Roxanne 
Carole Radziwill is opening up about her reaction to Jessel Taank bringing up her late cousin, Carolyn Bessette, on The Real Housewives of New York City.
While appearing on SiriusXM’s Jeff Lewis Live, Carole addressed the moment and made it clear she did not view Jessel’s comments as harmless small talk.
According to Carole, Jessel was not really asking thoughtful questions about Carolyn. Instead, Carole felt the conversation quickly crossed a line.
“Jessel was not asking questions,” Carole said. “She was just like, telling me that she had had this experience at some magazine, and she was discussing the Carolyn Bessette aesthetic and ‘What do you think about the Carolyn Bessette Summer?’”
Carole said the only real question Jessel asked was deeply inappropriate.
“There were no questions except for ‘Was she a btch?’” Carole recalled. “I was like, ‘What the fck?’ Like seriously. So that was my initiation.”
Carole, who was married to Anthony Radziwill, the cousin of John F. Kennedy Jr., has rarely spoken in a reality TV setting about Carolyn, who died alongside John and Anthony’s sister-in-law Lauren Bessette in a 1999 plane crash.
Because of that personal history, Carole said she was not prepared to have to navigate those kinds of questions while filming.
“Listen, this is my first time in my entire adult life I’ve had to navigate questions, inappropriate questions, about my family,” Carole explained.
She also said Jessel’s comments felt intentional in the moment.
“It felt at the time intentional,” Carole said. “There was no reason for her to be like, ‘Well, what do you mean? Why aren’t you having a Carolyn Bessette Summer?’”
Carole said she tried not to give the conversation energy because she did not want to get dragged into a fight over Carolyn.
“I wanted to give it no energy, and you could see I think in the show, I was just like, I didn’t want to talk to her about it,” Carole explained. “And that usually works with people.”
However, Carole said she especially did not want to argue about Carolyn on camera.
“I knew I did not want to get into an argument about Carolyn,” she said.
The RHONY alum also revealed that the entire filming experience was emotionally difficult for her, especially because of the subject matter that came up.
“The whole six weeks was very, it was very traumatic, really,” Carole said.
Carole shared that viewers may not even see how emotional the experience became behind the scenes.
“I don’t think you see all of it,” she said. “There are scenes where I’m like, really crying. I don’t know what gets in the show or not, but I would say the first three weeks of filming, I probably cried every morning.”
Carole said she would then have to pull herself together and continue filming.
“And then I would take a shower and, like, put on a smile and be like, ‘Okay,’” she said.
Carole’s reaction adds more context to why the Carolyn Bessette conversation hit such a nerve.
