After five years on The Real Housewives of New Jersey , Caroline Manzo and her family are continuing their on-camera lives with their spin-off Manzo’d With Children . Now reality veterans, they reflect on how to stay real in the world of “reality.”
Bravo / John Gara for BuzzFeed
On an October Monday afternoon at Little Town, New Jersey, a restaurant venture from Albie and Chris Manzo on Sinatra Street in Hoboken, the Manzo family, of The Real Housewives of New Jersey-fame, is gathered around a table. With an array of appetizers spread before them, the conversation flows freely. It could be any Manzo family gathering — minus Al Sr., who is working at the Brownstone in Paterson, plus two Bravo publicists and me.
With a little encouragement, they take a break from typical lunch chatter and are reading hate-tweets aloud.
"'Lauren Manzo, you're a bitch,'" middle Manzo offspring Lauren says. She searches through the at-replies on her phone for a more exciting example of the kind of ire she receives regularly on Twitter, particularly after a new episode of Manzo'd With Children airs on Sunday nights.
She stumbles on a gem and laughs, reading the approximately 100-character jab: "'Lauren Manzo is such an effing C, jaded from all those fat years. I thought fat people were jolly.'"
Lauren wasn't editing the vicious words from an anonymous account; the viewer was actually thoughtful enough to censor the words "fucking" and "c*nt" in the midst of spewing hate at a stranger.
None of this is new for the Manzos, but now, they're receiving a little extra attention. Caroline, who spent five seasons on RHONJ before jumping ship; her husband, Al; and their adult children, in birth order, Albie, Lauren, and Chris, are wrapping up their own spin-off, Manzo'd With Children.
"I will never understand," Chris says. "Nobody has ever pissed me off so bad that I'm like, in 140 characters I'm gonna tell them everything I possibly had."
Nodding, Lauren adds, "I watch certain reality shows and there's people that I'm like, Oh my god, I cannot stand her. But I would never not like anyone enough to literally write the most horrible things to them."
Caroline concludes, "That's why you can't take it serious."
There is an oddly zenlike quality to all of this. The ability to shrug off punches must be learned because it's hard not to bristle at the insults flung at the Manzos, whether you're one of them or not. Throughout lunch, they are laid-back and overwhelmingly practical about their lives as members of a reality show family. Albie likens Manzo'd With Children to grad school, a "more intense version of things" after the college experience of Real Housewives. And they're happy to offer a crash course on how to survive reality television.
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