Dorinda Medley Is Ready to Share All Her Secrets With Fans (and Daughter Hannah)

If you think you know Dorinda Medley, you have no idea. The Real Housewives of New York City alum is now ready to share even more of her life with fans. Later this year, she'll release her book, Make It Nice, and in it, she recently told The Daily Dish, she isn't holding back... in true Dorinda fashion.

"I feel like 2020 was a great year to go inward. You know, write this book, be back at Blue Stone Manor, kind of sit still, sit down, and just sort of, you know, stop all the madness for a while. And really just go quiet. And I’ve got to tell you it was, although COVID was terrible, it was really a great time to be peaceful, re-think, re-center, and kind of relive my childhood. I started off as Dorinda Cinkala from Great Barrington. And now Dorinda Medley back in Great Barrington at Blue Stone Manor writing my book. So it was really kind of fun, and I’m hoping that 2021, you know, seems like [we're] loosening up a little bit, and, you know, this vaccine’s gonna kick in and hopefully I can get out there and get on a good book tour and meet people again," she said. "I miss meeting people."

And, Dorinda promises that there are plenty of moments in her life you haven't learned about yet, even after she shared her life with viewers for six seasons.

"What’s interesting is people think when you’re on the show they know you. And it is you, to a point. But remember I started [on RHONY] at 50 years old. I was already married, divorced, a single mom, you know, [lived in] London, Hong Kong. Married again, widowed, raised a daughter. I’ve had Blue Stone Manor since 2005. So it’s very interesting. They kind of started off where my life — I wasn’t created on Bravo," she said. "You know what I mean? I kind of like came in sort of a fully formed human being. And then just sort of shared parts of my life. I even find it interesting when people come to Blue Stone Manor. [They go], 'It looks so different than it looks on the show,' because usually it’s concentrated in the living room or in the fish room or in the dining room. But they don’t see the house as a whole. [In the book,] I think people will get to know me a little better. Because, although you’ve learned, OK, yeah, she lived in London, but what does that mean? I mean, I almost lived in London a decade [during] a huge part of my life where I was married and raised Hannah 'til she was seven. And at a really crucial time where I was a young girl that moved there, and [I] was going to live there forever, if I hadn’t gotten divorced and things. So yes, you hear I lived in London, but you really didn’t live with me through London. You know what I mean?"

This new project will change all that and take fans inside her life like never before. Turns out, though, that working on the book was also a journey for Dorinda.

"I’ve forgotten a lot of the stuff. We don’t really think about ourselves as Dorinda at 21 or Dorinda at 18 or Dorinda as a little girl or Dorinda when she was first married. And that’s been really interesting. It was a great process. And I did it by sort of literally going to my mom and dad’s house and pulling out every photo album. Every yearbook. Every wedding album. Thankfully, there’s only two so far, but you never know. Stranger things have happened," she joked, adding, "And just sort of looking at myself and saying who is that? Who is that woman? Because we do change so much as women. We evolve and learn and make our mistakes and have our successes. But with change, you get a little more colorful and a little more different. And a little more savvy. Some things you are happy about, some things you aren’t happy about. But it’s OK, because it’s part of a bigger story. What I found very interesting is not only had I forgotten about a lot of them, but Hannah [Lynch, my daughter] really didn’t know about a lot of them. 'Cause Hannah thinks I start[ed], just like Bravo people think I started with Bravo, Hannah thinks I started with her."

With Dorinda literally ready to start a new chapter in her life, she will briefly return to TV. She is set to make a cameo in the upcoming Season 9 of Million Dollar Listing New York (check out a preview for the season below). As for her future on TV once that airs, she said, "Well, you never know, right? You never know. Every year’s a new thing."

Still, she has nothing but love for her stint on the small screen. "I think that my time on the show was good. I was good at it, and I think people enjoyed it. And now, you know, you got to try new things, right? Keep trying. Keep moving," she said, joking later on in the interview, "So don’t worry, I’m still dancing on tables; you just don’t see it anymore. That has never stopped, and that will never stop until, until I break a hip, that will keep going."

Your First Look at Season 9 of Million Dollar Listing New York