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Caroline Manzo says it’s time for a reality check.
Known for brawling and bawling on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” the 51-year-old mother of three wants you to know she’s more than just a big bossy mama.
“I was frustrated that some people misinterpret my low tolerance for bulls— as some sort of vindictive meanness,” the 51-year-old mother of three writes in her memoir, “Let Me Tell You Something,” out next Tuesday.
The straight talk carries over when she’s asked about rumors her husband, Al, has had affairs.
“I know the man I married. He’s a good man. But he’s a man. I don’t believe there were any long-term affairs. If that were the case, this story would end differently,” Manzo tells The News.
“If something happened here or there along the way, it’s very possible. I have no inclination of that, but logic tells me …” the words drift off before she finishes the thought. “I can’t worry about 20 years ago.”
Perched on a stool in the bar of her husband’s Paterson, N.J., catering hall, the Brownstone, Manzo is softer and prettier than her TV persona would lead one to expect. But mess with her and she comes on strong.
“When I address something, it’s usually with a hard hand,” she acknowledges. “It’s fast and furious.”
It’s true that Manzo referred to her castmate, the outrageous and sometimes outraged Teresa Giudice, as an “ugly human being” and a “sociopath” before the Bravo cameras last season, but somebody had to say it.
“I never attack anybody,” she says firmly. “But when I’m provoked, I’ll address it.”
Here’s the deal. Giudice, married to the unsavory Joe, who does something to make money, made a name for herself and the show after she got crazy mad and flipped a table over in a restaurant in the first season.
She lives large in a swirl of bankruptcy talk and has written three best-selling cookbooks. In “Fabulicious!,” Giudice referred to Manzo as being “as Italian as the Olive Garden.” So unkind.
At any rate, the cookbook sniping and the fact Giudice dared to deny she’d been behind some unpleasant stories in tabloids made all the housewives angry. Manzo and Giudice had a ratings-bonanza confrontation at the end of last season that ended in tears.
“Afterward my entire body was shaking,” says Manzo. “Shaking. I went into my bedroom and I just broke down.”
Life, as she says, is at home with her family, but what happens onscreen can hurt — a lot. Especially when it involves her kids.
Her sons, Albie and Chris, and daughter Lauren, all in their 20s, are regulars on the show and have their own story arcs. The boys have started a business, BLK water, while Lauren, who has prominently battled weight issues, opened Cafface Beauty Bar in Franklin Lakes, N.J.
Both are opportunities that might not have come about without the exposure of the show. Manzo readily admits that the rewards of being on “RHONJ” are “amazing ... And the experience is incredible,” she says.
“But we’re targets. And there’s a valuable lesson in that for my children. Life is big. Life is tough. There’s adversity in anything you do. And you deal with it.
“When someone calls your daughter fat, or the perception is that my sons are gay, or mama’s boys, at the end of the day it makes them stronger. But it’s not easy going through it.”
Al himself wanders into the bar. Both he and Caroline have slimmed down over the course of the series and make an attractive couple. He’s playful with her, and she gazes up at him through heavy false lashes as he talks.
He is forthcoming about what he calls his wife’s “integrity.”
“All the things she fights over on the show are clearly wrong, disgraceful things that you can’t justify,” he says.
“But she’ll never go along to get along. Sometimes it just makes me nuts. Like enough already with this freaking integrity.”
Al is clearly delighted with his wife’s celebrity, though. Caroline has gone from sitting in the audience listening to his speeches for civic groups to holding her own on late-night talk shows. “She just killed on Fallon,” he says proudly.
But celebrity cuts both ways. A bit of nastiness that attaches to the family dates back to the murder of Al’s father, Albert (Tiny) Manzo, whose body was found in the trunk of a car outside a supermarket in Hillside, N.J., in 1983. He was executed mob-style.
“I will not give credence to the Mafia talk,” Manzo says of her father-in-law. “He was a good man, a family man. His death remains a mystery.”
Ultimately, she would love to do a talk show, perhaps a panel show like “The View.” But now she’s filming season five of “RHONJ.” Last season was so unpleasant. Could peace possibly break out?RELATED: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Caroline Manzo Confesses: "If My Husband Cheated, I Would Forgive Him"
“It could still happen,” she teases. While she admits to a couple of teary moments so far, she won’t say if they’re happy or sad, just that “we manage to top ourselves.”
Yawn!! She is so dull.
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