The Real Housewives of New York's Dorinda Medley on Dealing with Grief
Dorinda Medley stars in the hit reality show, “The Real Housewives of New York City” and recently announced her brand new SiriusXM radio show “Make it Nice.” She’s known for her quick wit, sunny demeanor, and the ability to wear her heart of her sleeve… no matter what. In this interview, Dorinda opens up about her life off-screen and what’s given her strength and courage during some of her darkest days. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If this person came into your life eight years ago and said, hey, Dorinda, I'm going to come into your life.
I'm going to love you, cherish you, cherish your daughter, adore you.
You're going to have a great eight years, but then I got to go.
Would you take them?
I said, of course, mom.
She goes, well, that's what you got.
Everything in life has a beginning, a middle and an end.
It may not be the timing you want, but everything.
So you need to be appreciative of that and you need to move on and be thankful.
Hi, I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz podcast. I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz podcast.
you During the medley, stars in the hit reality show, The Real Housewives of New York City, and recently announced her brand new series, XM Radio Show.
Yay!
Make it nice.
I love when you say that.
You know, that became iconic in our show, Behind the Scenes.
Really?
Yes.
We also, when the producers are making a segment, they say, we made it nice.
I love that.
You know, I am so related to that phrase now.
I was actually in London about a month ago, and I thought, okay, I'm going to have a little bit of rest from the whole Housewives thing.
I literally was walking out of my hotel, and someone, a car went by and said, Make a noise!
I was like, oh my God!
I love it.
You've got a quick wit, sunny demeanor.
You can wear your heart on your sleeve, which really makes you a fantastic guest on the show, and I know today we'll have a good time, no matter what you tell the truth.
She's opening up here today about her life off-screen and what's given her strength and courage during some of her darkest days.
So most of what we see you doing is, to me anyway, seems like a lot of fun.
Yes.
Did you ever anticipate what would happen when you shared all those private moments publicly?
No, I always said, someone asked me when I first started the show, do you think the show could ruin your life?
I said, I think you ruin your life.
I think people like to make an excuse and say, this ruined my life, that ruined my life.
We ruin our lives.
And for me, the show was an incredibly therapeutic thing to do.
I was at a point in my life where I was really lost.
All my identities were gone.
I wasn't a mother.
I wasn't a white.
I mean, I was a mother, but my daughter had grown up and went to college.
My husband passed.
I was in my 50s.
And I'm like, this is it?
And I couldn't really understand why, what, when, how this happened.
So when I went on the show, it was an incredible way to express what I've been through, what I'm going through, and what I kind of hope for my life now.
And it really, the thing that was so great is I wasn't a wife or a mother or this or that.
I was just Dorinda.
I got to be my own identity and develop my own identity for the first time in probably 35 years.
Mm-hmm.
How did you get picked?
I'm always curious of that process.
Here's why I'm asking my sister-in-law, who's a complete character and is the bane of my existence.
She tortures me.
All the things my wife wants to say to me, she actually says to me.
Oh, boy.
I like her.
And I always kid her that I'm going to nominate her to be a housewife of wherever she happens to live.
Well, where is she?
We're always looking.
No, she lives in Delaware.
Housewives of Wilmington.
Yes.
But there's a whole bunch down there.
I grew up in that town.
I love Delaware, by the way.
Most people only know it because you drive through it.
I'm 95, but it's a beautiful area.
It's beautiful, and I have a very good friend that lives there because...
Well, she lives actually in Ardmore, but they have their home in Delaware, so I go visit all the time.
I love it.
And Delaware people are very sort of good, solid people.
They are.
Solid is the right word.
And so I'm always wondering, if I was casting, I would find someone like her.
But you guys are all so different from each other.
The brilliant folks at Bravo must have some magical way of telling who's going to be the right match.
Well, you have to remember, and not a lot of people know this, but there's a lot of cameo appearances of me throughout the years.
Because I know the girls.
I've known them.
We all kind of were on the Upper East Side.
And I think when you are on the Upper East Side, it's like being back in college.
We all kind of do the same thing.
Send our kids to the same schools.
Go to the same social events.
Really, it's like being on a college campus.
So when it started, it was called Moms of New York.
And I'll never forget it.
Ramona Singer started telling me about it.
Because Ramona's daughter went to Sacred Heart, the same school as my daughter.
So there's a new show, and they're fighting for the show, and it's going to be about women that they follow around in New York, and they go to cocktail parties, and they do all kinds of...
I'm like, that sounds so ridiculous.
I mean, who would be interested in that?
Yeah, Andy Cohen.
And I had just gotten divorced.
And I just didn't, and Hannah was in private school, and she had had enough change that I was sort of, I was like, no, this is not the right time.
But I would go to all the events.
They'd invite me to all the events.
I would always kind of be asked, would you ever do it?
No, it's not a good time.
Then I married Richard, and he was involved with politics, and he was a speechwriter for different people, Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Farrar and all these people.
And That wasn't right.
And then when Richard passed, Ramona came and said, try it for a season.
You know we want to have you on.
So I thought, you know what?
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to throw my hat in the wind.
If it doesn't work, I'll talk about it when I'm in the nursing home.
Oh, remember when I was on that season?
And the housewives, remember that?
But I've got to tell you something.
The minute I got on the show, I swear to God this is true.
That camera went on.
I looked at the camera.
The camera looked at me.
I was like, I like this.
I think it also was very helpful because I knew the girls already.
I had history.
We have similar lives.
How real is it?
100%.
I swear to God.
Most people don't stay friendly after some of these fights.
Well, listen, most people don't spend five days a week for a five-month period ten hours a day either.
Okay, that's true.
So, you know, it's like, it truly is like being, I actually made a big mistake to one of my producers right before the show ended.
I said, when's the semester start next year?
He goes, semester?
Because you kind of, you have to put on that hat.
You have to understand you're an ensemble group and you have to get in it.
And we're good.
We're professionals.
We know what we're doing.
People like it.
And people love, the thing that I love about the audience, it's very forgiving.
They're forgiving.
You put something out there, it's rough, but it then opens up all these wonderful avenues to open up discussions about difficult things.
There's lots more when we come back.
You mentioned Richard.
Yes.
Losing him...
It was terrible.
Yeah.
You've commented that the show helped you cope with those painful moments.
How so?
Because, you know, I was never a person.
I grew up in a very ethnic family, very stoic, very Catholic, you know, keep it moving, don't mourn, keep running.
And it was really difficult.
And I think in a weird way, Dr. Oz, the hardest part was the process of him dying.
And I did not really take on how much that physically and emotionally had affected me.
So when they die, it's sort of like, wait a second, I'm sick now.
Because you sort of are sick.
Someone said to me, when you have someone dying in your family, you get sick as well.
The whole family's sick.
So we came out of it, and Hannah didn't handle it well.
I didn't handle it well, but Hannah was smart.
She threw herself into therapy.
she talked about it.
Fragile age, just turning 18.
Terrible.
We had to do his college applications and his ICU.
And I had normalized that.
So when I stepped away from it and looked at the past year and a half, I'm like, this was not normal.
And I wasn't dealing with it in a way that I should have.
I should have spoken to someone.
I should have talked about it more.
But I did that old sort of cacthic ethnic thing.
I'm good.
It's no problem.
I'm going to be fine.
Oh, well, it happened.
I'm happy he actually died.
He was really sick.
That wasn't, you know what I mean?
All these things.
And when I got on the show and really started to talk about it, it became my therapy.
And I was like, yeah, that was painful.
Yeah, he died of liver failure?
Yes.
It was terrible.
It's a very painful way to go because you just blowed up.
And it's ugly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
You blow it up.
You look like a tick.
It's ugly.
And you know what?
People don't...
We all have sort of a romantic idea about dying.
You turn your head.
You gasp.
Say something really profound and go.
And people are angry.
And you're angry.
So you want it to be...
You want to present it as the way you see it on movies.
And it's not...
No one was happy at the end.
I wasn't happy.
I think at one point...
And I felt so terrible about this.
And I had to forgive myself...
I said to my mother, I just, I feel terrible.
I prayed and prayed that I'm going to get, at one point I was like, someone's got to go here because I can't take this anymore.
But I was tired.
You know, when you are going through that process, especially the last three months where every day is the day, you eat it, drink it, sleep it.
You don't know when to leave the hospital.
You don't, when you're away from the hospital, all you want to do is get back to the hospital and there is zero focus on you or what else is going on in the world.
You get left behind.
Yes.
So what was the best advice you got?
And that's something I wanted to talk about is I really, I say this all the time, the advocacy thing.
When you're an advocate for someone that's dying and you become the conservator, you have to surround yourself with a lot of good people.
And I've got to say, the nurses, I mean the doctors were great, but the nurses at New York Presbyterian, they were like angels.
Yeah.
I work with them.
They train me.
And nurses make much more of the decision processes.
In the operating room, I don't close the chest of an open-heart surgeon until the nurses think it's dry enough to close because they see it all.
I only see my cases.
I don't know how everybody else manages these problems.
The nurses are the glue that holds the system together.
And not only that, they're able.
I said to one fella that I actually have stayed in touch with, I said, how do you every day have such, you know, such compassion He's like, because they do.
They treated Richard, in my mind, like he was the only one there.
And then I would catch a sight of them in a side room.
I'm like, hey, you're treating that person a little too nice.
What about my man Richard?
Do you know what I mean?
Exactly.
They're very good and they reassure you and they walk you through.
And they really are on the journey with you.
So I called them my angels.
I miss them.
Actually, I miss them.
I always have patients go back, the ones that survive, because many don't, but most do.
And I have them go back and talk to the nurses in the ICU and those critical carriers because they don't see the success stories.
Yes.
I've gone back several times.
Good for you.
What's the best advice you got as you were recovering from Richard's loss?
You know, my mother gave me the best advice.
It makes me want to cry.
But my mother, who is such an incredible rock in my life, has handled it.
Sorry.
And, you know, my mother handles all things beautifully, you know, life, death, birth, baptisms, it's a process.
And she's just so wonderful.
She said to me at one point when I was, oh, what am I going to do?
How am I going to do this?
I can't believe this happened.
Why, why, why?
She said, you know, during the medley, let me ask you a question.
If...
Using your full name, of course.
Yeah, of course.
She said, listen, let me ask you a question.
If this person came into your life eight years ago and said, hey, Dorinda, I'm going to come into your life.
I'm going to love you, cherish you, cherish your daughter, adore you.
You're going to have a great eight years, but then I got to go.
Would you take them?
I said, of course, mom.
She goes, well, that's what you got.
Everything in life has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
It may not be the timing you want, but everything.
So you need to be appreciative of that, and you need to move on and be thankful.
And it really was such a telling moment.
I was like, she's right.
I mean, a little bit of get up and go, you know, stop.
What's your mom's name?
Diane Sincala.
She's wonderful.
I'm booking Diane.
She's wonderful.
Oh my goodness.
She's my rock.
And my mother, who I always said was such a beautiful...
It is funny.
You take away so many wonderful things when you are strangely given the blessing of watching someone leave this world.
I know that sounds odd to say, but...
But it brought a closeness to me again with my mother that I may not have had if this hadn't happened because all of a sudden my mother was my mom again.
I hadn't really had that kind of relationship with her for 30 years.
I was a grown-up.
I was living in London.
I'm trying to be a socialite.
All this kind of stuff.
And all of a sudden I was like, Mom, I need you to sleep in my bed with me.
I need that.
And she would do it.
And she'd get up in the morning and make me breakfast.
And it just brought this incredible sense of who I am today.
The foundation I came from and my strength.
You are Dorinda Sincala at the end of the day.
She said to me one day, all these other names you've collected over the years, but you're still Dorinda Sincala.
I'm like, I am mom.
What a great insight.
You know, I had two patients at one point in my career.
They were both about 50. They both needed open heart surgery.
The first father came in and he was very depressed, which is normal because you're going to have open heart surgery.
And I was going through all the risks and the like.
He interrupted me and said, Doc, it doesn't really matter.
Just do what you need to do.
It doesn't matter if I make it or not.
I said, wait a minute, hold a second.
We're not going to operate if it doesn't matter to you if you live.
It's one thing to be down on what's going on, but you need to be passionate about surviving.
And then his wife started crying, which is always a bad sign.
So I figured, you know, there's something deeper here.
And then she shared that their son, who was 15 years old, had been murdered.
Oh, my God.
They were in the St. Paddy's Day Parade.
It was a mistaken identity, and he got killed by a gang of folks.
Terrible.
So, they were down, and it probably may have caused some of his heart problems.
Anyway, I said, I don't know what to tell you.
I can't even deal with this, but the message will come to me eventually.
Let's give a little hiatus here.
Later that day, another guy comes in, needs heart surgery, and he's by himself.
And I say, okay, here's the risk.
He says, Doc, stop.
I'm going to make it.
I got to live.
I said, well, I mean, everyone says that, but why do you have to live?
He said, I've got a very disabled young son.
He's 15. He's, you know, he's developmentally delayed, so I can't really talk to him.
I got to change his diapers.
My wife's not in the picture.
I've got to survive because without me, he can't survive.
And I thought about that, and I realized that this, and I want to say to the first guy, which was, you had 15 years of bliss with your son.
As horrible as it was that you lost him, to your mother's point, you still got to have a catch with him, plan his future, dream with him.
The second father never had any of that, yet he finds value in having the relationship that he does have, limited as it is, and he's going to make it a reason to survive.
You've got to do the same thing.
That's correct.
We want to believe that life is going to be simple and straightforward.
And one thing that I've really learned through this process, all the different changes, is I no longer write my final chapter.
I'm always thinking, oh, at this...
I mean, who would have thunk it?
I thought I was going to be...
Happily married to Richard, living in the Berkshires, sort of flying back and forth to London.
Beautiful.
You know, I had it all planned out and it looked pretty damn good.
And then all of a sudden, boom.
Oh, no, no.
We're changing the chapter.
So I try to live in my present chapter of my life.
I try to just live in this chapter.
More questions after the break.
Speaking of chapters of their lives, let me ask you about a couple of your co-stars.
Okay.
Luanne.
Okay.
So, you knew this question was coming.
I did.
She had, as part of her settlement, she was on parole, and there's something she had to concede to, which is including breathalyzer tests, which is a smart thing.
So, she's failed that.
So, what advice do you give to her What goes through your mind when you see that happen to someone you care deeply for?
Yeah, I find it very difficult to talk about this because I just feel like it's not my place.
But you know, we...
I don't...
I'm always sort of on pins and needles when it comes to talking about anyone's recovery because they are the only ones that understand the journey.
And I just think it's difficult.
It's difficult.
And it's...
Strangely, you know, I think everybody has some sort of scarlet letter.
Some people get caught out.
Some people don't.
Good point.
But we all...
You know, it's made me self-examine a little bit and take a look at my life and say, you know, am I doing these things right?
You know, because...
I'm not belittling anything.
I'm just saying we have all made mistakes.
For sure.
And, you know, we can all get caught.
You know, there's been those mornings I've woken up and said, Oh, my God.
Thank God.
Are this ever going to happen again?
You know, I've not done anything that bad.
But you know what I mean?
And I just feel, you know, this has been a very difficult journey.
And to have to go back and go through all this and then have the added, they've added all kinds of additional things to her, probation.
You know, I haven't really spoken to her that much.
What do you want her to hear when you do speak to her, which is going to happen?
Well, I have spoken to her.
I've said, you know, you're going to get through this.
Stay strong.
Day by day.
Day by day.
You know, to tell you the truth, my real advice to her was, please go quiet.
If I were in the same position, I would literally put on a house coat, go to the Berkshires, and hide until my probation was over.
And the fact that she can do all these cabarets and be out there and do all that stuff is a credit to her, because I wouldn't.
I would go completely silent.
I'd turn off my phone, and whatever the date was, I would re-emerge.
Ta-da!
Doreen the Bentley's back.
You know, I think it's therapy for her.
I suspect that being alone for a lot of people is the most painful thing you can prescribe for them.
I certainly see it in patients.
You know, I love to be alone.
Do you know that's a little fun fact about Derinda Medley that no one knows?
I love my own company to the point where I can get a little odd.
Odd in what way?
Well, because I really love my company.
To the point where I'm in my house, I'm like, this is so much fun.
How do you make it nice when you're by yourself?
What do you make it nice for?
Oh, I could be busy in a paper box.
I'm just one of those people.
You know, I wake up busy.
That's what my mother says.
I wake up busy.
I just...
Maybe it's because I spend so much of my life devoting myself to others.
Oprah said something the other day.
She was doing a thing for one of the books that was coming out.
She said, get rid of the need to please.
And I'm like, that's me, Oprah.
And the more you need to please, the more people will take.
And the more they take, the more you want to please.
And it becomes this vicious circle.
And I have a tendency to do that.
So for me, it's so nice just to please myself.
I literally make myself breakfast.
I watch TV in the living room, which I find very luxurious.
It is.
With a blanket.
With a beer.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I have a good friend who's a physician also, and one day I had taken care of members of his family, and he was trying to thank me.
And I said, I don't need to do that.
He goes, no, no, listen, you can't always give.
You actually have to take, because if you don't take, people can't give.
Yeah, that's difficult for me.
You're taking away people's opportunity to do good, which actually hurts them.
So as crazy as it seems, to the right amount, taking from others, allowing them to give to you is a gift.
Yes.
The guy who created Habitat for Humanity, he passed away, but I had him on, when I was back when I was hosting the Oprah radio show, I had him on.
And he said everybody he'd ever built a house for, he'd give a little wooden piggy bank to so they could put money in it.
I love that.
And donate.
And I said, well, I don't understand.
These people are destitute.
That's why you're building them a house, right?
If they had money, they'd build their own house.
So while you ask them to give...
He said, because I don't want to ever take away their opportunity to help others because I'm taking away their humanity.
And he said, everyone always put money, could be pennies, in that wooden piggy bank, which would be the middle of the living room, to remind them that they had the opportunity to pass it on to others as well.
Well, that's right.
You give a man a house or give a man a hammer.
Yes.
All right, last question.
Go ahead.
Ethnie Frankel, who I've gotten to adore.
Who I love.
Yes.
She's had some loss in her life.
And when Dennis passed, she grieved, but people judge her grieving.
They judge Ethnie on a lot of things.
So wrong.
Explain it, defend her.
I feel very strongly about that because grieving is, especially grieving in a younger person.
I had a situation at Elio's one night when I met a woman at the bar.
She was probably in her 80s and Richard had just passed and I said, oh my God, I'm a widow too.
She said, oh no, darling, you're not a widow.
A widow is for old people.
What you're going through is just sad.
And there's not really a manual.
People don't know how to handle grief.
They don't know how to approach it.
You don't know how to approach it.
And all these rules, like I call it the Queen Victoria rules or regulations, wear black, da-da-da-da, be crying all the time.
It doesn't work.
You have to do, as I said, I think I said it to Bethany in an episode, or I said it to someone, you've got to do whatever it takes to get you through this time.
And no judgment.
Because they're gone.
Not sort of gone.
Not kind of gone.
They don't even care anymore.
They're gone.
And I can guarantee you one thing.
Richard Medley would want nothing more than for me.
He said it to me before he died.
He said, listen, do me a favor.
Oh, he used the Queen Victoria thing.
He said, don't do that Queen Victoria thing where you sit around mourning.
You've done all your mourning here.
I'm dead.
I'm not going to care anymore.
Right.
And it sat with me.
Sounds like a speechwriter.
He said, our contract is over.
We did rich or poor, sickness and health, the death to a spark.
Our contract is ending, he said.
And it really sat with me.
And when people passed, I remember someone once passed judgment on me about something.
Oh, I was dating John.
And they said, well, we're just a little unhappy that you died.
I said, really?
Because where are you right now?
You're with your family in the Hamptons.
You have your husband with you.
I'm alone.
So unless you want to pack up and come and live in my house with me and shepherd me through this period of my time, I don't think you have any right to say that.
I'm happy.
I'm doing the best I can with what I've got.
And I can clearly say, I'm happy.
Does that bother you?
It almost bothers people for you to be happy after someone dies.
I swear.
Which is ironic because in so many societies, humanity has always had to deal with it, but in many societies, there's a celebration around the loss so people can move on.
Yeah, well, that's right.
To make it nice, you've got to keep moving.
No, and Bethany deserves to be happy.
She's a young, beautiful woman.
She's got a beautiful daughter.
Life is to be had.
Go get it.
And I guarantee Dennis would say, please do it.
Your legacy.
Years from now, when your show's done, what's it going to be?
Philosopher, savant.
That's it.
God bless you.
I love having you here.
Oh, thank you, Dr. Oz.
I love seeing you.
One of my happiest days was in my early days when I first started this show when they said, you're going to be on Dr. Oz.
I called my mother.
I'm like, oh my God, oh my God, it's really happening.
I'm going to be on Dr. Oz.
I was so nervous.
Well, I've adored having you on every single time.
By the way, Make It Nice, perfect name for the new radio show.
Congratulations.
Check it out, everybody.
Yes, Radio Andy, Wednesday.
Tuesdays, Tuesdays now, Tuesdays now.
Tuesdays, get it right.
I took over Andy's show for two weeks, that's why.