The cast of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation has Ronnie Ortiz-Magro’s back. The MTV stars opened up exclusively to Us Weekly about their costar’s drama with the mother of his child, Jen Harley, and how it plays out on the upcoming season of the show.
“It puts us in a weird position, you know, when your friend has somebody and you see that significant other’s treating them bad, you’re like, you have to like this person because they’re going to be back with them, that’s how we are with her,” Paul “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio told Us in studio on Wednesday, August 22. “She’s treating him like this, we have to like like her, if he likes her. It’s just a weird situation, but it’s not for us to really like, it’s for him. We support Ronnie. 100 percent.”
Jenni “J-Woww” Farley agreed, adding, “I always say, ‘If Ron likes her, we like her.’ Whatever emotion he’s on.”
Us Weekly broke the news in June that Ortiz-Magro and Harley, who share 4-month-old daughter Ariana, got into a physical altercation in Las Vegas while filming season 2 of the Jersey Shore revival. Fans saw their first glimpse of footage of the fight in a supertease for the season released on Wednesday.
At the end of June, the on-off couple got into another fight in a car, which resulted in Harley’s arrest for domestic violence after Ortiz-Magro was briefly dragged by the moving vehicle. A source told Us at the time that “Jen was driving so erratically that three out of her four tires were flat.” The charges were later dropped “due to insufficient evidence,” per the County District Attorney’s Office.
“We tried everything, it was hard. We got drug into it, literally, he got dragged by the car. We were there for comic relief,” DelVecchio said. “We gave him resources, everything we need to do to get him right because he’s our brother.”
Farley added: “Do you give him a shoulder to cry on, do you give him tough love?”
Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino and Vinny Guadagnino also weighed in the situation.
“We are trying to support him in what he was going through, but it changed a lot during the season,” Sorrentino explained.
“I know they work on it, themselves, he was mentioning therapy,” Guadagnino added. “So hopefully that’s all working out.”
Jersey Shore Family Vacation season 2 premieres on MTV Thursday, August 23, at 8 p.m. ET.
