Carole Radziwill was grilled by her Real Housewives of New York City costars about her ties to Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, leading to an unexpected confession.
“If you Google me right now, it says that my name is in the Epstein file,” Carole, 63, said during the Tuesday, October 13, episode as the women spent time on newbie Erika Hammond’s private island.
Carole’s past communications with Ghislaine, 64, resurfaced earlier this year as documents were unsealed. She emphasized to costars Daisy Toye and Hailey Glassman that she “never knew Jeffrey Epstein” and that Ghislaine “never spoke about him.” (Epstein was indicted in 2019 for sex trafficking minors. He died in custody that year while awaiting trial. Ghislaine was convicted of child sex trafficking in 2021 and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.)
When Sai De Silva and Jessel Taank eventually joined the group outside, Carole was put in the hot seat. Sai, 45, pressed for more details about Carole’s relationship with Ghislaine, asking whether they were “really good friends.”
“If you read the press, we were … but she was never one of my close friends,” Carole insisted.
In a confessional, Carole explained that she was “friendly” with Ghislaine, with whom she shared mutual friends. “In the early 2000s, it would be strange if you [went] out to a really big event in New York and Ghislaine wasn’t there,” she told the cameras, once again noting Ghislaine “never talked about” the now-disgraced financier.
Sai continued to pepper Carole with questions, asking how she met Ghislaine to begin with and how they stopped speaking.
“You know, it’s like any friendship that sort of wasn’t that deep. We just kind of drifted apart,” Carole said, referring to Ghislaine as “a social climber” who was attracted to money and power. “If you lined up 10 women and said, ‘Which one was part of an international sex trafficking ring?’ It would not be her.”
Carole’s explanation apparently wasn’t enough to squash Sai’s concerns. As the discussion grew more tense, Sai explained that the Epstein scandal “pains me to my stomach,” especially as the mother of a teenage daughter.
“I get that people would be curious about it,” Carole said in another confessional, “but there’s a fine line between curiosity and accusation. Why are you using your daughter as a shield? And then also a sword to grill me with questions? … This is not what we should be talking about.”
According to Carole, the bigger question was “why under two administrations, the Department of Justice [and] the FBI never investigated any of the men.”
She added, “That’s what I’d be talking about if I had a teenage daughter.”
Sai remained skeptical, causing Carole to flip the conversation on its head. “How do I know you don’t know a predator? … Maybe you just don’t know it yet. That’s my point,” she said. “This is a story as old as time.”
Carole added that she thought Epstein “got what he deserved” when he was arrested, opening up about her own experience with sexual assault.
“Like a lot of young girls, I had a situation where I was sexually assaulted in college. So I was sensitive to that. This was a college professor,” she said. “And believe me, this professor was celebrated. This professor had lots of friends who didn’t know that he was assaulting young students. … It does shake me to think that I knew someone and would even, like, call her a friend, who then 20 years later, turned out to be a monster.”
The confession made Daisy emotional. “Poor Carole that she has to bring up such a disgusting, painful time in her life, just to justify herself to Sai,” she told the cameras. “I know Sai is very blunt, but nobody should be treated like this. I didn’t know we had a f***ing federal prosecutor on this trip.”
The Real Housewives of New York City airs on Bravo Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
