Throwback: Renee Graziano - Family Business

We’re taking a quick pause for New Year’s week, but we’ll be back after the New Year with brand-new episodes. Until then, enjoy this powerful throwback originally aired on March 6, 2024. Renee Graziano of Mob Wives fame sits down with Bunnie for a raw, no-filter conversation about surviving abuse, addiction, and lifelong trauma—and how she turned it all into purpose. Renee opens up about the chaos behind Mob Wives, the devastating loss of her father, her journey to sobriety, and how she’s become the tough-as-nails, fairy-godmother energy she embodies today. Renee Graziano: IG https://www.instagram.com/reneegraziano/?hl=en | TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@therealreneegraziano Watch Full Episodes & More: YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Dumbblondepod

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bunnie XO?

  12 celebrities, one don and cold hard cash from the producers of Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. And this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey. What up, girl? 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family for two weeks in a lavish Italian villa. They'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out, who makes money and who walks away with nothing. In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency, will the most powerful

• 0:43Bunnie XO?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who's gonna step up and become the new don? Let the games begin. Watch The Mob, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. For bundle subscribers, terms apply. I'll be tuning in. Is this thing on?

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Bonnie, who used to be a former sex worker and now hosts the podcast Dumb Blonde.

• 1:04Bunnie XO?

  Most little girls grow up wanting to be doctors and lawyers and shit. And I was like, I want to be super hot, make a lot of fucking money and be a rock star's wife. That was my goal as a child and here we are.

• 1:15Bunnie XO?

  What's up, you sexy motherfuckers? Welcome to another episode of Dumb Blonde. Today, we have our fairy mob mother here. This is Renee Graziano. How are you doing, mama?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I'm wonderful. It's such a pleasure to meet you.

• 1:29Bunnie XO?

  Dude, I'm so happy you're here. You're so striking in person. Like, you're beautiful online too, but you're just so striking.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  No, I'm prettier in person.

• 1:36Bunnie XO?

  I love it.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  And I'm smaller.

• 1:37Bunnie XO?

  You're tiny.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, people, people will always think I'm taller. I'm actually, you know, I did just lose like almost 20 pounds, so I am a little bit smaller than normal, but thank you.

• 1:48Bunnie XO?

  It's your presence online that makes, that makes people think you're bigger than you are because you are such a, just a power, power woman, like a powerful woman. Like, any room you walk in, you demand attention, so.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's where my addiction comes from.

• 2:07Bunnie XO?

  I love that.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:09Bunnie XO?

  We'll definitely get into that.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:10Bunnie XO?

  You are a real Sicilian princess.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14Bunnie XO?

  You're like.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  My father spared no expense on any one of his daughters. Like, I miss him terribly. It'll, we're coming up on five years and um, my life was really very much like a movie. And I think that's another reason why addiction played such a really big part in my life. Uh, but growing up with like a mob boss as a father and you could do no wrong. And everybody else was wrong. It was like the perfect combination. It was the perfect storm for me.

• 2:49Bunnie XO?

  Absolutely. And so for those of um, those people who don't know, who is your father?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Uh, my father is Anthony Graziano. He was the consigliere of the Bonanno crime family.

• 3:01Bunnie XO?

  That's, that's sounds powerful.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  It doesn't he? You know, and, and my father's story is quite remarkable. Uh, no higher than an eighth grade education. Um, you know, when he passed away, I found out that the first time he was ever arrested was for robbing Corn Flakes to feed his sisters. And he lived in a trailer um, with newspaper as the um, shades. And uh, his mom's boyfriend was sexually molesting his sisters. And at 12, my father was shipped off because the man suddenly died in an electrical fire.

• 3:41Bunnie XO?

  Oh.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:43Bunnie XO?

  Do we think dad had something to do with that allegedly?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  I hope he did.

• 3:46Bunnie XO?

  Yeah. Anybody that hurts children, anybody that hurts children deserves.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  I hu- I hope he did. I truly do because for me, I, now it makes so much more sense. Why he was the way he was with us. Like, we had to be covered and you couldn't do this and you couldn't wear a bikini. And I was always like, what's wrong with my father, you know? And it was like, God forbid you said you had your period. It was like you couldn't come out of the, like, your room. I remember I had my first breast reduction at like 18.

• 4:13Bunnie XO?

  Wow.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah, I had an F breast naturally. Yeah, I think God made me upside down and backward, so my ass was flat and my boobs were huge.

• 4:22Bunnie XO?

  Stop it.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kid you not, my nickname was Sheet Rock, okay? So you wonder why I have all these like, you know.

• 4:28Bunnie XO?

  Okay, who nicknamed you Sheet Rock?

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Well, okay, so my ex brother-in-law named me SpongeBob SquarePants. And then my ex-husband, that evil bastard, that rat, no good prick.

• 4:40Bunnie XO?

  We'll get into him later.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, we will. Um, yeah, I was just always picked on.

• 4:44Bunnie XO?

  That is terrible. And you don't look like Sheet Rock. You're beautiful.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  No, because I got my ass done like four times.

• 4:51Bunnie XO?

  And we're gonna talk about that too. So circling back to childhood. Um, you know, your dad was this huge mobster and what was life like for you? Did you guys talk about it? Were you allowed to say the word mob? Like, I know I've talked to the other girls and they all have such different upbringings. Where like Ramona's family did not talk about it.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Not at all.

• 5:10Bunnie XO?

  But Karen's family, they were just like, you know.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so Ramona's grandfather and my father were very dear friends, same family.

• 5:19Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  So they were very close. Um, so growing up, all I knew is my father worked. Like, most fathers work nine to five. My father worked five to nine.

• 5:30Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  So it was the opposite in the hours. And there were times that he, you know, wasn't home. But it was not something that we would ever question because you're not allowed to ask questions.

• 5:41Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  However, when I was about sixteen, I remember being in, um, Pastels, which was, you know, the nightclub in Brooklyn. And I was at the end of the bar with my best friend Teddy Persico. And a man comes over and he introduced, Teddy introduced me. He said, oh, this is TG's daughter. And he said, Yeah, you know, her father's a captain. I go, my father doesn't drive a boat. He goes, what? I go, he doesn't sail a ship, Teddy. Tell this guy. But I didn't know what the words were.

• 6:10Bunnie XO?

  And they're looking at you like.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I went home, Teddy's going, shut up, shut up. I go home, I go, Dad, is there something you want to tell me? I was like, is that why you're not home on the weekends? Or he's like, what are you talking about? And I was like, you're a captain. And he was like, Oh, my God, sit down. And it was like this moment of, you don't ever ask a question like that. Understand, You're a little different than everybody else. And I didn't know what it meant, but I started to understand because I Had like that flashback when these kids in fourth or fifth grade glued an article of my dad to my desk. Yeah, so, you know, there were two young girls that I went to school with that bullied me. And, um, one of the girls, her father was found in a trunk. So.

• 6:54Bunnie XO?

  I love how you say that so matter-of-factly.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  I know. So this is, you know what's crazy? Because now I finally realized all these things gave me trauma.

• 7:02Bunnie XO?

  Oh.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Which I never knew they did.

• 7:04Bunnie XO?

  Absolutely, baby.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  But it was normal to me.

• 7:05Bunnie XO?

  Trauma starts at the moment of conception. So like if your mom and dad were fighting her pregnancy, that's trauma. Like you, the minute conception starts, trauma.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Really?

• 7:17Bunnie XO?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Oh, that makes so, oh, wow. I better get my son into therapy immediately.

• 7:22Bunnie XO?

  Were you, were you close to your mom growing up?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Um, closer to my father. I'm like my father's twin, but I was also born very sick.

• 7:31Bunnie XO?

  Mm.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  So I had spinal taps for the first six months of my life. I'm the only addict in my family.

• 7:36Bunnie XO?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Um, well, I'm the only confessed addict in my family for drugs and alcohol. Not alcohol, actually, drugs. Um, I'm sure my father was an addict because of his lifestyle.

• 7:48Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? All that stuff that goes along with the mob. My sister Jennifer threw herself into work. You know, everybody has an addiction. Mine just resulted in drugs.

• 8:00Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  You know?

• 8:01Bunnie XO?

  So when you were born, you had to have spinal taps, which is trauma, right there?

• 8:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 8:05Bunnie XO?

  For you to, so you came out of the womb already having trauma.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:09Bunnie XO?

  Growing up, you, like you said, you did not know that your father was in the mob. How did they hide that from you?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Um, okay, so. I remember I was thirteen when I first experienced, uh, the feds broke down the doors and like sledgehammers. And they came in to get my father and I remember like losing my mind and saying, you're not taking him. And like I was on top of them.

• 8:32Bunnie XO?

  Aww.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I didn't know. And he was like, Renee, don't worry about it. I'm coming right back, Renee. Just don't worry about it. And I didn't know what it meant, you know, and, and it wasn't explained. It was like, oh, don't worry about it. You know, but then there's things in the newspaper.

• 8:46Bunnie XO?

  What did they say? Like daddy ran a red light?

• 8:49Speaker 02

  So bookmaking. So the reason Pete Rose didn't get inducted into the Hall of Fame is because he got pinched on my father's case.

• 8:56Bunnie XO?

  Wow.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of that. That was when he was like really coming up, you know? And, um, I knew I was different. I knew I was because my father would, when the candy man would come on the corner of the block, my father would buy out the truck for everybody on the block.

• 9:11Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  He was always doing stuff for everybody else, you know, and, and that's why I, I have this love for my father because. My father's never been charged with murder, so therefore in my eyes, he's not one. Okay, so all the other little things that mobsters do, it's kind of in their own community. As far as, you know, what I knew. Or if I watch a movie, I don't really get too much into that because people like to say, well, how could you defend your father? He was this and he was that. But at the end of the day, he was my father.

• 9:45Bunnie XO?

  And all you knew from him was love.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like, and when I told you this man loved me, like there was nothing greater in this world that when he died, I wanted to die. I literally wanted to go with him.

• 9:59Bunnie XO?

  You have two other sisters. Were they as close with him as you are?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Lana is nine years older, so my father was more in the street when she was younger, so there's a little bit of a resentment there. Um, and I got all the attention because I was the sick child. So Lana actually hung me when I was six with a red, white and blue plastic jump rope. Hoisted me over the chandelier. I'll never forget that.

• 10:23Bunnie XO?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  And then the other time, so. And then this other time.

• 10:28Bunnie XO?

  That is not normal, Renee.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  I, I know, but now I know why I have trauma. Then this other time, she put the dog leash around my neck and she hung the, the cord from the other side and she's like, just jump off the stairs and swing. I'm like, okay, you know. I was like a stick figure. I was a stick figure and she was heavier. So my father was harder on her. But her, her things were like, lose 50 pounds, I'll buy you a car. Lose 50 pounds, I'll give you 15,000, 20,000. So it was different. I didn't have to. I was skinny. There was like, if I turned sideways, all you saw were my boobs. Like, there was nothing to me.

• 11:04Bunnie XO?

  So there was definitely a jealousy factor.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Absolutely. And then my little sister.

• 11:10Bunnie XO?

  So you're the middle.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, okay. And a Cancer. So my little sister in first grade had an eighth grade reading level. And in eighth grade, I had an eighth grade reading level. So I was the less. Scholastically intelligent sister.

• 11:26Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  So I had that complex from birth. I was ugly according to Lana.

• 11:32Bunnie XO?

  Oh.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And I was dumb according to Jennifer. So. Which is normal for sisters and brothers and sisters to do. It's not nice, but they do it.

• 11:42Bunnie XO?

  So hurtful.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  It is. I took it on. I became that. I became ugly and dumb. In my, that's what I saw. I literally saw it. And um. I automatically. Uh, became promiscuous. Because of that too.

• 12:01Bunnie XO?

  At what age?

• 12:03Speaker 02

  I was thirteen.

• 12:04Bunnie XO?

  Oh my goodness. I just got goosebumps. That's, you're a baby.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. I wasn't a baby. My body didn't look like a baby. I looked like I was eighteen years old at thirteen. I was like a triple D. Like, I looked, if you seen pictures of me at thirteen, you'd be like, who is she? I look younger now than I did at thirteen.

• 12:22Bunnie XO?

  Wow.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  So I, yeah, my first boyfriend, I was uh, like thirteen and a half, and a half. He was seventeen. And um, his name was Frank.

• 12:32Bunnie XO?

  It's a little weird.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he was abusive. And that was something I hid from my father. I always hid my abuse.

• 12:39Bunnie XO?

  Abusive, getting abused by a boyfriend at thirteen?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:43Bunnie XO?

  What would he do to you?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  So um. We.

• 12:48Bunnie XO?

  Makes my skin crawl because you're such a baby.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny. His daughter actually reached out to me on like Instagram. I was like. How's your fat father doing? I can't stand, did he fix his nose yet? Did he, like, you know what? Because you know, you get scarred. You get so scarred.

• 13:04Bunnie XO?

  And rightfully so. He deserves that. But I, I just, it's, you know. We're painting a picture here for people and I don't think a lot of people have got to hear this from you.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  They don't know this.

• 13:14Bunnie XO?

  And they don't understand what makes you so, I don't want to say aggressive, but just so brazen and so like. You know, this is how it is. Like, you have been molded by trauma since birth.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Thank you for this, um, because a lot of people don't know these things about me because I always had to hide everything.

• 13:32Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  You know, but um Frank was abusive very young and I remember being fifteen and we were going. Tony Danza was at my sister Lana's wedding, so we were attending something and he was jealous because he couldn't come. So he stabbed, I'll never say, he stabbed me in the side of my leg with a fork as I was coming down the stairs. But cocaine was already in place at fourteen.

• 13:54Bunnie XO?

  So you were already doing drugs?

• 13:55Speaker 02

  I was, yeah, fourteen, yeah, absolutely.

• 13:57Bunnie XO?

  Well, let, well, we're gonna talk about the abuse, but then we're gonna rewind back to the drugs.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  So I think for me, um,

• 14:07Speaker 02

  I just stayed because I thought that's what I deserved.

• 14:12Bunnie XO?

  So he stabbed you in your leg?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  Like in my leg, I have like, I still have like, like two little marks left in my leg.

• 14:17Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  And I remember, um, I'd gone home one day and I had a black eye. And my, my father was on the couch and I walked in, he goes, come here. And like, he didn't see anything, I was just walking straight to the room, you know, and he was like, come here, and I go, what's up? And he's like, what happened to your face? I said, oh, I walked into the door, he goes, oh, yeah, you did? Sit down. And I was like, oh shit, you know? He's like, what door? I said, uh, uh, the door. Like, what do you say? Like, you know, cause my, at this point, I'm not really a liar and I suck at lying anyway.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  So I'm trying to like come up with a story in my head and I know I can at this point. And I remember I, oh, and this is why I never told on somebody afterwards. So, I said that he hit me and my father goes, okay. Watch this. So he makes a phone call and he calls up the father and he says, I need you and your son to meet me at my restaurant. And this, it was on Forest Avenue called Mama Roses. And then he called two other guys who have now passed on. And my father goes, get in the car. And I'm like, oh my God, what's gonna happen? I'm saying, I'll never forget it. I was singing the Isling Brothers in between the sheets in the car. He goes, what the fuck do you know about that?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  I was like, nothing. It's a, it's a song. And he's like, don't talk. I swear to God, it was so scary in the car with him. It was in his big Lincoln. We get there and he goes, go in the restaurant and don't go by the window. So what does that mean? That means go by the window.

• 15:57Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Right?

• 15:58Bunnie XO?

  You're gonna go look.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  So now there's two Lincolns outside, Frank, his father, and these two guys. And I look out the window and low and behold, now Frank has a cast on his arm. Needless to say, we know what happened, how it got broken. And it was that very second that I knew I could never tell on another human because it would be my sin that they got hurt. And that's so wrong to think that way because he deserved to have his arm broken.

• 16:25Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  But because I had this relationship with God at a very young age, I felt it was a sin. So I have to protect my father and protect the other person. So it's really my fault it happens. And that's exactly where everything started. That's, that's really where it all started.

• 16:45Bunnie XO?

  You just felt like you couldn't be honest because you were scared of the repercussions that would happen if like somebody hurt you or yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  So when I met my son's father.

• 16:55Bunnie XO?

  Let's rewind really quick.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Go.

• 16:56Bunnie XO?

  Before we get into that, you said that, um, at that age, you were already using drugs. When did you start using drugs?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 17:03Bunnie XO?

  And why were you using them?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Okay. So when I was about 13, I remember I did like mescaline, like double, purple double barrel. I'll never forget it. I had every bit of clothing that was on the, in the closet on me. It was in the closet. My girlfriend's mother was like, what is Renee doing in the closet with the clothes? So I, yeah, so I knew like that wasn't the drug for me because I didn't like that type of feeling.

• 17:26Bunnie XO?

  I don't even know what that is. What is that?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't even make that anymore. It's, it was like some kind of trippy drug. I don't, I don't like.

• 17:33Bunnie XO?

  Acid or.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not like, a- acid was really strong. This was like some little stuff.

• 17:38Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Um, and then. Um, I wanted to be very much like my older sister. So, you know, if there was partying going on, I wanted to do it too. So I remember it started with black beauties and yellow jackets. So those are uppers. That was like speed.

• 17:55Bunnie XO?

  Diet pills and stuff.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Correct. And then it just, when I met Frank, it was cocaine. So by fourteen, I was, you know, partying, fourteen, fifteen. Um, by the time I was sixteen, I was dating like the biggest drug dealer in Staten Island secretly.

• 18:12Bunnie XO?

  And who was this? Are we allowed to say his name?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  So gorgeous. No, I can't say it. Um, I, his name, his first name-

• 18:19Bunnie XO?

  But it wasn't Frank.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  No, his first name is Jay. He was just like, oh, he was beautiful. And he was like, you can't tell nobody, cause you know, your father'd be upset.

• 18:30Bunnie XO?

  How old was he?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Twenty-two.

• 18:31Bunnie XO?

  Twenty-two and you were how old?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Sixteen.

• 18:34Bunnie XO?

  God, I'm having this argument with our kid right now. She has twenty-year-olds hanging around and she's fifteen and I'm like, there's something wrong with them.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 18:40Bunnie XO?

  Okay, good. I'm glad you feel the same way.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  I think that's a crime.

• 18:43Bunnie XO?

  Okay, good.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Because what I know now, first of all, I would kill somebody. I have three granddaughters. You're not making it home, buddy. Like, no, you're warped in the brain that you wanna be with a little girl.

• 18:54Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Because regardless, the woman could be grown, you know, physically, we could look a certain way, but mentally, no. And that's where they condition you. You're conditioned in your early teen years, you know what I mean? So for me, it was ea- like, I felt popular. I felt special. I felt, I wasn't ugly. Yes, I felt, I, but it was a secret.

• 19:18Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  So it's still, you know, it's not fair to me. And I just stayed in a...

• 19:27Speaker 02

  You know what? Looking back, it's so sad. It's so sad. I could have been so much more in life, you know? I could have had the healthy relationship, but no, I, you know, I went from- My first boyfriend to that like relationship for a few years when I was in my six, sixteen to eighteen, to meeting my son's father when I was twenty, getting engaged a month and nineteen days after I met him because I wanted this. And my father said, "You want it? I'm gonna give you what you want. Now you're gonna let, when you make your bed, you gotta lay in it."

• 20:03Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  And my father didn't want me to marry him because he wasn't Italian. He was Puerto Rican.

• 20:08Bunnie XO?

  Did you ever, um, experience abuse in the house? Was that, no, there was never an abuse?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  No, Lana always got hit.

• 20:15Bunnie XO?

  I'm trying to figure out where your attachment style came from.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Okay. I don't know because my father never hit my mother.

• 20:21Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 02

  Ever. But what I do know is this. At sixteen, I found out about an affair my father had.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Mom, I'm sorry if you ever hear this. And I remember what I did.

• 20:35Bunnie XO?

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• 21:17Bunnie XO?

  Join Wayfair Rewards today to get five percent back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Wayfair, every style, every home. Attention all new and existing members of the W D N C. I'm Melanie Sanders and this is the We Do Not Care Club Podcast. We got to midlife and realized we just simply do not care much anymore. Now, we gotta help each other make sense of hot flashes, dry coochie, chin hair, trifling families, brain fog, and bat wings. We are not alone and we will be heard. So come join the W D N C. Follow and listen to the We Do Not Care Club Podcast with Melanie Sanders wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  And I lost it, like, lost it because I have the most magnificent mother in the world, like, Raquel Welch gorgeous. And such a good woman.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  But in the same thing, I didn't want to be her anymore. I wanted to be her and then I didn't want to be her because to me it was weak.

• 22:22Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  And I just said, that's what's gonna happen. And I ended up being the same damn thing, just with a big mouth.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  So my father never hit my mother, ever.

• 22:31Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Ever. It that's like, it's just not happening in my household. Lana got hit a lot because Lana was really bad. Like, she would rob the car all the time and, you know, like, flip the cars and

• 22:42Bunnie XO?

  Trying to hang you off chandeliers.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Absolutely, had me swinging off banisters, like, but, um, I think for me, I just wanted something.

• 22:51Bunnie XO?

  Wanted to be loved.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  And I had such a hole in my soul. I was born with a hole in my soul. Literally, I was born with a heart murmur. I think that was the hole. Yeah, um, and I, I would have done anything, anything in the wor- oh, God, I'm gonna get so emotional right now.

• 23:07Bunnie XO?

  It's okay.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  I would have done anything for someone to say, I love you.

• 23:13Bunnie XO?

  Looking back, do you feel like you finally found that love within yourself?

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Not yet.

• 23:19Bunnie XO?

  You're still looking for it?

• 23:22Bunnie XO?

  Well, I love you. I love you too. You wanna hug?

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. So sorry, I just, I was like, I'm not gonna cry today.

• 23:32Bunnie XO?

  I got you, Mom. You are so tough.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Thank you. You know, I, you know what's funny? Now I have it with my grandchildren, you know, and, um, they love me.

• 23:43Bunnie XO?

  Oh, I bet. You are, you are like the ultimate G-Ma. You're like glamor.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, that's the name of my company too. I just, they actually, I play superhero. I, um, I do all these things with the kids and, uh, it's this feeling of, it's a different love.

• 24:01Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  And it, it does

• 24:03Bunnie XO?

  Unconditional.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does fill the soul. You know, it, it, it is now for me. It's, things are changing and, um,

• 24:10Bunnie XO?

  Do we have any tissue, Mimi?

• 24:13Speaker 02

  I usually travel with a box.

• 24:15Bunnie XO?

  My gosh. We'll get you some.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  I'll rip the eyelashes off in five minutes. I don't even care.

• 24:20Bunnie XO?

  Take the shoes off. I don't care.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  I'm telling you.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know.

• 24:25Bunnie XO?

  I think it's a journey. I think life is a journey of literally learning how to fall in love with yourself.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:31Bunnie XO?

  It really is. And I, for women like us who have grown up with trauma and the women at home that are listening, like, that's really all we've ever searched for in this world is to give love and to receive love. And it starts with us.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  It does. And what I'm finding out now is nobody's gonna do it for me but me.

• 24:52Bunnie XO?

  Absolutely.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  You know, and that's, that's the sad part because I know how I love on somebody.

• 24:57Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  So I'm like, what, you know, where are these people? And my sister Jennifer would always say to me, Renee, your expectations of people are way too high. Nobody's you. No one will ever do the things you do. You pay people's bills before you'll even pay your own. You'll take care of everyone, strangers on the street and not yourself. And I think that's what it was. I've always been trying to save a life, but it was my life I had to save. And I just felt like that my life wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough. Why should I be alive? Why should I have all these things? Even when I was young, I would give everything out. Everything my father'd give me, I'd give everybody else because I felt like God gave me so much. Why would I not share it?

• 25:42Speaker 02

  You know, not everybody gets the lifestyle that I, I lived as a child. I had a fur coat at seven, diamond nameplates. Like I, I think I came out of the womb as a mob wife. Like, you know, with the, with the big jewelry and the whole bit, you know, and now I, I look back and I just, I have three granddaughters and I have one grandson and all I want them to do, all I want for them, I should say, is to know that they are so loved. And nothing matters and nobody will ever hurt them. And I say that and I don't care if the feds were listening in on this one. I would go right to the wall for them. You know what I mean? As every parent should for their child, every parent, any parent that doesn't shouldn't be a parent. That's how I view it.

• 26:27Bunnie XO?

  Did you ever pour that, feel like you poured that love into AJ?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  You know what? AJ, AJ is, is very loved. Very, very, very loved. He doesn't.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Really show me that though anymore. Um, I I know I hurt my son.

• 26:44Bunnie XO?

  No.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Definitely did. Um, AJ witnessed some stuff that uh he doesn't talk about ever. So when AJ was like five and um, it was November twenty ninth and um, his father gave me a really bad beating and um, his face was pressed between the two little lats on the stairs. And his eyes never left mine as this man dragged me down the stairs backwards and um, I just remember looking at him and I said, I gotta get him out of here. And I went to church and there was a piece of paper in the church and it said, after the long, dark storm, there will be light.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  And there was no other piece of paper in the whole church that said that. And I'm all over the church like, oh, my God, God's talking to me. Like, I know this man's having a conversation with me. I know, facts. I left the next day. I packed, what's crazy, it's my son, my clothes and my television.

• 27:45Bunnie XO?

  When you're in those situations, you do crazy shit.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  My TV, no, because I swear the TV meant something to me all my life. Like, I wanted to be um, Lucille Ball. That was my dream. Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball with Blondie and Joan Jett twist. That's what, that's all I wanted to be when I grew up. You know what I mean? But then again, I wanted to be Diane Carroll, but then my mother told me I couldn't be Diane Carroll because she was a black woman and I and I argued with her for like years. Yes, I can. She was like, no, you can't, Renee. You don't understand. But um, yeah, I left him right there and I I left with AJ. I went home. My father was like, okay, no problem. Stay. You can't go back now. And what's crazy is my ex-husband's last name is Pagan.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  So for someone who believes in God so much, right?

• 28:34Bunnie XO?

  I've always thought that.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Okay, I got married in a church called Our Lady of Pity.

• 28:39Bunnie XO?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  A black crow flew in my church and sat above me on my wedding tape.

• 28:46Bunnie XO?

  Wow.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  I married.

• 28:48Bunnie XO?

  Goosebumps.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  I married the devil. I I I kid you, he's the spawn of the devil.

• 28:52Bunnie XO?

  How did you guys meet? Where did this come from? Cause I read somewhere that he was a friend of your father's.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  No, not at all. He's a liar.

• 28:59Bunnie XO?

  Okay.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  He wishes. Um, I met him on

• 29:06Speaker 02

  May seven, May seventeenth of nineteen ninety. He had just come home from doing like four years for like gun trafficking. So for me, it's like, oh, the Azari bro, I love it. Um, oh my God, he's gonna fit in my family just fine.

• 29:22Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  You know, and I remember going home and saying, Dad, I got a boyfriend. I want you to meet him. And he's like, what's his name? I'm like, ask him when he gets here. He goes, what does that mean, Renee? Cause I couldn't say his name was Hector.

• 29:32Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  I didn't know what was gonna happen.

• 29:33Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  So when he got to the house, my father goes, what's your name? He goes Hector. He goes Hector? What's that? Wha- wha- wha- what are you? So he said, I'm Puerto Rican. And he goes, no, your name is Junior. That's where he got that name from.

• 29:45Bunnie XO?

  Wow.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  From my father. And because he was in jail with a friend of my father's who was Joe Messina, who was the uh, mob boss of the Bonanno crime family, who also became a fucking rat. Um, and he's, he's dead now too. Um. My father gave him a pass. He started abusing me immediately, immediately.

• 30:08Bunnie XO?

  And you were how old, twenty?

• 30:09Speaker 02

  I was twenty. I got engaged a month and nineteen days after I met him. I said, Daddy, this is what I want. And my father always gave me what I wanted.

• 30:17Bunnie XO?

  So even getting, you know, beat by him.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  No, my father never knew.

• 30:21Bunnie XO?

  No, never knew, never told him.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  He's my abuser. And when I say that, I mean it in every way, shape of the word. So whatever comes before abuse emotionally, mentally, sexually, physically, that's my abuser.

• 30:35Bunnie XO?

  I've heard you say that he was your rapist?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. He uh.

• 30:41Bunnie XO?

  It's hard to believe that people give this man a platform.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  You know what's hard to believe? That women don't report this. Because you don't know it's a crime when you're married. I didn't know that that's a crime.

• 30:53Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  You know, if your husband comes home and he's a little bit forceful and you have to submit, that's a crime. I didn't know that. And I had a therapist. Her name was Renee. Um. And she was the one who told me, no, that's rape, Renee. And I was like, uh, I don't think it's called that where I'm from. And she's like, no, that's what it's called, period.

• 31:14Bunnie XO?

  What would he do?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  It, he was just, the drugs were bad. He was a, he is an alcoholic and an addict. So, um.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  He would just come home from, we had a strip club, my father's. And his girlfriend worked there. Her name was Danielle.

• 31:34Bunnie XO?

  Who's girlfriend?

• 31:35Speaker 02

  My ex-husband.

• 31:35Bunnie XO?

  Juniors, okay.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Filthy bitch. Um, filthy. And um, he would just constantly compare me to her. And he was very forceful from being drunk and high. And I really didn't have many choices.

• 31:53Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Uh, I also didn't understand. And I think I didn't understand a lot because I was never really developed in that sense of the word. Physically, I was very developed, but I wasn't mature enough.

• 32:06Bunnie XO?

  You're still a baby at twenty.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're, absolutely, but I was doing it from thirteen. So you know what I mean? I figured, oh, I'm gonna make a guy like me. I know what I could do. And every guy liked me, trust me.

• 32:17Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  But not every guy wanted me because, one, it wasn't just the fact that you had to deal with my father. I don't shut up.

• 32:25Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  You, you're gonna follow suit.

• 32:28Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  If you can't equal up to my father, you're gonna follow suit.

• 32:32Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And I'm gonna lead. And that's really what it was. And my ex-husband resented me for that because guys would kiss me hello before him. So you know that mob thing, they all kiss each other. They wouldn't kiss him before me.

• 32:45Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  And I kept saying to him, but you're not Anthony's daughter, I am.

• 32:49Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  So I am to be treated tha- that way because I am the, you know, mob royalty if you, if you.

• 32:56Bunnie XO?

  And he's also not Italian.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  No, and that was the thing. Then he became so close with my father. My father loved this man. Oh my god, he loved this man. And he was gonna give him our last name. So he could be, imagine this, and this man ratted on my father, beat his daughter.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  The abuse I went through, he shattered my coccyx bone, broke, uh, cracked a rib, punctured a kidney, broke my cheekbone, like, and I would never tell.

• 33:25Bunnie XO?

  Renee.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I, yeah, I never told.

• 33:28Bunnie XO?

  Why would he do these things? Like, he just would come home drunk?

• 33:31Speaker 02

  He was just, because he would say really mean things to me and, oh god, this is so bad, sorry Lois. His mother's Lois, she died. She was a heroin addict, died of HIV. So he would be really mean to me and I'd be like, your mother's, oh, true, it's true. Your mother's this or your mother's that, because that's my only defense. Because I'm getting smacked, so what else could I do? I'm like a little peanut and this man is six feet professional boxer.

• 33:56Bunnie XO?

  No man should ever hit a woman, no matter what.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  He was, he was just.

• 34:02Bunnie XO?

  Evil.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't want, I, I, I, I know that he had his own trauma, but I don't like to give him any little bit of grace whatsoever, because he doesn't deserve it. Because you could walk out that door. You could, you, you walked out that door and gave your girlfriend my car and left me while I was pregnant, throwing up, my body shut down. I lost twenty-five pounds in my fourth month. I, uh, my body, I collapsed and I stayed in the hospital for like, at least two weeks. And he made me take a cab home. Like, the things, like, I, I, a lot of it's flashing right now, so forgive me.

• 34:40Bunnie XO?

  No, you're good.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  You know, because my ADD is also active right now. And it's like, oh shit, I, oh my god, oh my, wha- what was I doing?

• 34:48Bunnie XO?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  I could have had anything and anyone.

• 34:51Bunnie XO?

  I went through it too, I went through it, a severely abusive relationship. So everything that I'm hearing from you just breaks my heart because I too stayed no matter what. And it was like, we had the most amazing sex and like, I would try, he was always sorry after he would do it. And then now, this man is trying to gaslight me because he knows I'm writing a book.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Oh, good, so where, what's his address?

• 35:11Bunnie XO?

  And is telling me that everything that happened is embellished and that I'm lying and that he, he never hit me closed-fisted, but he bopped me in my nose. You know, like, it's, it's like, the, the guy, these men are just crazy. So to me, you know, Hector sounds a lot like my ex.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that, because they're, uh, what's the word, what are they called?

• 35:30Bunnie XO?

  Narcissist.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Narcissist, narcissist asshole. My ex-husband, the sex was horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible. Um, you should be embarrassed. Um, but, hey, you know, it's so crazy, his girlfriend, he has a girlfriend now that like stalks me.

• 35:47Bunnie XO?

  Of course.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  I'm like, bitch, please have a seat.

• 35:49Bunnie XO?

  You're the one that got away with it.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Like, please have a seat.

• 35:51Bunnie XO?

  He probably triangulates you with her.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  He just knocked her out cold in a parking lot in Staten Island, maybe like six months ago. He moved out here, he lives in Lake Tahoe. And if I had his address, I'd give it to you.

• 36:02Bunnie XO?

  No.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Um, for anybody who wanted to ring the bell. I don't care. So like, I really don't care. Like, it could come and say, Renee, you're not allowed to say that. I'd be like, yes, I am.

• 36:12Bunnie XO?

  So let's rewind it back. So you're going through this horrific time with him. You're pregnant. You know, you know, you have AJ. AJ's having to witness the abuse. When do you guys finally break? Because I know on Mob Wives, you guys ended up getting back together.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Okay, so it was, um, November 30th.

• 36:32Bunnie XO?

  I love that she remembers dates.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, I have a thing with numbers.

• 36:35Bunnie XO?

  Okay.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Um, it was, yep, 1999, because I remember for New Year's, I remember that Prince song playing in my head. Um, I left, and then I found out that the affair he was having at that time was with his sister's friend, who I always said it was, and she was pregnant. So here's this one. So now I show up at court. Oh, I didn't know she was pregnant yet. So I go to court. He gets pinched. I go to court. I have to put the house up for him, and he's there with her. And I'm sitting there, and I'm looking, and my cousin Alexis, who's this tiny, tiny little blonde. We call her Barbie. And she says, Renee, I go, there's a ring on her finger. He's married to me.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  I get up, and the judge goes, who's here for, you know, Hector Pagan? I go, me. He goes, in your name? I go, Renee Pagan. He goes, well, then who's the woman that he's with? That was one. I walk out of the courtroom, and I remember getting into a fight with him in front of the federal building that he took me by my throat and dangled me in the street.

• 37:35Bunnie XO?

  While you're pregnant?

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Uh, no, she was now pregnant. She was now pregnant. I was, no, AJ was already born, but he was having this affair.

• 37:42Bunnie XO?

  Sorry.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  And then I find out he's engaged. Two weeks later, my son says to me, uh, he was with his dad. I was away. I had a boyfriend at the time. And a wise guy boyfriend, too. He was cute. Um. And AJ called me and says that, um, what was his name? Vicky made him pee in the tub because she was on the toilet bowl and he was playing in the so- snow and I said, "Okay mommy's mommy will be there in no time." "You were in the bathroom with my kid?" That's a no. I made it home from three hours away in like two hours and I gave her a beating outside the house and I'm not a fighter. At all. And that's how I ended up finding out she was pregnant because he said, "I'll kill you. She's having a baby and I didn't even know she was pregnant."

• 38:26Speaker 02

  And that's how I found out. So you're married to me, engaged, having a child, still beating me and this is where we're at. So at that point I was like, "I'm done." He went to jail for eight years. I had nothing to do with him, no communication. I then started working for 50 Cent and I, you know, my life started to pick up and I had this really fun and exciting life. All of a sudden I was experiencing everything from different races and culture and I was like in heaven. I was like candies. Yeah, that was me. Um, and uh, matter of fact, my friend that lives here, I, you know, I'm talking about the witch, I'll tell you afterwards.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  So he came home and he then got a girlfriend.

• 39:12Bunnie XO?

  As Mob Wives going on?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  No, no, no. He came home in eight. So Mob Wives happened in 10.

• 39:18Bunnie XO?

  2007, you had an overdose, didn't you?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:21Bunnie XO?

  Can we talk about that?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 39:22Bunnie XO?

  Cause this was before Mob Wives even started.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yep. So, okay. So I, um,

• 39:30Speaker 02

  from the damage in my back, they put me on oxyeights. And um, I was hooked, I think in a week. And I was on two oxyeights, ready? Six for oxys.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Xanax, water pills, diet pills, everything the doctor gave me.

• 39:48Bunnie XO?

  Oh my gosh.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Doctor gave me.

• 39:50Bunnie XO?

  That's enough to kill you.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  It did, obviously.

• 39:53Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  And then, um, on July 4th in 2007, I OD'd for the first time.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  My, they were like four cop cars. I was a wild lunatic. You couldn't contain me, nothing.

• 40:06Bunnie XO?

  Can you tell me on that day, what happened?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Uh, my girlfriend Nancy, I said to Nancy, you gotta take me to my mom's. I'm, I'm gonna die and I know it. I said, I, I have to get off drugs. She took, she got me there. She gave my mother everything that I had and I hit the floor. And that was it. And my mother did not understand addiction and was embarrassed. So she put me in a seventy-two hour holdover as opposed to detox. And I was sexually assaulted in the, um, mental ward. By a man named Stanley Guido. On July seventh at four thirty-five in the afternoon. Two hours before I was being released.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  And then I was straitjacketed after that. And.

• 40:59Bunnie XO?

  So they, let me get this right. Your mom has you admitted?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Committed.

• 41:04Bunnie XO?

  Committed. And? A man forces himself on you?

• 41:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was a patient.

• 41:10Bunnie XO?

  Oh, he was a patient?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  He was a patient.

• 41:12Bunnie XO?

  Okay.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  And I remember there was this young black boy there and they kept giving him so much Thorazine. And I would give him my cookies because I knew it would change the chemicals. Like, so I know I'm not crazy, you know? So, but I saw what they were doing to people and it was breaking my heart. So they drugged me. And the man came in my room and, uh, held me down. That's why I like, uh, I, I shake on my left side.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  So he held me down. He, he sexually assaulted me. Um, I remember like losing it. And they wouldn't get me a gynecologist. They wouldn't call nine-one-one. So I found a way to set a fire.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  And I knew if the police, if the fire department came, the police department would come. The police department, the man was Detective Goram, he was the head of SVU, but he used to be organized crime. I knew my father. And he said, tell me what happened. I told him. He, the man admitted it. This, I have a police report that backs this up. And he tried to orally violate me, the man. Um, the cop turned his face and I did what I did. And they straitjacketed me because I like attacked him. Like you couldn't get me off of him.

• 42:26Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  You couldn't. And the man said he did it. So now the therapist, the psychiatrist tells my mother I'm lying. My mother believes the doctor because she thinks I'm trying to get out. They kept me there for two weeks. I spent my thirty-seventh birthday with a one-on-one in Staten Island Hospital. And uh, it, it changed me for the rest of my life. It changed me for the rest of my life because it was different than the abuse from my husband. This you took from me. He did that, but it was different because he was part of my, it was my relationship. This stranger did it to me.

• 43:00Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  And um, they started giving me eight milligrams a day in Xanax. Eight milligrams a day.

• 43:08Bunnie XO?

  So much, even two.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  At a hundred and twenty-five pounds.

• 43:11Bunnie XO?

  Even two milligrams is a lot. I used to take literally a p, a quarter of the Xanax, like a piece of a piece.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Oh no, it takes me four milligrams to knock me out.

• 43:21Bunnie XO?

  Oh god.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  My tolerance is so high to drugs, so high.

• 43:24Bunnie XO?

  Wild.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  And that's what happened to me. And um, it changed me.

• 43:28Bunnie XO?

  I'm so sorry.

• 43:29Speaker 02

  It's okay. You know what? I actually have some forgiveness there. And I think it's because when I realized it was my fault. And what I say it was my fault is, what he did to me wasn't my fault, but it was my fault I was there. Because if I didn't do the drugs, I wouldn't have OD'd. If I didn't OD, he couldn't have done that. So that's mine. I have to own it. And when I owned it, it was like, oh, okay, I get it. And it didn't feel as bad. I didn't smell him anymore. It took me years. I I was like, maybe three or four years. I'd smell this human. I would scratch my skin off my body. My neck, like, there's parts of my wife's, like, my neck would be ripped apart because I the the feeling would over, like, the pains in my body when he tried to, like, eat

• 44:14Speaker 02

  forcefully push his fist inside of me, like, I'd get pain. And then all of a sudden, it was gone. It was just gone. I dealt with it. I don't know. Maybe it's because I prayed so much on it, like, I would always just ask God, just please, just take this one. Like, you give me so much, and I know they say, like, you can only God gives you what you can handle, but like, I had a timeout. God, I'm done. I'm like, I'm tapping out, dude, like, there, I'm done. I I want to die. I just want to die now. And that's what it was. I just wanted to die for a really long time, but I was too chicken to do it, and I'm Catholic, and it's a sin. So I would never, you know, do it.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  But it's been in my head, you know what I mean? Um. And then after I lost my father, that was it for me. Then I really.

• 45:07Bunnie XO?

  So when you got out of the mental, we're gonna circle back, and we'll get to the this is when your dad passes. When you got out of the mental hospital and you were just at that breaking point of like, this is enough, I've had enough. When you got out, were you able to stay sober, or did that what happened to you in that hospital, just?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that was the start of Xanax addiction. That was it. So Xanax, I would say to I'm sober at least nine months a year. Absolutely.

• 45:34Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Um, my using is a little different. I'm definitely an addict, but I'll use maybe two days. Cocaine, two days and then I won't use for like two months. Xanax, I was using like consecutive and it was like to the point where I couldn't feel, so I couldn't think, I couldn't feel, it was great.

• 45:55Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, it's the, it's the most wonderful drug in the world.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  If you use it correctly, it is a good drug.

• 46:02Bunnie XO?

  I didn't use it correctly. I overdosed on it twice. I loved Xanax, so people that don't understand, people that don't have dysregulated nervous systems, don't understand the feeling of chewing on a Xanax. That was my favorite thing, or putting it under my tongue and just letting it dissolve.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Taste is so horrible.

• 46:18Bunnie XO?

  It's horrific, but the feeling you get is euphoric.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  That's why, that's why there were two and three in my mouth at a time. It was just like, okay, you know, oh, wait, in fifteen minutes, I'm not gonna feel anything. And I have, I suffer with severe insomnia since my twenties. So I don't sleep. I go two, three days, no sleep.

• 46:38Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  I was hospitalized. I've woken up under general anesthesia. I've woken up under propofol, like, I mean, something happens to me when they put me out.

• 46:47Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  And I think I'm so afraid that I, like, the adrenaline pumps and I get back up. So, yeah, and I think also the not sleeping had to do with the lifestyle. You know what I mean? Not the drugs, but the lifestyle of waiting up for my father or waiting up for my ex-husband to come home by the window, always waiting, waiting, waiting. And it's, it's just, it's so much trauma, man.

• 47:10Bunnie XO?

  It's a lot.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Like, I'm just figuring it out now.

• 47:13Bunnie XO?

  Yeah. Healing trauma, you're never healed. It's literally a journey. And we're gonna have to figure out our trauma till the day we're not here anymore. Like, that, it's a journey.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  My son has a hard time with this one. He's like, why can't you just stop?

• 47:30Bunnie XO?

  Men are wired differently.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  I'm like, you know what? They are, but they're not. Okay, they don't share with us enough.

• 47:37Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  But I think they're just, they could be just as, or weaker.

• 47:42Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  I definitely think so. Like, look at a man that gets traumatized by a woman. He becomes a creep afterwards, you know what I mean? We don't become creepy, we just like.

• 47:50Bunnie XO?

  I'm not laughing at men becoming creeps. I'm laughing at how she says stuff.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  I'm laughing at men becoming creeps, I am.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  I said it and I stand on it. Um, I just think, you know, for my son, he's so, he's so strong and um.

• 48:09Bunnie XO?

  He's also probably super empathic and super sensitive because normally when you're, no.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  No, the kid, no.

• 48:15Bunnie XO?

  Not at all.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  No, he's so cold.

• 48:19Bunnie XO?

  Oh, he got his dad.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  You know, after his father did what he did, AJ had to like be cold because we don't know.

• 48:27Bunnie XO?

  It just hurt him too bad.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  AJ had unfortunately suffered a, a serious situation where somebody hurt him very badly.

• 48:35Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Um, because of his father.

• 48:37Bunnie XO?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, fourteen staples.

• 48:40Bunnie XO?

  Oh, my gosh. And this was after he ratted on your dad? So let's, let's rewind back to that. So, okay, you know, two thousand seven, you had the overdose, this horrific incident with the mental hospital. And then when does Mob Wives come knocking? Two thousand eight, two thousand nine?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Okay, so after what happened to me in the hospital, I worked for Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin. That was like, like a great.

• 49:03Bunnie XO?

  Was Alec cool? Cause I've heard so many horror stories about it.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  He was great with me. Always. Tina is my favorite person on the face of the earth.

• 49:11Bunnie XO?

  Seems like a sweetie pie.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  She would always say to me, you're gonna be famous one day, Renee. You're gonna be famous one day. And I'd be like, okay, Tina, we gotta get a diet pill, water pill, what are we doing? You know, and I'll tell you why I say that. Um, so two thousand ten, Mob Wives starts. My sister Jennifer says, Renee, you can't be on the show.

• 49:27Bunnie XO?

  Jennifer actually.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Is the EP and creator of Mob Wives.

• 49:31Bunnie XO?

  And that's your sister.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Yes. And she said, you can't be on the show. I can't deal with you. I'm like, well, could I do wardrobe? What could I do? And all along, she had a plan for me to be on it, but wasn't telling me. And so like a few days before, she was like, that's what you get. I was like, okay. So Mob Wives kicks off. Um, my ex-husband is home at the time. I have plastic surgery, season one, gone terribly wrong. I die.

• 49:57Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, we're gonna talk about that.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  I lose, yep, I lose six point three pints of blood, MRSA through my body, read my last rites twice, vancomycin, vancomycin resistant.

• 50:07Bunnie XO?

  It was you were having so you okay so the show starts you're doing the show.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 50:13Bunnie XO?

  Hector comes home.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:14Bunnie XO?

  Okay, you decide to get your body done.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:18Bunnie XO?

  And this is on the show. This is all playing out on the show. So if you guys are not mob wives, fanatics, go and binge this series. You will not be disappointed, but take me on that journey. You decide to go get your body done. Did you get your body done for him?

• 50:30Speaker 02

  I got my body done so nobody could talk about me anymore. And I thought I was gonna have this fabulous figure.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  The doctor was was another evil individual. And he decided he was gonna give me a full body lift at one hundred and sixty five pounds. That doesn't even make sense. You're not supposed to do that to somebody so small. So I went in for a BBL and a tummy tuck. I ended up. My ass was even more concave now at this point. I'm dying. I have MRSA. I have a hole this big in my back.

• 51:05Bunnie XO?

  So you go home from the surgery?

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so the surgery happened on June eleventh. In two thousand and eleven. I go home. My mother comes to the hospital. Okay, no, sorry. Okay. Surgery day, I go in. He does he does a seven hour surgery in like four and a half hours. They put the garment on me. They rip me open. I bleed out. Emergency second surgery, come out, never calls nine one one. I lost six point three pints of blood. The next day, my mom comes and she hears me and I she comes running and I said, I'm dying. And she's like, what do you mean? I said, I'm dying. And I was cold. I was blue.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  I remember the woman in the ambulance saying, stay with me, stay with me, stay with me. And I was like, just let me go, just let me like. And they were like, you have to have a transfusion. Now I think I'm gonna die because I have to have a four pint transfusion. I don't want the blood. They take my rights away from me. I have the transfusion. I'm in the hospital. For a week, I go home. And I smell something. So I'm like, must be the antibiotics, you know, because for females that.

• 52:14Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  So I said to the doc, I called the doctor, I said, hey, you know, I have a hundred and one Phoebes, like, get to the hospital. I said, okay, he's like, I'll meet you there. I get to the hospital. The hospital's ten minutes for me. Within twenty minutes, I'm at a hundred and three five. The doctor comes in and his name is Dr. Raj. He touches me and MRSA just was everywhere.

• 52:37Bunnie XO?

  Oh.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Everywhere. So now they have me like in like a little incubation thing because nobody can come around me.

• 52:42Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  Um, now, you know, I could kill somebody with MRSA or whatever.

• 52:47Bunnie XO?

  Oh.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  They start with their vancomycin. I'm vancomycin resistant.

• 52:51Bunnie XO?

  No.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Four days. Um, read my last rites twice. Dr. Addy, his name is, he was a doctor from Africa who works with HIV patients. So now I think I have HIV. This is like, you know, you gotta understand.

• 53:03Bunnie XO?

  Well, you don't know. They don't tell you what's going on.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Infectious disease. The man's coming in from Africa. What the fuck? I'm like, oh my God, it's over. And, um, he comes up with a cocktail and I remember being upstairs and my father calling, didn't speak to me and my sister. Because of mob wives.

• 53:19Bunnie XO?

  Your dad was, yeah, we'll talk about that too. Let's finish the story about this.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  So he was away. So my father calls and the priest said, you know, you should say goodbye to your daughter. And he said, what has she got you bullshitted to father? And that my mother said, no, Renee's dying. Like it was, it's a real thing. There's, she's vancomycin resistant. They can't fix her. And then I think my father might have threatened the doctor and the next day I was, I was on my road to recovery. And they said that I've defied medical history. My plastic surgeon never showed up. Ever.

• 53:55Bunnie XO?

  Wow.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Yep. And then there's a lot that goes into that story with the doctor, which I'm not going to touch on that because we've had so many damn lawsuits over it. Um, my ex-husband then comes back, comes to the hospital. I'll never forget it. And he brought me this Rolex and it was the one Rolex I didn't have. And he gave it to me and he said, I love you. And in my brain, I said, I had to die for him to love me.

• 54:24Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Mind you, this is my abuser. I go back with him. I move him in. I come home from the hospital.

• 54:32Bunnie XO?

  This is all on the show.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 54:35Bunnie XO?

  Playing out on the show. This is real life. None of this is scripted.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  Hell, you couldn't script me. The only thing fake about me is my nose.

• 54:41Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, my ass is mine. It's just fat from a different part of my body.

• 54:46Bunnie XO?

  I say the same thing.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  My nose is not mine.

• 54:50Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Modified.

• 54:51Bunnie XO?

  And then let's, let's, let's cut back real quick. Your dad did stop talking to you guys because of the

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost three years.

• 54:57Bunnie XO?

  Didn't he get shelved from the mob? Or they said he was shelved technically? Okay.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  He wasn't at that, this particular point, not at all.

• 55:05Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  It wasn't until he came home and I'll, I'll touch a little bit on that.

• 55:10Bunnie XO?

  Okay.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  Um, so my ex-husband now says, I love you. I want to be with you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, great.

• 55:17Bunnie XO?

  And I think there was a, an episode where you even said to him, like, you never say, I love you to me.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Oh, listen, this, this creep, this creep, this creep.

• 55:26Bunnie XO?

  Did you think, you think that he did all this because he knew?

• 55:29Speaker 02

  I know he did. I know he did. He only came back to me to set my father up. My father came home August. My father was gone and I wrote my father a letter before he came home and, and you could verify this with my mother. It said, Dad, you're gonna go back to jail right before Thanksgiving. I know it. Please don't talk to anybody. Don't, don't, don't. Day before Thanksgiving, they took my father away. And I knew it. I wrote, I knew it. Like, when I tell you my premonitions are so real. I knew it and I, I just knew something wasn't right. But I was so high because I'm on Dilaudid now. Eight milligram, like, I'm sorry, six milligrams. Every time I take my Dilaudid, it's six milligrams. I had been sent home with a, um, a medicine ball.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  So I had the pick and, you know, to my heart, every day I had to do this. A nurse, three times a day, like, changing my bandages, all of this. He comes back to me, I love you, I love you, I love you. This, that and a third. We're going to therapy. All of this.

• 56:28Bunnie XO?

  God, he even committed to therapy?

• 56:31Speaker 02

  Well, he was cooperating with the government since two thousand and six because he's not even a real man and can't tell you that, but I know his paperwork, so I'll, I'll give you that so we can put that up there too. Because since two thousand and six, he's been a rat fucking cocksucker, excuse my mouth, it gets me very angry.

• 56:46Bunnie XO?

  Is that why your dad went away?

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:49Bunnie XO?

  Okay, and nobody knew that it was because of him?

• 56:52Speaker 02

  No, so this is, so November twenty, right before, um, November twenty first, my father was in the hospital, my dad had cancer, uh, prostate, bladder, urethra, kidney. And I was gonna kill myself, I, I'll never forget it, and I, I took Seracil. I'm like, I can't live like this no more. So dramatic, but Seracil, where was I going? Anyway, my father ran from the hospital to the house. And I remember, like, my white marble floors, there was blood everywhere. And he was like, what's wrong with you, what's going on? And I was like, Dad, something's wrong, I don't know what it is, but something's wrong, I can't, I, I can't take it. But I'm so polluted mentally with so much deluded and Xanax, and he's giving me cocaine, and I'm just like, high.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  And, um, I watched his behavior, he was acting strange, going outside for phone calls. I think he's cheating on me.

• 57:42Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Right, because he was always cheating.

• 57:44Bunnie XO?

  You go through his phone.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  Exactly, he was always cheating on me.

• 57:46Bunnie XO?

  With Rita, actually.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Right. What happens is this. He turns himself in. My son comes home, November twenty first. And he hands me a letter. And he said, this is from Dad, I go, where's your father? We didn't talk for two days before, because I was fighting with him, and I thought he was cheating.

• 58:05Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  He turned himself in because he couldn't take it anymore. So I read this letter, he says, you know, uh, I got pinched, nine years, da-da-da-da. Me, I'm like, I'll put the house up, whatever. I called home, I said, Dad, I can't find him, my father, I swear to God, you could see the, the phone conversation. And I said, he said, mind your fucking business, get off the phone. And I was like, what are you talking? Get off the phone, Renee, don't get on the phone today. And I'm like, Dad, I can't find him in this, in the system. Renee, shh, Renee, please, Renee. And I, I couldn't understand what was happening. And then I call him back, I'm like, Dad, Dad, I can't find him. And I hear my sister Jennifer's son

• 58:48Speaker 02

  open the door, and then he said, Poppy, it's the police. And I said, Dad, I'm coming, I'm on my way. And he said, Renee, stay home, you're gonna, I'll go to jail for murder, don't come here. And I hung up the phone and I knew it was over. He was home three months after 12 years. And the next day in the newspaper it read, "Mob wife starth husband's a snitch."

• 59:21Speaker 02

  My whole life ended. My identity was wiped. I was nothing at that moment.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  But I got sober that day. For like, almost a year. And uh...

• 59:37Bunnie XO?

  This is all playing out on the show. And I mean, you're having to not only deal with this in your own personal life, you're literally having to live this with millions of people having an opinion. The first thing I thought of whenever that was going down was, is that what maybe brought you and Karen a little bit closer? Because you kind of had to go through.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  So Karen and I, our fight, the first fight we had on the show, it was more planned. Because we were good. Karen, I stayed with Karen before I, the show started and I got sober. And she, I lived with her for a while and she helped me out, so. That night we had to do that scene, it turned real. When she's, when I had to say what I had to say about her father and she had to say, "Well, you can't think for yourself." And it was like, real then. But the love we had for each other was not going to go anywhere. We were still gonna stand on it, we just had to say these things to one another. So when Karen came to my house,

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  I actually...

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  I would be, I was the one that would say, "Don't talk to the daughter, dah dah dah dah dah." And then people were doing it to my son. And it was Karen that said, that helped my son out. Because I, yeah, I had a nervous breakdown that day in the house. Um, Karen was there. I, I collapsed in the bathroom. Then I, I ended up spending two weeks in the hospital afterwards from a nervous breakdown. All these things were happening to me, like, you know, it's like this. Everything is happening, everything's happening and happening and happening and you can't put a finger on anything because you're not, I'm not okay up here, you know, for all that time I was, I was using, um, not just what I was prescribed because I had MRSA, so I literally had a hole in my back, the pain was excruciating, it was down to my spine,

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  like this deep into my back. But now I'm on cocaine and then I stopped, immediately, everything stopped that day that I found everything out. So when I get home from the hospital, my money's gone. I'm like, where's my money? And I take his watch collection, oh, this fucking rat bastard, I take his watch collection and I go to the jeweler. And I said, listen, I gotta pay my taxes, I'm screwed. This man left me with car notes, this, that and the third.

• 1:01:59Bunnie XO?

  Did the FBI take your money?

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:02:01Bunnie XO?

  Okay.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  Things just disappeared on his behalf because he said he left me everything, he didn't leave me anything but crumbs, the crumbs in my fucking bed and embarrassed and humiliated is what he left me. So the jeweler comes and says, Renee, sit down. I go, for what? Just give me the money, I gotta go. He said, Renee, sit down. The watches are all fake and they all have wires in them. I took my watch off, he said, take that watch off. The watch he gave me in the hospital, Bunny, had a wire in it.

• 1:02:30Bunnie XO?

  Get the fuck out of here, Renee.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  My son shouldn't see tomorrow. How about that?

• 1:02:36Bunnie XO?

  What a piece of shit.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  So when he's sitting there doing these interviews, he's a fucking liar. He's a disgrace. He doesn't deserve to breathe. He put my father, who wanted to give him my last name so he could be the gangster he wanted to be, and you're a rat? You're a pussy? You're a pussy. That's what you are. You got your son hurt. You beat your wife. You're a pussy. I have no respect for a man like that. I have no respect for any man, any woman or any man that does those type of things to another person. Because that's disgusting. You murdered somebody, not my father, you killed him, but you put my father away because

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  you are the murderer because you couldn't do your time? You fucking pussy.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  That's how I feel about it.

• 1:03:30Bunnie XO?

  Good lord.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Bunnie XO?

  That is heavy. So the watch he gave you while you're laying on your deathbed?

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:03:35Bunnie XO?

  And he's telling you he loves you, has a wire in it?

• 1:03:40Bunnie XO?

  I don't even

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:03:41Bunnie XO?

  I have no words.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  And I haven't spoke on this, like, I said it on Mob Wives, you'll see it. He wrote how he was gonna murder me, and I read that letter on purpose on television with Ramona, because I was afraid at that point. At that point, I said, "This guy's a killer. I know what he is." So, it is possible. I didn't have my father anymore, he was in jail. My father's also now very, very sick at the time, you know, with the cancer. And I'm saying to myself, "What am I gonna do?" Okay, I gotta use my brain. Everybody's like, "Get restraining what?" I'm like, "I can't, I'm a rat."

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  And everybody was like, "No, you're not." And I'm like, "No, I'm just gonna read the letter." And maybe that was a little snitchy, okay.

• 1:04:22Bunnie XO?

  I don't think it was snitchy.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  I don't think it was. I had to protect myself. I had to. And I had to show that me and my son are unified and against that man. So, my son is my, like, my life. I'm gonna die for my child and my father, you know? And I remember Jennifer saying that day, "Shut the sh- shut it down, shut it down, shut it." I said, "Don't you shut this fucking show down. We're gonna show every little bit of this, because this is what this life is about."

• 1:04:46Bunnie XO?

  Literally.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  It's not about who could dress the prettiest. It's about death. It's about murder. It's about, it's about betrayal. And nobody has been betrayed more than me, from Mob Wives to the men. And I say Mob Wives because of the one Mob Wife, which isn't Karen or Ramona that you interviewed, without saying her name. She's no good neither. That's betrayal. You wanna use, party, have a good time, but you wanna tell on me. But I'm not gonna tell on you, but you wanna tell on me. So, you expect me to hide your lies while you tell my truth? Fuck you, bitch. That's where I'm at in life.

• 1:05:23Bunnie XO?

  We're talking about Dr. D.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  And everybody wants to walk around, "Oh, Renee, you're in recovery, you know, you gotta let things go." No, you don't. I don't have to let anything go if I don't want it. She does, she can't influence me to, to use over it. She can't influence me to feel bad about myself anymore. But the truth of the matter is, it's people like her that say horrible things about a good person like me, who does hide your lies. And, and I'm not talking about drugs, I'm talking about multiple lies. I'll hide your shit for you, because I, I believe that you're not supposed to do that to another person. But you sit there and tell your friends to call me a junkie? Okay. Like, you know, I'm so over the girls that you wanna be a whore, okay, own your shit too.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  Like, you know, fuck that bitch. Like, if I wanna sleep with you, I'm going to. You wanna talk about me, who cares? You wanna call me a drug addict, so what? You know, if I'm a drug addict and a little bit of a tramp, oh my god, I must be the worst person in the world. But I'll feed your kids, I'll give you everything I got. So, this whole thing of mob wives and this mob lifestyle, like, you're jealous of me that I'm actually a mob boss's daughter? Hey, that's my father. That's not me, that's my father. That's who I became because of him. So when I was stripped, literally, of everything in life, from money to everything, I had to reinvent myself, over and over and over, and I couldn't anymore. I just couldn't.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  I didn't want to anymore. I didn't know who Renee was. I'm just finding out who I am now. And, yeah, you know what? I was a mob boss's daughter. I'm now a grandmother. I'm a, a, an advocate for people in addiction, mental health. I'm way more than a mob wife.

• 1:07:13Bunnie XO?

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Way more. And I don't have to tell you I'm gonna beat you up to be cool. Like, okay, if that's what you think is cool, that's bullying.

• 1:07:21Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  And yes, I might have been a bully on the show, absolutely. But what they don't show you is every situation I was put into. I fought by myself. Everybody was against me. You know why? Because they were jealous of Jennifer. You know, not all of the girls. A lot of them had problems with my sister, but my sister's your boss.

• 1:07:42Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Who's on welfare, who's this, who's broke? And at the end of the day, she put a paycheck, and a very tremendous paycheck, for everyone. Maybe we didn't like, we didn't get what we, we thought we should have. But nobody was getting eight thousand an episode, day one, walking in the door. Nobody was. What were they giving? A jersey shoe was like fifteen hundred. Nobody was getting eight, eight thousand for your first season. Nobody. You know, and there was just so much jealousy.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  And you know, even on my part, not, and I'll say that, like Ange had a show, not Renee. Ange this, not Renee. But Renee is the one who's doing all the work. So if you really want to talk about the show, season, uh, one, I think we all had equal parts. Absolutely. Season two, we know it was all about me with nine extra episodes added. So now everybody got the same paycheck. I didn't get a bonus. Yeah, I had a problem with that. Absolutely.

• 1:08:44Bunnie XO?

  Cause it was your life.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. And nobody's doing what I'm doing. I'm giving you everything from addiction. I'm dying on TV. I'm ODing basically on TV every year. To one point, I know for a fact when I, when everybody, Ramona left and Karen left, I was like 75% of the show. I did the work.

• 1:09:02Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  There was a lot of unfair shit, you know, but I can't blame my sister for it because it's the network that's giving us the money, you know?

• 1:09:12Bunnie XO?

  You guys literally became an iconic moment in time. I don't even think you guys realized how.

• 1:09:19Speaker 02

  Oh, I did.

• 1:09:19Bunnie XO?

  Yeah. And Renee's like, yep, yep, I did.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Bunnie XO?

  Yeah. I, I think that you guys are gonna be a part of history and that, that whole lineage. Like, look at, you guys have Mob Wives re-trending on TikTok now.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  It's insane.

• 1:09:32Bunnie XO?

  How do you feel about that TikTok trend?

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  I love it. I, I love, I love watching Khloe Kardashian. First of all, I love Khloe.

• 1:09:40Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Um, and I know Khloe from many, many, many years ago. Um, she was always so much fun and beautiful. She's my favorite. I think she's just a beautiful spirit and strong and she says what she said and I love it.

• 1:09:54Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Um, watching everybody, Jo, uh, Joan Collins the other day had it, did the Mob Wives aesthetic. I'm like, this is, I wanted to be Joan Collins and Joan Collins just wants to be us now. So for me, it was this moment of. Wow.

• 1:10:11Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  You know, but again, like I watched my mom do that. Like I I'm telling you, I came out in a fur coat with with big diamonds and all of that. So I think it's wonderful. Like if you, you know, I don't like the fact that they attach the negative part to it because fashion is fashion. So they should, you know, leave it alone. But I do understand how they say, how do you glamorize the mafia? Well, I don't know. You guys are the ones making the movies.

• 1:10:37Bunnie XO?

  Yeah. Hollywood has always glamorized the mob.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Because it's, there was something to it.

• 1:10:43Bunnie XO?

  I'm from Vegas. The mob is glorified in Vegas.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Do you know that, um, Meyer Lansky, so my therapist Renee Meyer Lansky was her godfather. And Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky opened the first Catholic church. Yep. Yep. The first Catholic church in Vegas.

• 1:11:02Bunnie XO?

  Wow, that's amazing. I never.

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  I love all those like, I want the house where Bugsy Siegel lived that they said is haunted. I would live there with him. I would feel like I have somebody.

• 1:11:11Bunnie XO?

  She said I would, I'd live there with him. He'd love you. You and that, you and that ghost could make out every night.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Snuggle up, baby.

• 1:11:19Bunnie XO?

  I love that. Alright, so let's circle back. You're going through all this shit on Mob Wives. The, the show's kind of imploding at this point. And I, it's one because of the Harvey Weinstein thing. But two, also, I feel like the cast members were falling apart too.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Uh, falling apart? Like what, what, what episode are we in? What season are we in?

• 1:11:40Bunnie XO?

  I think towards the last season. We're just getting to the point where.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  They were reaching.

• 1:11:44Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, it was getting.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were reaching. I guess they wanted like new blood. Uh, Alicia had left the show at this point. Um, Karen came back. That's why Alicia left. Um, and it just, and then the other Natalie left.

• 1:12:00Bunnie XO?

  Carla and Rita stopped being friends. Like it was, do, do we ever know what happened with Carla and Rita, the real story?

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:12:08Bunnie XO?

  Can we talk about it? Because you were just with Carla the other day, weren't you?

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  I was, I saw Carla when I was in Florida, yeah. So the truth of the matter is, and I, I don't, it's really for Carla to speak on, but I'll tell you this much. So obviously, it couldn't just be me and Karen that thought she was shitty, because it was her best friend then, that she stopped speaking to. So it wasn't just me, Ramona, Karen, it was all of us felt the same way. So now, obviously, who's the common denominator? She is. So, my thing with, with, uh, Drida is this.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  She had this

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  thing where she had to be the, the top dog. Drida's funny. I'm gonna give her that. I, me and Drida have some of the-

• 1:12:58Bunnie XO?

  She's great with the one-liners.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  We had some scenes together that we would be crying, laughing so hard. But the jealousy, it's stupid. It's like, you're...

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Look, if you look up in the sky, there's millions, billions of stars, right? Everybody could be a star. Not my fault, I'm the North Star and you're not.

• 1:13:20Bunnie XO?

  Right, right.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said it.

• 1:13:23Bunnie XO?

  Mimi's over here falling out of her seat.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, North Star status, sorry. God said, you know what, I'm gonna give you a lot of shit, so I'll make you the North Star. Okay. But what are you in competition with? You can't be me, and I don't wanna be you. You're not my father's daughter, you don't have my upbringing. You can't be me, I can't be you. So be you over the fuck there, and I'm over here. So I'm, I'm, I'm confrontation, we all know. I don't, I, I don't give a shit.

• 1:13:52Speaker 02

  I don't feel that girls have to put their hands on each other. I can have an argument, a verbal argument with you, okay? So what, you're, you're fast with your words, you're witty, okay, good for you. I'm not saying you're not a star, you definitely are. But you don't have to be this person to, to down everybody else. You know what I mean? I, I'm saying what I'm saying because it, when a person knocks you and knocks you and knocks you and kicks you and kicks you, fuck you bitch, that's where I'm at, and, you know what I mean? And it, it's sad. It really is, because we had something really special, all of us, but- You know, it's my understanding that VH1 was not happy with her either. The demands, the demands.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Like, we, I remember, we had to go to like an OK Magazine party and they sent us like Ubers and it wasn't a black car and she threw a fit. Who are you? I was born in a limousine bitch, I don't even complain.

• 1:14:50Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Like, I'm really about that life.

• 1:14:53Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? I'm really from that life. So, you know, Drita's always saying, I, you know, she was brought up in the projects, da-da-da. But you didn't riding around in a limousine, so what are you complaining for? You got a car, someone's driving you. I don't care that it's not a black car. You're still driving me to point A to point B, I don't gotta worry.

• 1:15:10Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Like, what is that about? Like, the demands are ridiculous. They were ridiculous. And...

• 1:15:18Bunnie XO?

  What about the other girls on the show? Are you guys close? Are you guys friends? Like, Carl, I mean, of course, Big Ange, we know, rest in peace.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:15:25Bunnie XO?

  You guys all loved Big Ange.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Um, I talked to Karen and I talked to Ramona. Uh, I texted with Ramona this morning.

• 1:15:32Bunnie XO?

  She's so, she's so beautiful.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know what?

• 1:15:35Bunnie XO?

  She's so gorgeous.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  I, I have to tell you, I didn't talk to, I didn't talk to the girls for quite a while.

• 1:15:39Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  So, um, you know, there was a falling out with a lot of the, everyone, everyone. And of course, I'm Jennifer's sister, so of course, I'm gonna always stay on my sister's side. But then I got to a point where I had to make my rights. You know, I had to make the, the right wrong that I've done. So I did a lot of apologizing and I'm very grateful that the, the girls have forgiven me. I do talk to Natalie Garcia, uh, the one that I choked in Vegas.

• 1:16:11Bunnie XO?

  It's growth, Renee.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  It is, it is. It's growth on everybody's behalf, you know? So, I speak to everybody but Drita. And I don't see love at all. You know what I mean? But everybody...

• 1:16:25Bunnie XO?

  She kinda fell off. Love was like online for the longest time and then like completely disappeared.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, she, I, she slept with my son's father too, so, I'm... It's just, it's so, it's just so annoying.

• 1:16:37Bunnie XO?

  Goodness.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  All of this stuff, like to me, it's just like-

• 1:16:39Bunnie XO?

  Not Hector.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  Not Hector, Hector the garbage collector. He hated that.

• 1:16:44Bunnie XO?

  And from this Mob Wives just frenzy, you guys literally were a moment in history and just brought so much realness to people's televisions. What does Renee do after the lights go off?

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Uh, Renee continued to work. So I did Celebrity Big Brother. I did Marriage Boot Camp, Family Boot Camp.

• 1:17:06Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, can we talk about the Marriage Boot Camp?

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  Oh, please, let's talk about it, that fucking idiot.

• 1:17:11Bunnie XO?

  You had another asshole.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Asshole, okay, that was not my boyfriend, at all.

• 1:17:16Bunnie XO?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  So, here's that story, okay. So, you know, there was always like that flirtatious thing or whatever. Um, so we get this, the show or whatever, and we do it. But he decides he's gonna get drunk, and he likes to gro- uh, grope. So, um, they have me downstairs doing my scene for hours. And by the time he gets down the stairs, he's wrecked. And he starts cursing about my son's father. And saying the word spic, and this and that, and I'm, and there's a Spanish kid there, and I'm like, "Don't say that, that's not nice, I'm trying to control the situation." By the time we get upstairs, he tells me that I'm an N lover.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  And I'm a disgrace to my father, and this and that, and this and that. And I said, "What'd you say?" Like, now, my girlfriend's in the house, prima donna, and her, her husband, and he's saying the N word. And there's two bodyguards, big guys. And he's saying the N word, over and over, telling me, um, uh, he used the C word, he used words that no one's ever-

• 1:18:23Bunnie XO?

  And this is nobody that-

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  My ex-husbands never even called me the words that he did.

• 1:18:26Bunnie XO?

  This is somebody that you're not even dating?

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Right, and he's drunk.

• 1:18:29Bunnie XO?

  Did you guys just decide to go on the show together?

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Yes, so we, so, what happens is, he turns around and he says something, and I said, "Joe, my son's gonna hear," and he goes, "Your son's no good like his father." Bah, I crack him. Like, I, I, I don't, when I tell you, I don't raise my hands. Like, it takes a lot for me, and I don't hit men. I cracked this guy so fucking hard, that everybody was just sitting there like, "Did she just, like, hit him?"

• 1:18:57Bunnie XO?

  They were probably relieved.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  Ready, the bouncer goes like this. Don't. I was like, I got to boom and I picked up like a, there was a big, heavy statue and I went to like, crack him in the head with it and they were like, no, you can't do that. I lost it. Too far Renee, too far. You're telling me, you're cursing at me and my son, you're telling me my son's no good. Now, watch what I do to you. So now they are like, we want you to press charges. I'm like, I ain't pressing charges on nobody. Cops come, they throw him out of the house. I make him sleep in the tent outside, basically. And he had to stay to finish the show. But, you know, it was like that redemption where I get up there and I'm like, he's like, well, you know, you like getting married. Fuck you. I was like, I'm good. I'm leaving without you. I would have married him dead. Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  Um, you know, that was, that was.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Acting turned real. Right. So for me, that got really very real. Every scenario was very real for me. So even though he wasn't my boyfriend, we were talking about reasons why I, I have a problem dating. So for me is, I don't trust nobody. Yeah. How could I? Yeah. How could I? There might be a nice guy down the road somewhere. There might be. And if, if he comes along, he's got to come with a letter from God. Cause that's the only way he's allowed around me. Like it's gotta say, love God. Like, you know? XO XO. XO XO. Like there's nothing. Anybody can really do to me anymore, you know? Do you think you'll ever be able to trust somebody and love again?

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  To like fully get the love that you've been yearning your whole life? Oh, well, you know what, Bunny? Nobody knows this, but I'll tell you this one. So the last guy I was dating, I found out was gay.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Renee, you got a picker on you. Gay. Sucking dick.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  Renee. Okay? He wasn't just cheating on me with a girl. He was cheating on me with a Russian guy. So the girl. Which one was this? Do we know who this is? Are we allowed to say? His name is. I can say it. He lives in Long Island, um, and his license plate is, I suck dick.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Bleep his name. You can bleep his name, but believe it. Cause I'll run with this like a motherfucker. T-shirt, Hector Hector, the garbage collector, and I suck dick.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Okay, not me, the boyfriends, so.

• 1:21:30Bunnie XO?

  How long were you guys together for?

• 1:21:32Speaker 02

  Like, but this is me, wait, then the one before that was a con man. The things that have happened to me.

• 1:21:37Bunnie XO?

  Renee.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  The things that have happened to me.

• 1:21:39Bunnie XO?

  Okay, no dating anymore, okay?

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  No, definitely not.

• 1:21:42Bunnie XO?

  You need to run them through me first, I'll do background checks, I'll fucking, I need to meet them, like.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  I was so, the, the, the one before last, um, he actually studied me. And, um, it was a real con game.

• 1:21:56Bunnie XO?

  Oh, God.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  He said, you know what, he said he was away with my dad, he knew everything about my father. So for me.

• 1:22:04Bunnie XO?

  Was he an obsessed fan?

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he used me, he opened up a strip club and he wanted 50 cent to do the grand opening. And I got 50 to do me a really huge favor, uh, for a lot less than he charges. And I love Curtis to this day, he's one of my favorite people on the face of this earth. Um.

• 1:22:22Bunnie XO?

  I hear really good things about him. For as much shit as he does not tolerate, like, I've always heard really good things about him.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  He's a cancer.

• 1:22:29Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  He is one of my favorite people ever. He truly is, he's always been so kind to me. He had, you know, he got, he was on the phone, my dad, he, he's met my mom, he came to my father's house. I'll never forget, we were sitting on the couch one day and my ex-husband didn't believe I really worked for him. So he was coming to the house because he knew, he put his arm around me, he goes, watch this, I go, okay. He goes, I'm so glad she's your ex-wife. I was like, haha, okay.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, I love him, he, he's always been a good friend to me. I would do anything in the world for him, anything. Um, but yeah, where was I?

• 1:23:09Bunnie XO?

  So the con guy.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  Okay, the con man, right. His name was, what was his name?

• 1:23:13Bunnie XO?

  No, it's okay, we don't need to know Renee.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  No, I can't remember, actually. Texas. We're just gonna have to bleep it anyways. He was in Texas. Damn, he was a southern boy? Yeah, from the Bronx. Oh, okay. Yeah, but I find out, like, you know what it was? This long distance dating was different. So I'm not always around. Where do you find these men? How do they fall in your lap? So, okay, so this one booked me and was, I was getting money with him. And he was just really nice all the time, like, we'd show up with flowers. But I, see, I don't know what a con game is. Yeah. So I like con men, but not, I'm, excuse me, I like con vics, not con men. Right. Um, so for me, I think that's where I kinda got lost in it. Like, I would never think somebody would do that, you know?

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  Because I don't, I don't come from that. Right. You know, I come from, like, real money in the street. Yeah. Um, and, yeah, so he used me. Uh, comes out that I got engaged. And then he didn't want to pay for the ring, so I had to bring the ring back. And he just wanted a TV show. Yeah, okay. What a scumbag. That's all right, I got even with him already. So let's move on to I suck dick. Okay, then, then came I suck dick. So, um, well, let's say he sucks dick, because I know I do. But he sucks dick. So this girl reaches out to me and she tells me that she's his girlfriend. I go, what are you talking about? I'm the girlfriend. So she's like- Where did you meet this guy? Where'd you meet I suck dick at? Again, through getting money.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  Okay. So he was like, let me, I'm gonna manage you for a minute. Because I was quiet, not doing anything, and I figured, okay, maybe, I'm looking at, like, the statistics, the numbers, and his numbers were right. Mm. But I didn't know him. And he, he was in the street, um, with that letter. Okay. So me, I go from, you know, the Italian mob, then I dated BMF. My BMF boyfriend was a, like, a high on the food chain for years. I have an interview with Tony Sa tomorrow. Okay, okay, so I'll tell you who it is when, when we're done. Yeah, yeah. Um, so I was with him for a really long time. So then I kinda just always stayed in the street, because street guys for me were- That's how I am. What I know. I married a street guy. Right. Jay is a street guy. Right, exactly.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  So I know the street. Mm. However, the streets changed. So the people that I was now associating with are in, they're not even chewed dirty gum on my sneaker. They're degenerate lowlifes, like, they're, they belong in the sewer, they're filth. Um- Yeah, they all go in the Hector category.

• 1:25:48Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  So she tells me this, she sends me an article. I read the article and then I start realizing everything in that article is what he's doing to me.

• 1:25:59Bunnie XO?

  Oh no.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  And there's the conversation with him and the guy. And it said, why didn't you, oh my god, how gross, I threw up for a week. Why didn't you suck my dick last night? I was like.

• 1:26:11Bunnie XO?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  Wait, he wants to call the cops on me because now I go public.

• 1:26:17Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  Now, he calls the cops, the cops come to my house in Florida and they're like, Ms. Graziano, are you harassing him? I said, yes, I am. Why, what's the problem? The cop was like, you know, you really can't do that. I go, yes, I can. He's like, no, you can't. I go, no, he's gay. And he told me he wasn't and he's gay. And the cop was like.

• 1:26:38Bunnie XO?

  Putting your life at risk.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the cop was like, I gotta tell you something. I go, what? He goes, you know, I'm from Long Island, so I know who your father is. Your father would be devastated. He'd roll over in his grave. Because now, he's not even my own nationality.

• 1:26:52Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  Okay, so now, the cop is saying this to me. He's on the phone, the gay man. And I love gay people, but I don't sleep with gay people.

• 1:27:02Bunnie XO?

  Right, well, it's just.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  A straight woman wants a straight man.

• 1:27:06Bunnie XO?

  Absolutely.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  Okay, it's got nothing to do with that. I love everybody, everybody, I'm not racist, I love everyone.

• 1:27:12Bunnie XO?

  It's also a health risk anytime somebody cheats on you. It could be with a man or a woman, you know?

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  The statistics for HIV are way higher with anal sex and da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So anyway, the cop says, Wait, he called you? I said, yeah, he's at the precinct. I'm harassing him? The cop goes off on him and he goes, I go, matter of fact, he's threatening to, um. Send my son naked pictures. He goes, Ms. Graziano, that's a felony. Would you like to press charges?

• 1:27:42Bunnie XO?

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• 1:28:24Bunnie XO?

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• 1:29:08Bunnie XO?

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• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  I said, you know what? I'm not a rat. But.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  I can't do, I just couldn't do it. Hmm. And he was, you know, then he started to realize the position he was in. Yeah. And I said, I OD'd over this. This is, this, this, like, I, I just lost my whole life. Like, it was like I couldn't come up for air. Jennifer wasn't talking to me for a year and a half. Everything in my life is falling apart. My son didn't want to talk to me. Nobody wanted to talk to me. And they were like, what are you doing? Lost your father too. Look what you're doing to yourself. Look who you're with. We will not associate with this. Hmm. And everything just started piling up and piling up and piling up and piling up. And I just, I gave up. And this was in what year? Twenty? The one that just passed?

• 1:30:42Speaker 02

  Twenty twenty-two, right? Twenty-three. Twenty twenty-three? Yep. Okay, gotcha. And I stopped speaking. The last time I dealt with him was, uh, April. And when did you overdose? And I, I, uh, May. And I just like, like, lost my shit, man. And then I got back up on the horse and I was sober June, July, August, September eighteenth. Someone gave me a bag of fentanyl when it was supposed to be cocaine.

• 1:31:19Speaker 02

  And, um. Was it somebody you trusted or you just got it from a dealer? A girlfriend of mine. I said, make a phone call, do me a favor, da-da-da. And she's like, okay. I, I vouch for him. I said, okay. I have the text message on my phone, too. He said I accidentally gave her. Uh, she, I died in a restaurant in Florida. I was dead. Uh, I was, um, interbeded for three days. And, uh, no one in my family came.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  To the hospital and I spent nine days there, learning how to walk again.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  And um, that was it for me. I said, okay. I was always afraid of heroin, like I was never touched it, you know, never did anything like that. And my father's sister, Belinda, she was uh, an addict and um, she died HIV.

• 1:32:17Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  Uh, but she was sober for many years before she died. And uh, for me, it was always that one thought and that was it for me. I was it. And I was like, okay, like I'm gonna die for real. Matter of fact, I'm dead again.

• 1:32:32Bunnie XO?

  You did a line of this stuff and how long?

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  I don't remember anything.

• 1:32:35Bunnie XO?

  You don't, okay, so you did it.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  Three days are wiped from my brain.

• 1:32:38Bunnie XO?

  Literally, you just, that was it. You didn't feel anything?

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  I don't know, I don't know what happened at all. I don't remember anything. That day, September eighteenth is com- eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth are wiped from my brain.

• 1:32:50Bunnie XO?

  And why did nobody from your family come see you? They were just all mad?

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  They said I wasn't gonna make it and my family didn't wanna, they just couldn't do it. I mean, unless they were like really torturing me in some sort of way, but yeah, that was it. That was it for me. And it's fine. And I don't blame them. I don't. Uh, I've put them through hell, hell, I put them through. Um, when my father died in tw- uh, nineteen, um, in twenty, they told me that if I had shock treatment, that I would not be sad anymore. So I did.

• 1:33:29Bunnie XO?

  So you had shock, uh, what do they call that? Does it, where they shock your brain?

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  ECT, electric shock. Yeah, I think that's what it is, yeah. I um,

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  did six sessions and it destroyed my brain.

• 1:33:44Bunnie XO?

  You don't feel like it helped you at all?

• 1:33:46Speaker 02

  No, I know it didn't. It made my addiction terribly worse. And I um,

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  That's the first time I'm actually saying it.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  Cause nobody knows that. But, yeah.

• 1:34:00Bunnie XO?

  Why you need to speak on these things because you know.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  I would have done anything Bunny if they would have said Renee, jump off the bridge and you're not gonna be in pain. I would have said San Francisco or Varenzano, pick it, I'm going, I'm there, I don't care. Renee tie bricks to your ankle and stay on the water for a day, you're not gonna live, but you won't be in pain. Okay, let me do it. I would have done anything, anything in the world to remove that pain of losing my lifeline. Because he was my identity. He was Renee Graziano, I, I, that because of him, I was Renee Graziano.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  When you're older, it's hard to figure out who you are. And it's sad and lonely and.

• 1:34:49Bunnie XO?

  Circling back to the shock treatment though, they had recommended that for me whenever I was going through my depression. So I, I think hearing somebody who's actually been through it could possibly help somebody, you know?

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, so I, I would not recommend it.

• 1:35:04Speaker 02

  Six months, I did start to sleep, but then everything went haywire. So I lost a lot of my memory.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  I now take Adderall because of it, because the Adderall actually does help me. Um, I take a very low dose, I haven't been on Adderall in four months now, but uh, I think I have to actually go back on it because of my. I can articulate, but not as good as I normally do, you know what I mean? So my brain isn't as sharp as it was. And the one thing that the Adderall did do for me was I don't have to take any antidepressants. So I actually have ADD, ADHD, and it's that that contributes to my addiction. So when my brain is here, I can't live in my past. So when I'm living in my past, that's why I constantly wanna self-medicate.

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  So when I'm, when I'm on the right medication, my brain is like, sharp, extremely sharp. And it does, it did help with the, you know, um, memory loss and it jogs your memory. But I've also done now, um, ketamine treatments.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Which are phenomenal.

• 1:36:15Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Speaker 02

  Uh, helping with the anxiety. So I don't take any anxiety meds. I take Prozac. For menopause, actually now, uh, which I had to be forced into menopause at forty-four. They lost my uterus from all the scar tissue. Yeah, my stories are crazy.

• 1:36:32Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  And I take. I was on Strattera with Wellbutrin and that's giving me a hard time.

• 1:36:40Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  Those, I don't like it at all. It's like a pointless drug. It doesn't work.

• 1:36:45Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:36:45Speaker 02

  It slows the brain down, but it doesn't help you get it out. So that I just stopped and I, um.

• 1:36:53Bunnie XO?

  Let's talk about where you are now. So you did the la- you had your overdose. You had to learn how to walk again in the hospital.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was there for, uh, nine days, uh, and then I was okay. Like, it was like, nothing happened to me.

• 1:37:08Bunnie XO?

  You're a fucking warrior.

• 1:37:09Speaker 02

  Well, if you saw my car accident on January fourth of twenty-two, if you Google it, there's no car. And I'm standing outside the car like with a full face of makeup. I remember, I felt my father. My Aunt Linda and my cousin Anthony pulled me out of that car and they're all dead. And I kid you not, they like, Google it. There's nothing. There's no driver's side. Yep.

• 1:37:33Bunnie XO?

  You have nine lives, Renee. I told you that when we fir- you first got here.

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I like wearing black for that reason too. The cat that I am. Um, I'm just gonna have to learn how to land on my feet.

• 1:37:45Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Speaker 02

  Um, but you know what? I just got a job, uh, working in treatment, um, doing business development. I'm doing.

• 1:37:55Bunnie XO?

  You left, uh, Florida and ended up moving.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Florida. I went to Texas first, um, to get well at Recovery Unplugged, but they didn't have. A program that was a little bit more modified for the extreme trauma for me.

• 1:38:11Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:38:11Speaker 02

  So after we did my trauma ag, it opened up everything again and they couldn't follow up. So then Lamar Odom. Uh, who's a dear friend, had me come to his place, which is Vanity Wellness, uh, out here in California, and now I work for them. And my objective is to help someone realize that they are special. And you don't have to have a hole in your soul. And it's okay if you do. You know, just spread love, give love, and it's really about that, you know, and. And I know I'm harsh with other things that I say because I'm a a real personal feels. You know, and I hate the fact that so many people have done me dirty when I've really never done anything to them.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  But you know, a lot of people don't like the truth. So. That's what I tell you, the truth. A lot of people have to tell me the truth, so why can't I say it back, you know, and it's just. I'm not weak by any means, and I was.

• 1:39:12Bunnie XO?

  I would never think you're weak.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Okay, well, you know, a lot of people will say it. Because uh you're weak because you do drugs. Nope. I'm not weak. If I I think I would have been dead. A long time ago if I didn't self-medicate. And I'm not saying it's okay to self-medicate. I'm just saying I would have been dead a long.

• 1:39:32Bunnie XO?

  That was your journey.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  Yep, I had to numb. Everything, you know, it's. To have an uncle blown up on on a a street, friends murdered, and. You're just cooking Sunday dinner and like, oh, okay, honey, I'll yeah, I'll leave it on the counter. What is that? I I I spent a year in black going to funerals, so. I'm realizing that is trauma. And although it wasn't. You know, it in my household, it still was trauma, you know, losing life is. When you're a loving person, you know, you're separated from somebody that you love like I it started with my grandmother when I was thirteen.

• 1:40:15Speaker 02

  And now in life, I have my four grandchildren.

• 1:40:19Bunnie XO?

  Are you and AJ on good terms?

• 1:40:22Speaker 02

  My son just left. Uh my son and I ha- I'm sober since the third of November.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  And my son and I have spoken every single day since then.

• 1:40:33Bunnie XO?

  Oh.

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:40:34Bunnie XO?

  Shout out AJ.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  Yes, he's.

• 1:40:38Bunnie XO?

  I'm sure that's detrimental to your sobriety also.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:41Bunnie XO?

  Not that we're putting pressure on him. I'm sure that's just so healing for you to be able to.

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  He's good now. He knows. He made the phone call because I told him that he wasn't going to see me ever again on the third. And I said, I couldn't do it anymore. I was like, I'm not going to kill myself, but just in case something happens. And he said, stay right there. Don't move. And he made a phone call for me. And um, my friend Phil O'Hara, he got me placed, he put me in. And um, it's just every day he talks to me, every day. And he's proud of me and he says it. He'll call me and be like, what's up, home slice? What are you doing? Like, I'm like, oh, my God, do you know how much money I made on TikTok today? Do you want half of it? And he's like, this is what me and my son do. I'm like, I, I send him money all the time. And he's like, Mom, you, you know, you can

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  keep your own money. And I'm like, no, no, no, go buy the kids stuff. And I'm having so much fun. And he's like, Mom, I just took them to Disney last week. They flew here with the two older ones. Uh, we got rained out in Disney, but we ended up at Universal for um, you know, a beautiful day and it's, it's just. My family's talking to me. Everyone in my family's talking to me. My sister Jennifer and I are working together again. She's part of my management team again. Um, I'm so grateful and.

• 1:42:01Bunnie XO?

  Happy?

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm a little angry at a few people and maybe now that I said it, I have to work on that.

• 1:42:08Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:09Speaker 02

  Um, but if I don't like you, I just don't like you.

• 1:42:12Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  I probably don't have to talk about you.

• 1:42:14Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:42:15Speaker 02

  But I can't respect a person that is me, that's cruel. You know what I mean? Like my ex husband, that's evil. I don't like evil.

• 1:42:23Bunnie XO?

  How do you feel about him doing these interviews now?

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  I think he's a twat. I think he's a twat. I mean, he sounds like a jerk off. I live for an A everything. No, you didn't. You never had anything. It was always my money. You never had any money. You always had my money. I bought the house. Like, you know, he, he's just, I think he should just sit down already.

• 1:42:44Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:45Speaker 02

  You know, but let me tell you something.

• 1:42:46Bunnie XO?

  I can't believe he hasn't been sat down. That's the crazy.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  Well, who's going to kill the killer?

• 1:42:50Bunnie XO?

  Right.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  My father's dead. So who's coming for him?

• 1:42:54Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, he, he, he.

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  I don't know why you even wanna speak about me. Leave me alone.

• 1:43:03Bunnie XO?

  Like you've already done enough.

• 1:43:04Speaker 02

  Alone. Like I have not spoken to you in thirteen years. Leave me the fuck alone. Take your jerk off girlfriend, who's a Mob Wives fan and follows me and stalks me and calls me a junkie and all, like bitch, you don't, you just got knocked out cold by a man. You should sit the fuck down too.

• 1:43:25Bunnie XO?

  Does he have a relationship with AJ at all?

• 1:43:27Speaker 02

  No, he's, he's, he, he has to, he,

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  he should, you know what? God works in very mysterious ways though, cuz he has blood cancer now.

• 1:43:36Bunnie XO?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  Am I smiling? Oh shit.

• 1:43:39Bunnie XO?

  No. I'm sorry.

• 1:43:43Bunnie XO?

  Hey, I'm telling you, man, evil-

• 1:43:44Speaker 02

  I can't help it. I, you know what? I, I, I know I'm supposed to be like, I know God, he's, God's not even mad at me, forget it. He's not even mad. How could you be mad at the girl that this man beat and did all these things to? And she smiles cuz you're sick.

• 1:43:57Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  You're, he's really sick though. Like he's, uh, diagnosed sociopath with psychopathic tendencies. Like, you should really sit down.

• 1:44:09Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  You sound like an asshole.

• 1:44:11Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  Doing interviews. You're a rat.

• 1:44:14Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  You wanna profit from being a rat? You put my father in prison, my best friend's husband, my uncle. You destroyed a family, many families. And how about the girl that doesn't have a father anymore? You did that. So you should be talking to God, not people doing podcasts cuz you wanna earn money. Go get a fucking job.

• 1:44:39Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  Get a fucking job. And stop beating women already. Stop. It's disgusting.

• 1:44:46Bunnie XO?

  They never stop.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  You're not getting into heaven. Like you're, you know, you're still, and you know, I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna, I wasn't gonna, but I'm gonna. So he was threatening to hurt me again. Okay, just recently. The threats, the threats.

• 1:44:59Bunnie XO?

  Junior?

• 1:44:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Threatening how he's gonna kill me.

• 1:45:01Bunnie XO?

  Hector, he doesn't even deserve the name Junior.

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  He doesn't, no, he doesn't. The threats, the threats, the threats. It's just to the point where it, it's gotta stop.

• 1:45:09Bunnie XO?

  He, he, just recently? That's like, that could be detrimental to your sobriety.

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  Yep. So my poor son had to do this.

• 1:45:19Speaker 02

  He said, he said, you chose to do what you did and be on podcasts. You shouldn't be mad or anything if you get stuff said about you. And at the end of the day, you abused her. And you're still trying to abuse her. You're trying to hit her so she falls back down. I don't know how you think you're trying to be a protector or how you say you want the best from her. When clearly that has never been the case. My son had to actually do that for me. Do you know how disgusting you must be as a parent? That your child has to defend his mother?

• 1:45:53Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  And you know what that did to me? That my son, now I know my son knows. Do you know what I mean? Like, I knew he knew, but now I know he feels it. To say you abused his mother. Go the fuck away.

• 1:46:11Bunnie XO?

  They never do.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Just go away. I don't want you anywhere by me. I don't even,

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  unless provoked, I don't talk about you because you are a non fucking factor. You're a degenerate loser.

• 1:46:28Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Speaker 02

  Go the fuck away. Take your girlfriend and go away.

• 1:46:32Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  And she needs therapy, that bitch. How are you with, like, how do you not see what's happening to you? You know, and

• 1:46:41Bunnie XO?

  It's the same reason that we didn't see what was happening to us.

• 1:46:44Speaker 02

  It takes a woman seven times. Do you know that? That's the number. Seven times she'll have to be hit before she leaves.

• 1:46:51Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:52Speaker 02

  Well, I'm pretty sure she's probably around seven now.

• 1:46:55Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, that's about right because that's what it took me to leave.

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:59Bunnie XO?

  A few years and being beat up a few times.

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  Took me 10 years. 10 years. I couldn't.

• 1:47:06Bunnie XO?

  Renee, I'm so proud of you.

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:47:08Bunnie XO?

  You have come so far.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  And I'm not done, honey.

• 1:47:11Bunnie XO?

  I'm so excited to see what you do in the future and I want, if you ever need to talk, you just call me.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:47:18Bunnie XO?

  Just text me, call me if you're ever having a rough time or anything, I'm always gonna be here for you.

• 1:47:23Speaker 02

  I appreciate it and I love what you're doing and I love the energy you put out. It's positive, even like I could watch your face when I'm saying certain things, you're like, oh shit. But you know, I don't often talk the way I do in an interview, but I'm so comfortable and I've been holding all of this for so long.

• 1:47:43Bunnie XO?

  Let it out.

• 1:47:44Speaker 02

  That it, that's what makes me sick, so it's kinda-

• 1:47:46Bunnie XO?

  Your secrets keep you sick.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Oh, sure do. You know, now everybody knows I'm a little bit of a tramp though.

• 1:47:53Bunnie XO?

  No, they don't.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  I don't care.

• 1:47:55Bunnie XO?

  They love you.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't care, I don't care anymore, I'm so tired of caring about what other people think of me.

• 1:48:01Bunnie XO?

  Stop caring. That's what, that was my huge lesson last year was I had to stop. I had so many people attacking me because of this podcast and just, I got to a point where I was just like, I don't fucking care. I'm doing this, you're not, this is my life.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  Well, it's jealousy.

• 1:48:16Bunnie XO?

  Yeah, it's wild.

• 1:48:17Speaker 02

  Isn't it insane that, and you know, the comments that people say, the things that people say to hurt another human. Like, what people say about me when I read them, you know, the way I look or this or edited or, I love my fucking apps, leave me alone. I created a Mob Wife app.

• 1:48:36Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  Um, you know, just for the fun of it, because I love the way it looks, I love AI pictures, I don't always look good, so why shouldn't I? Like, people are-

• 1:48:44Bunnie XO?

  It's your world, you can do what you want, just like everybody does what they want on their own apps and on their own platforms.

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  Who goes on a person's page and says those things?

• 1:48:53Bunnie XO?

  Weirdos, literally, straight up weirdos.

• 1:48:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:48:58Bunnie XO?

  Well, what's next? What's in the future for you? What do you have in the works?

• 1:49:01Speaker 02

  Okay, so Mob Candy, I have my jewelry line still, Mob Candy. I have a new app with Drop Me in AI called Mob Wife by Renee Graziano and people could download their photos and they get to look like a mob wife.

• 1:49:16Bunnie XO?

  Ah.

• 1:49:16Speaker 02

  For eight dollars as opposed to going buying that fur coat, you get the free fur coat there. Um. I have, I'm working on a project, hopefully it'll come to fruition with TV. I did do my own pilot for My Fairy Mob Mother. Unfortunately, it was part of my relapse. Um, there were a lot of things that I touched on that I obviously didn't deal with. And I started to self-medicate again, so I'm gonna leave that there.

• 1:49:44Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  That's not for me. Um, and right now, I just wanna help somebody get sober. That's it. That's, that's really my focus. I have four grandchildren that I have to worry about. Um, and maybe I'll find love one day, you know? But in the meanwhile, I'm gonna love me enough.

• 1:50:04Bunnie XO?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:06Bunnie XO?

  That's, that's beautiful. And I think that's all you can do. After all the shit you've been through, Renee. You are still fucking standing. You're still punching life and telling him it hits like a bitch. Like, you are one tough cookie, dude.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:50:19Bunnie XO?

  I just, I love your aura. I love everything about you and I can't, I cannot wait to see what, how much hell you give the world continuing on in these years.

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  This time around, as Renee, just Renee, I, I look forward to, to see who I'm gonna be in about a year from now.

• 1:50:37Bunnie XO?

  I'm excited. You gotta come back and visit me.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:50:40Bunnie XO?

  And come, come do a concert. We're gonna be everywhere. We're going on tour, so come.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  I'm such like a country fan too. Like, I love country music.

• 1:50:47Bunnie XO?

  That's hilarious that you're a mob wife and love country.

• 1:50:50Speaker 02

  Oh my god, Goth Brooks. When I get married, the song from Hope Floats, that's gonna be like my, my wedding song. Absolutely, absolutely. I love it. It's just like, it's, it's real.

• 1:51:01Bunnie XO?

  Come to, yeah, come to a show. Jay would love to meet you.

• 1:51:04Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 1:51:05Bunnie XO?

  I'll call him, I'll call him when, when we're done with this podcast, so you can say hi.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  Yes, and, and he, let me tell you something. My mother is a huge fan.

• 1:51:12Bunnie XO?

  That's hilarious. I love that.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  It is, because she calls me, wait, I get, I get messages. Do you know what Jelly's doing now? He's working with the, what is it, something to Towers, Freedom Towers? She tells me everything. She's like, Renee, he's remarkable. And she's like, he spoke to Congress, Renee. I'm like, yes, mom, I know. She's like, oh my god, this is wonderful. You have a friend like you. And I'm like, you know what, Ronnie? You just gotta stick your foot in your mouth all the fucking time.

• 1:51:42Bunnie XO?

  I love it.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, doll.

• 1:51:45Bunnie XO?

  Well, why don't you tell people where they can find you on your social medias?

• 1:51:48Speaker 02

  So, social media for Instagram is Renee Graziano, and it's the real Renee Graziano on TikTok, where I make all my goofy dances.

• 1:51:56Bunnie XO?

  Go follow the OG mob wife and go pop into her lives and give her all your gifts.

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:52:03Bunnie XO?

  Thank you so much, Renee.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  You're welcome.

• 1:52:04Bunnie XO?

  It's been a blast. And thank you, guys, for tuning into another episode of Dumb Blonde. I will see you, guys, next week. Bye.