I think our fathers came into this as partners and they will forever go out as partners. I didn’t really have one-on-one experiences with them until our fathers got arrested in 1990 when we would go to the MCC (Metropolitan Correctional Center) in lower Manhattan and visit, and we would see each other on those visits.ĪK: Is there bad blood to this day because of what happened? There were times we went to some parties and we were in the same place. Listen to Karen on the Allison Interviews podcast.ĪK : Since your father worked so closely with John Gotti, as a kid did you and your brother, Gerard, have any type of relationship with the Gotti kids? We are actually dealing with people who are at a place in their lives where they want to tell their story for whatever reason. We’re not sharing Mob secrets and ceremonies. When we reached out to him and started talking, they wanted to share their experiences. I knew of his story and I knew my father was close with him. I knew of the father, William “Wild Bill” Cutolo because he was an underboss. As far as the Cutolo family, I didn’t have a personal relationship with them. I think that sometimes people just want to come out and tell their story for whatever reason. I do believe if they were still in hiding, they would not come out and appear on a reality show, so it didn’t really take a lot of convincing. They have their story of their experiences within the program and what they went through. KG: There is that old myth of what witness protection really is. I always got questions, like, “Oh, was your boyfriend scared to date you?” As a father, if someone was being abusive towards me, he would give him the old dad talk, but he’s not going to go and try to take that person’s life unless he was a threat to me, and then any father goes there.ĪK: How did you convince these different families, especially the ones in witness protection, to be part of a reality television show (Families of the Mafia/MTV)? I don’t want to make this sound like a cliché, but they don’t kill innocent people. But the reality is, that’s what was required when he went to Vietnam, when he was fighting for his country because he believed in it and protected it, the same way he believed in his oath and his life in Cosa Nostra. And when he joined the Mob, he became a soldier in Cosa Nostra, and fought for what he believed in. The way my father described it is, at one time he was a soldier and went to Vietnam and fought for his country, which he believed in. You agree to kill, and you also understand that you can be killed. All those men take an oath to that lifestyle that they understand. Obviously, The Mafia takes that concept to an extreme, but these are philosophical questions that make you stop in your tracks. It’s a controversial question, but is it okay to kill a bad guy? Or is it never okay to kill? How do you differentiate these issues, because so many times in life you’re forced into this position where you have to do something bad in order to do something good. Of course, he played a pivotal role in liberated Europe from the Nazis.
My father is who he is, and he is able to tell his story on this show.ĪK: My grandfather was in World War 2, in the Infantry Division, and his job was to kill the enemy. We’re actually digging deep into these different families and it’s a multigenerational story. Families of The Mafia is a totally different direction.
You don’t have to prove you are on top.” But when you are caught up on a reality show and everybody has their opinion, it fuels its own fire. You have taken life by the horns, and came back home. He said to me, “You coming back to New York is such a bigger presence than you having to argue or fight with women on a show. I don’t think my father liked a lot of the arguing and the fighting on Mob Wives. Even though the men in our lives went out of the house and they were criminals, whatever they chose to do outside the house, when you came home it was family-oriented and traditional. It was the first time we were really addressing the issues publicly, and all the arguing and bickering on that show was not really who I was as a person, like as a mob daughter, or my mother being a “mob wife.” Our life was just different than that. In retrospect, a lot of that show was based off my father’s life and who he was. KG: Mob Wives, especially when it first came out, was the first of its kind, where we were actually saying the word out loud. What’s different about Families of the Mafia, which he appears in? AK: In your 2012 book, Mob Daughter, you say when you were on Mob Wives, your dad, who was in prison at the time, was supportive, but he wasn’t really on board with that show.
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