I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed Dorinda Medley on Brandi Glanville‘s podcast. I mean, I could have done without Brandi’s voice, Brandi’s immaturity, and Brandi’s constant interruptions, but the rest was great. Dorinda was great.
Brandi gushes over Dorinda when she calls in and says she doesn’t like how much the Real Housewives of New York have come after her so far this season. Dorinda likens Real Housewives to a sorority: “At first, they kind of take you in, rush you, invite you to the great cocktail parties, then the hazing starts. First season, they get you all in there and let you get your feet wet. Second season is when everyone really tests your strength. A second season can be a make it or break it, personally and professionally.”
Brandi also takes issue with Dorinda‘s RHONY co-stars coming after John Mahdessian, “I think it’s really messed up, especially these women that don’t have men themselves. I feel like they’re just jealous that you’re actually happy.”
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Dorinda talks about being married, then divorced and married, then widowed, adding, “People don’t understand that journey.”
Brandi thinks John just likes to have fun. “John’s very social,” agrees Dorinda. “The thing that bothers me – and I’ve said it in my blogs – I’ve never had dinner with these people with John. I’ve never gone to drinks with them. We don’t hang in the same places, so to make these pernicious accusations is based on speculation. And I think it is because we are both quite colorful.” That said, she admits, “Everyone likes to speculate…and it brings color to the show.”
Dorinda goes on to say that she only sees John two or three times a week. On one hand, she’s still trying to find herself since Richard’s death, but on the other hand, she thinks life should be multi-faceted. “I hate vanilla,” she says. “I am definitely experimental.”
On why she joined Real Housewives of New York, Dorinda acknowledges that she thought she had life figured out, then, BOOM. God had other plans. “I kind of woke up one day – Hannah‘s not home; Richard‘s certainly not home,” she laments. “I’m too young to do nothing and too old to do anything.”
Dorinda says the idea was always in the back of her mind, because she knew the cast, but the timing wasn’t right…until it was. “It was all about timing,” she admits. “I don’t have to worry about the things I had to worry about when I had a young child and a husband. If it doesn’t work out…it’ll be a good story.”
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Hannah doesn’t share her mother’s sense of adventure, so needless to say, she wasn’t crazy about the idea of reality TV. Dorinda says Hannah has come to accept the show, in general, but she gets upset when she feels Dorinda is misrepresented. It’s been twenty seconds since Brandi talked about herself, so she chimes in. “They are only seeing a portion of who you are, and that’s what I was always frustrated with. Am I the drunk fun girl on the show? Yes, but I also raise two children, run a household, run businesses…but they don’t see that. It is hard when people only see that little bit.”
Dorinda tells Brandi, “In life, people are going to like you, people are not going to like you. It’s not really that different, it’s just on a much bigger scale. I tend not to listen to the noise. I don’t sit there, obsessing over my Instagram. I say my peace. I make my statements. I try to stay politically involved. I try to be diversified as much as I can on my social media – not just be focused on what party I’m going to or where I’m traveling to – and give people a wider look at me than just me being a Real Housewife of New York.”
Brandi wishes she were half as mature calls Dorinda “amazing” and “cool.”
“People tend to hang themselves; you don’t have to provide the rope,” adds Dorinda. “If you just sit back, stand still, and let it wash by you, it usually, on a whole, turns out positively. I think. I hope.” Brandi says she feels the need to fight the haters but claims she has learned that “fighting back does nobody any good.”
Dorinda admits she learned by drunk tweeting and deleting the next morning, adding, “But you have to watch it. I didn’t realize how powerful social media was. I just never did any social media so I just missed it a little bit, but my God, it’s powerful. I watched that show one night, How The Internet Ruined My Life, and I was like, Oh my God, that’s going to be me!”
Brandi goes on and on about how some other people are obsessed with social media. Not her. Nope. She’s above it. “I’m like, who cares about Twitter? You gotta walk away. They are so consumed by these outlets that don’t mean shit.”
“It’s a platform,” shares Dorinda. “You decide how you use that platform. It is what it is, but it is definitely a learning curve. Even this season, I’ve learned a lot. As much as I had to take my punches, I really grew again. That’s one of the reasons I did it. I thought, I’m going to put myself out there. I used it almost as therapy, because I’m not a good therapy person. I’m not a good person to go there every Thursday and sit for an hour and a half and talk about myself. I end up having them talk about themselves and they end up paying me at the end of it. For me, it was a great way to journey through my grief, introduce this new life, force myself to go out, put my makeup on every day. It got me going again. It introduced me to a whole new group of friends.”
Dorinda admits many of her old friends didn’t support her decision to join Real Housewives of New York, but those who stuck by her, often say that she is exactly the same person on and off TV. Brandi takes this opportunity to kick off a Bethenny Frankel bashing session.
“You’re very real,” Brandi says to Dorinda. “I feel like a lot of the other women, who have been doing the show a lot longer than you have, tend to jump in and create drama. They kind of invent it and it doesn’t even need to be there. Like, talking about stuff that happened off camera; that’s unnecessary.”
Dorinda shares, “That’s another thing I learned this season. I thought when we were off camera, we were kind of free and clear. Not that I did anything bad, but that was a new dimension to it, that people actually were talking about something that happened in the middle of the summer. I was like, OK, but now I gotta shift my game a bit.”
“They’re only hearing one side of it,” whines Brandi. “They’re hearing Bethenny say it, and everyone thinks Bethenny always tells the truth no matter what and she’s always right, and that drives me nuts because I don’t agree with that. It’s like, just because you’re saying it, doesn’t make it true. Everyone has a different story. If we can’t see it, I don’t want to hear about it.”
RELATED: Bethenny Frankel Says “A Bitch I May Be…But An Honest One”
Dorinda says, despite what went down this season, she still really likes Bethenny. “She has got a very strong opinion and she puts it out there. She’s great TV, and you can’t take that away from her, the girl is made for reality TV.”
Brandi continues to complain about Bethenny. “I think, because she’s built her brand to be such a huge brand and she’s so successful, I think that she thinks whatever she says is God’s word. And I think the audience kind of sees that. Anyone who feels like that is going to be good to watch…it’s just not true.”
And…. Dorinda continues to defend Bethenny. “She’s a professional. She goes in there like a soldier – I think she does it with her personal life. I think she does it with her business. I think she does it as a mother. She’s all in. There’s no gray. She. Is. All. In. There’s something to be learned from that. She doesn’t go home at night and cry – I promise you.”
Brandi disagrees. She thinks Bethenny does cry when she’s alone, because Brandi cries, and they’re both Scorpios. Dorinda admits she weeps, but at the end of the day, as long as her family is OK, she’s OK.
The conversation circles back to being divorced vs widowed. Dorinda says she thinks divorce was easier. Brandi agrees, adding, “I wish mine had died…just kidding. Totally joking. I don’t want him to die, he is the father of my children, he could just get a really bad cold.”
Dorinda has nothing but good things to say about Jules Wainstein. When Brandi makes a dig about her weight, Dorinda says, “She talks about how she struggled with that and I’m very proud of her for doing that. You have to remember, she’s half Asian. <how could we forget?> Her mother’s built like that. She’s a hard core New Yorker – we don’t like to eat.”
Brandi says the Real Housewives of New York are the skinniest, which leads to a hilarious comment from Dorinda about the Real Housewives of Atlanta, “We know all the right things to wear. We’re not putting on some crazy outfit like they do on some of the other shows, that you shouldn’t be wearing ever, never mind when you’re 40. I’m talking about some of the crazy ones down in Atlanta. I don’t know what that stuff is.”
Dorinda asks Brandi how she met her current boyfriend, the Uber driver, and Brandi admits her friends spontaneously invited him to join them for an “after hours dance party” at Brandi‘s house. “I actually wasn’t super excited about him coming in, but then we just started making out.” Brandi goes on to say that she’s too busy for the relationship to be serious. “I’m spread in a lot of different directions, especially when he’s around.” <eye roll>
Dorinda says the Real Housewives of New York reunion films in July. “That is going to be a humdinger of a reunion. I think it’s going to be very interesting, very revealing. What people don’t realize…these people come in prepared, with notebooks and notes and things, and no one talks to each other.” She admits she was unprepared for her first reunion – she had idea it was so serious – but she already has two composition books filled with notes for the next one.
Well, hats off to Dorinda for refusing to take Brandi‘s constant “come down to my level and let’s trash everyone” bait. If you can stand forty minutes of Brandi, the podcast is worth a listen. I enjoyed Dorinda’s stories.
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Photo Credit: Charles Sykes/Bravo
