Gia Giudice Is Right Where She Belongs

Three minutes into the 2009 premiere of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Gia Giudice made her reality TV debut in pigtails and silver flip-flops. At 7, she was the quintessential oldest sibling, leading her younger sister Gabriella by the hand from the car toward their dad’s office. For the next 15 years, Giudice was a regular on the show. “I don’t even think I was aware it was a spotlight, but I always loved the cameras,” she says. “We were little divas that my mom raised.”

Giudice, now 25 and without pigtails, is sitting across from me on a couch at Blonde Studios in NoMad, Manhattan, right after her photo shoot. She spent the past few hours embracing her inner diva in full glam — glowing skin, fluttery lashes, and sculpted brows. Even now, her makeup is impressively unsmudged, and her white button-down and black capris are perfectly pressed.

We’re meeting weeks before the premiere of Season 2 of Next Gen NYC. The show follows Giudice — alongside fellow Bravo kids and content creators — as they navigate the drama that comes with living in New York City in their 20s. But Giudice shows none of the nerves you might expect from a young reality star on the cusp of her sophomore season. Then again, she’s got plenty of experience on camera.

Giudice has appeared in every season of RHONJ to date, right up until the series’ 2024 hiatus. Amid all that filming, she graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in criminal justice in 2023 and began studying for the LSAT. But as her influencer career gained traction, she switched gears and was eventually cast in Next Gen.

Over the past year, Giudice has gone back to the beginning to reacquaint herself with the Bravo series that made her family — especially her mom, Teresa Giudice — famous, documenting her journey through the RHONJ episodes (“home videos”) on TikTok. “I never really watched it from the beginning before. But I realized, ‘OK. If I’m binge-watching Salt Lake City, I should start my mom’s,’” she says.

That sting never goes away when you’re watching your family’s trauma back.

Giudice thinks some episodes are “f*cking hilarious,” like the one where her mom took her bra shopping when she was a kid. “I had no boobs, and I wanted a bra so bad,” she says. But others were harder to play back. “Watching it made me realize how much my mom has given to this show. She’s given absolutely everything.”

“Watching those moments, I cry at all of them,” Giudice continues. “That sting never goes away when you’re watching your family’s trauma back.” After watching Season 10, which chronicled her father Joe Giudice’s release from prison, she took a break. “My dad was deported. It was just a lot,” Giudice says. “I was in this mindset where I really thought he was going to come home, even if he had to fight it in front of the Supreme Court.”

She has some regrets about her attitude during that period. “I was very ‘me, me, me.’ It was my senior year of high school. I was so focused on him missing my graduation, my prom, all these milestones. Looking back, that was so selfish of me. My younger sisters — Audriana was a baby and grew up with no dad, and Milania and Gabriella were so young, too — I had so many more years than them.”

I’ve always been the voice of reason in my family.

She might see those moments as self-centered, but amid all the turmoil, her role in the Giudice clan has remained consistent. “I’ve always been the voice of reason in my family,” she says. “It's the classic eldest daughter thing to an extent. It’s also because I’ve gone through a lot in my life where my parents were absent for certain points and I had to step up for my siblings.”

It’s clear that Giudice has an unshakable appreciation for her roots, even as she’s coming into her own. “Over the past year, there have been a lot of milestones in my life that have really molded me into ‘This is Gia Giudice as an individual and as a brand,’ rather than ‘She's a mini Teresa.’ I obviously do not take that as an insult at all; she’s iconic,” she says, “but I wish people could also see who I am separately.”

Since filming the first season of Next Gen, Giudice has taken many strides — from launching her podcast, Casual Chaos (“It’s my baby”), to winning Season 4 of Special Forces (“Everyone thought I was going to be the first one out”). Then, last November, she moved from her family home in Montville, New Jersey, into an apartment of her own in Jersey City. Though the move admittedly pulled on some “heartstrings,” Giudice knew it was time to go, thanks to her Special Forces victory.

She started the challenging series — on which contestants compete in a series of training exercises led by ex-Special Forces operatives — with her mom in tow. Two days in, her mom left without telling her, leaving her with two options: give up or continue solo. She chose the latter and was one of the last recruits standing.

“Special Forces made me realize that I am OK on my own,” she says. “I was really staying home as a security blanket for my family in case they needed me.” Now, her apartment is her “safe space” — even if she still misses her mom’s cooking. “There was literally never a time that I came home as a kid and my mom and her parents weren’t cooking in the kitchen,” she says, pausing, “Sorry, my mom’s actually calling me.” She fires off a quick text: “Two minutes. In a meeting.”

Luckily, Giudice won’t be without her mom’s recipes for long. This summer, she is opening Il Vero, a new restaurant in Westwood, New Jersey, that blends Italian “comfort food” with high-end “lounge vibes.” Her mom, of course, consulted on the decor (“She has insane style”) and the menu. “We are implementing a lot of specials from my mom’s cookbook,” Giudice says. Keep an eye out for her childhood favorite, tagliatelle with ham and peas, plus the same red sauce she grew up eating every Sunday.

I am my biggest critic. So when I watched Next Gen, I saw it as a mirror.

As we talk, Giudice is also prepping for Miami Swim Week, where she walked for White Fox, and for plenty of summer travel (from the Jersey Shore to Japan), all while gearing up for Next Gen NYC Season 2, premiering June 25. Season 1 made waves when it aired last June, but according to Giudice, it’s nothing compared with what’s coming. “Season 2 is so much better than Season 1. It's night and day,” she says. “We all know each other better, so the dynamic is just juicier.”

This season, Giudice refined her approach to her fellow castmates — ditching the mediator role she’s accustomed to in favor of a more laid-back manner. “I am my biggest critic. So when I watched Next Gen, I saw it as a mirror. I looked at the things that I loved about myself and things I didn’t,” she says. Specifically, she felt that her defensiveness toward Ariana Biermann, especially during conflicts with Charlie Zakkour and Ava Dash, went overboard.

Now, her mindset is simple: “Worry about myself, let my friends handle their own battles, and speak when needed.” She hopes this will help people see who she is beyond the drama. “I’m a fun drunk. I like to just go out with my friends. I’m so hardworking, and I bust my *ss every single day. That was lacking in Season 1, but I think that’s a lot of what you’re going to see in Season 2.”

Her boyfriend, Christian Carmichael, will also appear more frequently in the upcoming season — a decision that was “definitely not a no-brainer” for the couple, who have been together since 2020. He wasn’t ready for regular cameos in Season 1, but he gradually grew more comfortable with the idea. “It’s all about meeting your partner where they’re at. That’s something that Christian and I really focused on,” she says. “Now, he’s on Next Gen all the time. Everyone loves him. I can’t go anywhere without them asking, ‘Where’s Christian?’”

It might be hard to understand, but filming really does feel like therapy in a way.

Showing more of their romance on camera also opened up the couple’s dialogue to more meaningful topics. “When you’re filming a show, you are having obviously different conversations than you would just sitting in your living room because you really have to tell your story and express your feelings,” Giudice says. “It might be hard to understand, but filming really does feel like therapy in a way.”

The cameras add a layer of accountability, too. “When you’re having a deep conversation where maybe you would get a little more nasty with each other, now, it's like, ‘OK, we are really talking and really hearing each other.’”

Of course, it helps that Giudice has perfected grace under pressure after spending most of her life with a camera present. Looking ahead, she’s optimistic about her future on reality TV. “I still want to be so open and vulnerable, but I obviously hope that I don’t have to endure some of the really tough challenges that we already had to face,” she says. “My mom always says, ‘I hope that was your hardship and that you don’t have to endure anything that dark or deep again in your life.’ That's what I hope for, too.”

Now, as Giudice returns to center stage on the second season of Next Gen, she considers a different kind of role — that of a Housewife. “I always knew one day it would be Andy [Cohen]’s dream to see that full-circle moment,” she says. “Now that I’m on Next Gen, who knows where it will lead, but maybe I’ll be a Housewife one day.”

Without missing a beat, she offers her Housewives tagline: “I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I guess I was made for this.”