‘RHONY’ Star Carole Radziwill Confronted Over Epstein Files in Explosive Season 16 Trailer

Carole Radziwill‘s past is following her into her Bravo comeback.

“I can’t believe I’m back,” Carole, 62, says in the new trailer for The Real Housewives of New York City season 16, shared on Tuesday, July 21. At one point in the teaser, she appears to be confronted on the street by a stranger over her alleged ties to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“The Epstein files!” the stranger calls out as Carole walks with costar Erin Lichy. “She’s the one from the Epstein files!” the woman adds.

Also in the trailer, costar Sai De Silva directly asks Carole if she’s ever set foot on Epstein’s private island, where the late financier brought young women and his friends. “No,” Carole responds. “You think I’m part of an international sex trafficking ring?”

Near the end of the trailer, Carole reflects, “Everyone’s American love story is my American horror story,” likely a reference to FX’s Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, which many viewers will recognize as tied to her own personal tragedies.

The former journalist married Anthony Radziwill, the cousin of John F. Kennedy Jr, in 1994. Anthony died of cancer in 1999 at age 40, less than a month after JFK Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, who was Carole’s closest friend, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, were killed in the July 1999 plane crash off the coast of Massachusetts. Radziwill chronicled that devastating period in her memoir, What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship, and Love.

Carole’s name surfaced in the Epstein files earlier this year. She told The New York Times in March that she “never knew Jeffrey Epstein,” though she acknowledged a former friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s abuse.

“Imagine knowing someone… and then they turn out to be, like, a monster,” Carole told the outlet. She said she and Maxwell were friends “for five or six years” in the early 2000s, and that the friendship had ended long before Maxwell’s crimes came to light.

Carole first joined The Real Housewives of New York City in Season 5 and stepped away after season 10. She’s now returning alongside Lichy, De Silva, Jessel Taank and newcomers Hailey Glassman, Erika Hammond and Daisy Toye.