Growing up Gotti on national TV

By Colleen Long
Associated Press

Mob relations aside, don't mess with Victoria Gotti.

Victoria Gotti is a mob-family scion who's making her mark as a celebrity gossip columnist and now a reality TV star. "The Sopranos" does a lousy job of portraying Italian-American women, she says. Associated Press

She is the author of five books, a columnist at the celebrity publication Star and is starting her own magazine, Red Carpet, where celebrities will write articles about their lives.

She's confrontational, quick-witted and isn't afraid to speak her mind no matter who she's talking to. Then again, she IS the daughter of deceased mob boss John Gotti.

"Look, I loved my father and I love my family," she told the Associated Press. "But this is my life. I don't represent anyone else, it's about me and my children, and I want to make sure they do good in their lives."

Gotti and her sons are the subject of the new reality show "Growing up Gotti," which premieres tonight. She said she did the show to clear up talk that she's "the Godmother" or that her family is the real-life Sopranos.

"I'm tired of everybody labeling us as the 'first mob family,' " she said. "I have three young boys that have their own paths in life chosen."

Gotti said growing up in the spotlight, as a member of an infamous family, made it a bit easier to have the show's cameras there. Her name, too, has helped her as a gossip columnist.

"A lot of celebrities out there are just as curious about me, having read stories about me," she said.

"I will say this: It's really disappointing when you work with someone so closely, and in the end a situation that you think you're doing to help them and their client blows up in your face because of their change of mind and change of heart," Gotti said.

She also got into some controversy for reporting in May that Ryan Seacrest's talk show would go off the air.

"The irony of that story is a few weeks later, the report shows up in (the New York Post's) Page Six that it's going to be canceled, after his people told my editor over and over again his show wasn't going to be canceled, and was even being renewed next season," she said.

The show was officially axed on Tuesday.

Gotti says she's careful with her stories because she knows what it feels like to be the target of false information. But she says celebrities forfeit some of their rights to privacy.

"I feel mine was given away for me many, many years ago," she said. "I didn't have a say."

She said she hadn't yet spoken to her imprisoned brother John Jr. since he was indicted last week on charges of plotting the kidnapping and attempted murder of talk-show host Curtis Sliwa in 1992. "I haven't talked to him, I don't know what's happening and so I can't really say anything," she said.

Her TV show is a weird glimpse into the family. John Gotti's picture sits on a table in the foyer. In the first episode, her brother Peter drops by for dinner as she's telling her teen sons, Carmine, John and Frank, about going on a blind date. No one's happy about it.

It turns out the date, a bald guy named Ed, is less than perfect. He hints that she's spoiled, and that she's spoiled her kids.

"I'll give you a thousand dollars if you take him to a ditch somewhere and roll him in," she jokes afterward to the limo driver.

In the interview, Gotti said she doesn't watch "The Sopranos," and had turned down repeated requests from writers asking her about the show.

"I just find it offensive," she said. "Forget the mob stuff, it's the way the women walk around cracking gum and talking about trivial nonsense. Italian women are stunning and cultured, and they're smart. It doesn't portray them like that."

And just about every time Tony Soprano whacks someone, she gets a call from a reporter asking her what she thinks of it.

"It's a show, remember?" she scoffed. "It's not real."