Dorinda Medley Steps In To Save ‘The Golden Life’ After Jill Zarin’s Racist Rant Threatened To Destroy E!’s ‘RHONY’ Reunion
Dorinda Medley is ready to “make it nice” in the Sunshine State. E! officially announced this morning that she will join her former Real Housewives of New York City co-stars in the network’s highly anticipated spinoff show, The Golden Life.
“Well, the rumors are true! I will be joining the women on The Golden Life in Palm Beach,” Medley said in a press release provided to DECIDER. “After decades of friendship, and navigating life’s ups and downs together, it will be nice to reconnect with my ‘sisters.’ I am so excited to celebrate and share the next chapter of our lives!”
Medley will be joined by Luann de Lesseps, Sonja Morgan, Kelly Bensimon, and Ramona Singer, marking the crew’s first reunion since The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: RHONY Legacy, which aired on Peacock in late 2023. The news comes less than a week after E! decided to part ways with OG RHONY star Jill Zarin, who was originally supposed to appear in the series, over her controversial rant about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance.
The Golden Life, which will start filming this spring, follows the group’s lives in Palm Beach, FL. While they may no longer be in the Big Apple, fans will still watch as the women navigate friendships, family, dating, and, perhaps, some unresolved drama in South Florida.
When The Golden Life was first announced, it didn’t exactly surprise me that Medley wasn’t included in the cast. Having been in the midst of her second run on Peacock’s The Traitors and working on a Bravo spinoff about Bluestone Manor, I simply figured those NBC/Bravo contracts were airtight. But when RHONY executive producer Andy Cohen gave the show his blessing on Radio Andy!—and Zarin royally effed up her chances at redemption—it only made sense that Medley return to the fold.
Peaock
For RHONY fans, this is the type of comeback Medley has long deserved since getting put “on pause” following Season 12. Despite her exclusion from the final season of RHONY as we knew it, the socialite has continued to stay in the mix, making appearances at BravoCon, hosting a radio show, and even leading a Traitors fanbase so strong, that when she was murdered on her first night in Ardross Castle in Season 3, producers decided to give her a second chance in Season 4.
Medley, over the years, has lamented herself as not only one of the most beloved Real Housewives of all time, but also a cultural icon. Not to mention, unlike some of her co-stars, Medley knows how to stay on the right side of history. In the hours after Zarin posted (and deleted) her video about Bad Bunny, Medley took to her radio show, Reality Checked, to praise his performance for reflecting “hope, love, and unity,” noting that she was “horrified” by Zarin’s tirade.
Between Zarin’s complaints about a halftime show sung in Spanish with minimal white people, Morgan doing damage control by boasting of her “huge Latin following,” and Singer getting accused of racism in the past, it’s no surprise that some fans have dubbed The Golden Life as “MAGA RHONY.” But if anyone can save the spinoff from being overshadowed by controversial politics and instead divert it back to the good ol’ fashioned hijinks we know and love from OG RHONY, it’s Medley.
