It’s been 15 years since Jersey Shore was released on MTV – and a lot has certainly changed since then.
Jersey Shore stars Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, Jenni ‘Jwoww’ Farley, Angelina Pivarnick, Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino, and Vincent ‘Vinny’ Guadagnino took a walk down memory lane as they sat down with DailyMail.com to reflect on their time in the show.
During their chat, Polizzi laid bare the difficulties of participating in the final season of the show while she was pregnant.
The reality star was expecting her first child with her then-fiancé, Jionni LaValle, when the season six was filmed in 2011. Her son Lorenzo Dominic LaValle was born in August 2012.
While speaking exclusively with DailyMail.com, Polizzi admitted that it was not easy for her to star in the MTV series while she was gearing up to become a mother… especially because it was ‘unplanned.’
‘I came into season six pregnant,’ Polizzi recalled. ‘It was not planned, like… I wasn’t ready for it.
‘Obviously I was excited to be a mom and everything [but] that changed my entire perspective on life.’
The cast also reflected on their legendary contributions to the world of reality TV as well as all the growth they’ve had since they first stepped foot into the Shore House all those years ago.
Jersey Shore stars Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, Jenni ‘Jwoww’ Farley, Angelina Pivarnick, Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino, and Vincent ‘Vinny’ Guadagnino spoke with DailyMail.com
During their chat, Polizzi laid bare the difficulties of participating in the final season of the show while she was pregnant
Farley said that the show ending when it did couldn’t have been more perfectly timed.
‘It was like a full-circle moment where [I thought], “Where do we go from here? Everyone’s growing up,”‘ she said.
‘We didn’t have the family dynamic that we do now then, so I felt like that was the perfect time to end because everyone was kind of like… branching off.’
After the show ended, Polizzi and Farley went off to do a spin-off together called Snooki & Jwoww, featuring their day-to-day endeavors living together in New Jersey.
Then soon after, the Jersey Shore cast reunited to begin shooting Jersey Shore Family Vacation – a show that’s now in it’s eighth season.
Farley contributes the cast’s ability to come back and spend so much time together to the fact that they cultivate their relationships independently outside of what goes on on-screen.
‘I think it’s everything outside of the show that makes us close,’ she said.
‘Here filming – that’s fine. But it’s really our day-to-day lives that keeps the closeness and the realness.
Sorrentino told DailyMail.com that coming back to Family Vacation felt like a big moment of growth for him
‘So when we film, we’ll fight for each other not with each other.’
That’s one of the things that keeps fans coming back to the Jersey Shore family.
Sorrentino told DailyMail.com that coming back to Family Vacation felt like a big moment of growth for him.
‘That’s when I was forced to embody a new version of myself and sort of like write my own comeback,’ he shared.
‘My whole comeback has been documented on the Jersey Shore Family Vacation series… it’s very sentimental to me.’
He’s of course referring to his journey to sobriety, which began in 2015 after he admitted himself into rehab.
But aside from trading in alcohol for Red Bulls, Diet Coke, and chicken ‘tendies,’ he maintains that he’s still pretty ‘Jersey Shore.’
‘Not much has changed, I’m still Mike The Situation… now I’m just 10 years clean and sober and a very proud father,’ he said.
The TV personalities also revealed whether or not one of their famous catchphrases still applies to their life now, over a decade on.
During their time in the show, the cast members often used the acronyms GTL – which stands for Gym, Tan, Laundry – to describe their daily routine.
It was a recurring joke on the show that the stars’ days would only consist of working out, tanning, and doing laundry, so the GTL lifestyle was created.
Now, Polizzi told DailyMail.com that she doesn’t live that way anymore. Instead, she said she likes to subscribe to a GKM lifestyle: ‘Gym, Kids, and Martinis.’
As for Farley, she joked that two aspects of GTL are still a huge part of her life – going to the gym and tanning – but added that she would replace the L with a K to represent her kids.
Pivarnick, who has had several fallouts with the cast over the course of the show, told DailyMail.com that her version of GTL is now ‘God,’ ‘Time for myself,’ and ‘Lessons.’
Guadagnino revealed that rather than going to the gym he prefers running, but he said tanning is still a consistent activity in his life.
‘I don’t really have a lot of clothes so, I don’t have to do laundry,’ he added.