Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi claims a Jersey Shore producer told police to arrest her on the beach for public intoxication while cameras rolled in the summer of 2010.
Polizzi, 36, recalled the infamous moment on the Wednesday, August 28, episode of the podcast “Therapuss With Jake Shane,” saying that she had “started to black out when the cops were handcuffing me” and shared a “little secret” from behind the scenes of the hit MTV reality series, which aired from 2009 to 2012.
“Those cops weren’t on shift for the town,” Polizzi told host Jake Shane. “They were on shift from production to make sure they are protecting us from crazy people. … So I don’t even think it’s legal because they weren’t working for the town, but I watched the video back and one of the producers said, ‘Just arrest her.’”
On July 30, 2010, Polizzi was arrested and booked in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and criminal annoyance. That September, charges were dropped and she was fined $500 and ordered to do two days of community service.
Months later, MTV aired the drama in an episode of Jersey Shore called “Where’s the Beach?” in which Polizzi drank through her work shift at the Shore Store following a night of partying with her castmates.
“I woke up that day and I was drinking nonstop,” Polizzi said on the “Therapuss” podcast. “So you know when you wake up and you feel like the shakes are coming? You’re like, ‘I’m going to s–t, I’m going to throw up, but I have to be on camera and I have to go [to] this shift,’ so I woke up still in my party dress with my blanket on walking to my shift.”
Her boss, Danny Merk, had told her, “Oh, you’re late, you’re going to get fired.”
When she reported to her job, she consumed Four Loko, a Long Island iced tea and a beer, which she chugged to ward off “the shakes.”
“I was like, ‘I can’t do this,’” she recalled. “So that’s when I ran. I just ran to the bar. I took shots just to start feeling better and then I just didn’t stop. I felt good, I was like, ‘I’m not going to go back to work.’ I was meeting all these random people. I think I made out with an old man. … It was a nightmare, but I had a great time.”
She continued, “I knew the beach was right there, but my drunk self was like, ‘How do I get on the beach?’ … Because there’s only a certain amount of entries to get on the beach. I couldn’t find them anywhere, so I was like, ‘Where’s the beach? How do I get on the beach?’ And the guy’s like, ‘Right there,’ and I’m like, ‘I know, moron. How do I get on the beach?’”
Flash-forward 14 years: Polizzi is mom to son Lorenzo, 11, daughter Giovanna, 9, and son Angelo, 4, with husband Jionni LaValle, whom she met while filming Jersey Shore in 2012. The couple married two years later. She currently appears on the spinoff Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.
