY' star hasn't watched 'Love Story,' saying the show felt like 'a body slam.'
“It was a very emotional time for me,” Radziwill, 63, explained about the hype around the FX series.
"That show, really, it was like a body slam," she continued. "I didn't watch it, but you couldn't get away from it."
Radziwill was married to JFK Jr.’s maternal cousin Anthony Radziwill until he died from cancer in August 1999.
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'The Emotions All Came Back'
The reality star was married to JFK Jr.’s cousin Anthony Radziwill, who died from cancer in 1999.
She shared that the timing resurfaced a lot of unaddressed grief, stating, "The emotions all came back. It's a little grief that I felt, almost the whole time I was filming."
"You'll see the arc of that story throughout, I think, the whole season," she explained, referring to the new RHONY episodes. "Certainly, in the beginning, and then it comes up really big at the end, and that was completely unplanned."
Carole Radziwill thinks Carolyn Bessette 'would have gotten a kick out of' her reality TV career.
Radziwill clarified that she had no intention of discussing her late husband or friends on camera, noting, "What I had to say about that time in my life, I wrote in a book," referring to her 2005 memoir, What Remains.
During a recent appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Radziwill also reflected on how she believes that Bessette "would have gotten a kick out of my RHONY career." However, she quickly laughed off the idea that the fashionista would have ever made an actual cameo on the show.
