Carole Radziwill addressed her name appearing in the Jeffrey Epstein filesbefore “The Real Housewives of New York City” returns for Season 16.
“I mean, I felt like this isn’t something I shy away from,” she said Tuesday at a press event at Wölffer Estate Vineyard in the Hamptons that Page Six attended.
“Me and many, many, many, many more people found their names in these files,” the 63-year-old continued. “And it’s not something I shy away from because I think, really, it’s important to talk about it. It’s important to be transparent.”
Radziwill insisted she “didn’t know anything, as no one, you know, 20 years ago would have known anything.”
The Bravo star also blasted her old pal Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who was convicted for her role in aiding Epstein’s sexual abuse of young girls.
“It’s hard to think that someone you knew that long ago, even called a friend at some point, was a horrible, horrible person doing horrible things,” Radziwill said.
Radziwill went on to call her return to “RHONY” after eight years “an opportunity to talk” about the files.
“There are real victims and survivors that were brave enough to really stand up to these very, very powerful people,” she said.
In the Season 16 trailer, Radziwill is asked by co-star Sai Da Silva if she’s ever been to Epstein’s private island, where the American financier ran his sex trafficking and child abuse operation.
“No,” Radziwill replied, before asking Da Silva, “You think I’m part of an international sex trafficking ring?”
In another scene, someone on the streets of New York shouts to Radziwill, “She’s the one from the Epstein files!”
After Radziwill’s name surfaced in the Epstein files released earlier this year, she told the New York Times in March that she “never knew Jeffrey Epstein.
Radziwill did, however, admit she was friends with Maxwell — who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence — for “five or six years” in the early 2000s, thought she clarified their friendship ended long before Maxwell’s crimes came to the surface.
“Imagine knowing someone… and then they turn out to be, like, a monster,” Radziwill said.
Maxwell was credited as the photographer of Radziwill’s author photo in her 2005 memoir “What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love.”
During her NYT interview, Radziwill insisted Maxwell did not strike her as someone capable of such egregious behavior.
“The thing about her that made it easy for me to spend any time with her at all was that she was very intelligent, she was educated,” Radziwill said.
“If you lined up 10 women, and you asked, like, pick the woman who would be involved in an international sex trafficking ring, it would not be her.”
“RHONY” Season 16 premieres Sept. 8 on Bravo.
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