The return of the OG meatball? Paul “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio thinks it’s possible that Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi will return to Jersey Shore Family Vacation, more than one year after she announced she was exiting the series.
“We talked to her every single day, even when we’re filming,” DelVecchio, 40, told Us Weekly exclusively on Tuesday, January 5, while promoting new episodes of Revenge Prank with DJ Pauly D and Vinny. “She has, like, super FOMO [fear of missing out]. She’s in the loop on everything. So, to me, it feels like she didn’t quit. She’s there!”
The DJ added, “I just hope that she comes back, and I think she will. I don’t know. We’ll see. I think she will.”
Polizzi, 33, announced her decision to quit the reality show in December 2019. “I have to do what’s best for me at the moment, and I am retiring from Jersey Shore,” the Snooki & JWoww alum, who shares children Lorenzo, 8, Giovanna, 6, and Angelo, 19 months, with husband Jionni LaValle, said on her “It’s Happening With Snooki & Joey” podcast at the time. “I hate being away from the kids. I don’t like partying three days in a row. It’s just not my life anymore.”
During the season 3 finale, which aired in June 2019, she told her costars she was throwing in the towel after a fight broke out at Angelina Pivarnick‘s wedding. “I’m quitting, I think,” she told Deena Nicole Cortese. “I think this is it. This is not fun. … I just love my roomies, always. Jersey Shore is literally my life. I never would have met my best friends, so the fact that it has to end like this, for me, it really sucks.”
In January 2020, the A Shore Thing author detailed the impact filming has on her family. “Any time I say ‘Mommy’s going to work,’ [Lorenzo is] like, ‘Mom, you cannot leave me again like you did. I was so upset. I don’t want you leaving,’” she told Us. “So now every time I say I’m leaving for work, he goes, ‘How long are you leaving?’ It kind of gives him anxiety now. I can’t do that anymore. They are definitely happy that I’m not going to be leaving for days on end now.”
In December, a source told Us that Polizzi has “moved on” from the show and has been focusing on her store in New Jersey, The Snooki Shop, as well as raising her children.
Revenge Prank with DJ Pauly D and Vinny returns to MTV Thursday, January 7, at 9 p.m. ET after a new episode of Jersey Shore Family Vacation.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
