If there's one thing Dorinda Medley knows how to do, it's "make it nice."
E! News can exclusively reveal the very first look at the former Real Housewives of New York City star's new book, appropriately titled Make It Nice. The cover image shows the Big Apple socialite posing inside her iconic Berkshires home Blue Stone Manor dressed elegantly in a white blouse and yellow patterned pants.
Make It Nice, which comes out Aug. 17, features stories about Medley's life, from living in London with her late husband to entertaining fans on RHONY.
"I always sort of dabbled in wanting to write a book. People have always said, 'Oh my god, you have such an interesting life, you live so many different places,'" Medley tells E! News exclusively.
Medley revealed her book deal with Simon and Schuster came "fortuitously" just weeks before she departed The Real Housewives of New York City last year.
"It was just very sort of karmic," she shared. "I had no idea what the journey would look like. I had no idea what the book was going look like, and it really allowed me some breathing time to take my head out of where I was presently, and bring myself back to how I got there. It was perfect timing to say."
Medley chronicles the phases of her life, "as young as a child, a young adult, a wife, a mother, a single mother, a widow. Someone who wants more opportunity not only for myself but for my daughter. I love to give advice. Having a daughter and watching my daughter start to navigate her life and her only starting from the opportunities that I've been able to give to her. I thought, wouldn't it be nice to take not only myself, not only an audience."
Read on for our exclusive Q&A with Medley to hear all about Make It Nice, her life post-RHONY and if she'd ever pop up on the hit Bravo series in the future.
E! NEWS: What kind of tips are in Make It Nice? Life tips? Entertainment tips?
DM: There's tips, there's advice, there's a way to manage situations, it talks about, you know, growing up, living abroad, being married, being divorced with a child in Europe, remarrying, managing money, and sort of the growth process. There is no 'no.' I always managed to pick myself up and keep moving around.
E!: I think it's safe to say we met you down the road in this journey. So while you kind of touched on names and things like that in the past, now we're going to kind of get into the stories we haven't heard, right?
DM: You guys only know me as Dorinda Medley, Mrs. Medley, John Mahdessian's girlfriend, Real Housewives of New York City. The cake was fully baked by the time I got the show, you guys just got a piece of it. Now I want to give you the full cake.
E!: Well, can you tell us a little about how and where you're spending your time these days? I mean you share a lot on your social media, but these days where are you and what's important to you and what are you focusing on?
DM: Well, of course, we've been in the pandemic so I came up to the Berkshires in March [2020]. And then I just sort of ended up staying. So you know the majority of my time, I've been in Blue Stone Manor but what's been great, it couldn't have been a better place to write this book because I'm kind of back to where I ran away from all the things. I did a full circle. So it was a very fortuitous thing to write the book here. And, yeah, now that we've kind of slowly coming out of this, of course I want to change it up because my life is in New York. I'm a New Yorker.
E!: I want to talk about your new look and then the weight loss and what can you tell us about it. Because I said you look great and I didn't even notice the caption, but you look so slim and I just I think people want to know a little bit more about how. I mean we know it's Nutrisystem but I think we want to know a little bit more about how you're doing it.
DM: Well I think it's, you know, this whole last year, it's such a beautiful process of growth. Again, this terrible thing that happened, COVID, you know I was like okay, maybe it's time to stop, look, listen and reinvent, you know? Really take time to dig deep and go back to my roots and get super healthy. I did partner with Nutrisystem, which I was kind of both excited and insulted that they wanted to partner with me. But it was good because I'm not the only one, I think we all went a little nuts during COVID. Also the Berkshires are so about health and wellness and outdoors. It was very easy to do that and I love to cook healthy. I just decided to just become my best self, I really do.
Sometimes when you are on a show or doing any kind of project, you think it's your whole entire life but when you leave it you realize the world's really big. You can take on your old life a little bit and I think COVID really was such a learning curve for all of us, what was important, you know? Spending so much time again with my parents and coming back home after leaving here when I was 18 basically to go college, I never really came back. I went as them as my caretaker and I came home almost becoming the person that sort of looked after them during COVID. I took that job very pridefully.
E!: And when things lift a little bit, are we single and ready to date?
DM: Well, I'm putting out the word and I'm ready, but you know what, I'm waiting until I can do it in person. But yeah, do you have someone available for me?
E!: Is there any possibility we will see you on RHONY again?
DM: Wow, I never say never. And there's always a possibility. This is forevermore, you know, you're a Housewife. It's sort of like a tattoo we all get. And some of us can hide it more than others, some of us put it right out there and say it to the world. But you know what? Let's see how this goes, let's see what they think, and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, I think I had a great six years, don't you?
Make It Nice is out everywhere Aug. 17.