Snooki Announces She's Retiring from Jersey Shore: 'I Just Hate Being Away from the Kids'
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi dropped bombshell news on Friday: she will not be returning to Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.
The 32-year-old reality star announced her decision on the Dec. 6 episode of her podcast It’s Happening with Snooki & Joey, explaining that while she “can’t believe [she’s] saying this,” her choice to step away from the MTV show, which originally premiered in 2009, is “what is best for [her] at the moment.”
“I love you so much, and don’t hate me for my decision,” she said. “I am retiring from Jersey Shore. I am not coming back to Jersey Shore for season 4 if there is one.”
“The main reason is really … I just can’t do it anymore. Literally, leaving my kids to film it is really, really hard on me,” Polizzi — who shares daughter Giovanna Marie, 5, and sons Lorenzo Dominic, 7 and Angelo James, 6 months, with husband Jionni LaValle — went on to explain.
“I try and quit every single day,” she admitted. “I quit every time we film because I just hate being away from the kids. I don’t like partying three days in a row. It’s just not my life anymore. I want to be home with the kids. I don’t mind here and there going to a dinner or whatever, but it’s just really hard for me to leave the kids and film the show.”
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Continuing, she explained that lately, the reality series has “been very drama” and “so serious.”
“For me, I don’t want that and I’m not leaving my kids days on end to film this show when that’s the result of it,” she said. “I just don’t like the turnout of it and I don’t like the person I’m being portrayed as. This is getting a little too much. At 32 years old and with three kids, if I’m doing a reality show I just want it to be fun and light-hearted, and lately it’s not like that and the show is getting so dramatic.”
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Polizzi also revealed that she and her children have been receiving “death threats,” making her experience “just a lot and not something I signed up for with this show.”
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However, the star said this would not be the end of her time on reality TV. “I’m not saying goodbye,” she said. “I just need to move on from the show because I don’t like the direction it’s going in when it comes to the drama and the cattiness.”
PEOPLE is out to MTV for comment.
Aside from her time on Jersey Shore, Polizzi maintained her TV presence with the spinoff Snooki & JWoww, appearances on season 17 of Dancing with the Stars and 2017’s The New Celebrity Apprentice. She released her fifth book, Strong Is the New Sexy: My Kickass Story on Getting My Formula for Fierce, in 2015.
Polizzi and her husband also debuted their renovation show, Nicole & Jionni’s Shore Flip, in 2016.
