‘RHONY’ Star Carole Radziwill Reflects on Ghislaine Maxwell Friendship: ‘I Didn’t Know Anything’

Carole Radziwill isn’t shying away from questions about her connection to the Jeffrey Epstein files as she prepares for her Real Housewives comeback.

According to a People report published Wednesday, September 2, host Andy Cohen brought up 63-year-old Radziwill’s ties to the Epstein files during a season 16 cast panel for The Real Housewives of New York City in Sagaponack, New York, the previous day.

“I felt like this isn’t something that I shy away from,” Radziwill told Cohen, 58, per the report. “Me and many, many, many more people found their names in these files. It’s not something I shy away from because I think, really, it’s important to talk about it. It’s important to be transparent. Obviously, I didn’t know anything, as no one 20 years ago would have known anything, but it’s hard also.”

Radziwill’s Epstein ties trace back to a past friendship with Ghislaine Maxwell. She told The New York Times earlier this year that she knew Maxwell, 64, “for five or six years” in the early 2000s but “never knew” Epstein himself, adding, “Imagine knowing someone and even being friendly with them and then they turn out to be, like, a monster.”

At the cast panel, Radziwill expanded on that when she said, “It’s hard to think that someone you knew that long ago — and even called a friend at some point — was a horrible, horrible person doing horrible things. That had all aired, at first I was really nervous. But it’s an opportunity to talk about it,” adding that there are “real victims and survivors that were really brave enough to really stand up to these very, very powerful people,” per People.

As Star previously reported, the drama has already played out on camera. In the show’s July trailer, Radziwill is confronted on the street by a stranger alongside costar Erin Lichy. In another scene, costar Sai De Silva asked Radziwill if she’d ever set foot on Epstein’s private island. “No,” Radziwill replied, in the trailer footage. “You think I’m part of an international sex trafficking ring?”