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Jersey Shore fans got to know Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s wild side over the course of the show’s original six seasons. And although many enjoyed seeing Polizzi’s antics in the series, Polizzi was sometimes her own worst critic of her onscreen behavior.

Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi on watching herself on ‘Jersey Shore’

Nicole Polizzi smiling at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards.
Nicole Polizzi | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Even Polizzi sometimes wasn’t too proud of her adventures on Jersey Shore. From shouting matches with her roommates to being arrested on TV, the reality show depicted all angles of Polizzi’s lifestyle at the time. It may have made for some entertaining television, but Polizzi was weary of the way she was portrayed on the TV show.

“If I do something stupid, which is pretty much the whole time, I hate it,” she once told Rolling Stone. “I just hate it. Obviously, they’re only going to put the good stuff in, and the good stuff is us drunk, so all I’m seeing is me drunk and falling down. That’s how I am when I party, but some of the stuff I do is, like, ‘Really, Nicole?’ I look like a freakin’ alcoholic. I’m like, ‘You’re sweating, your makeup is running, you look gross.’ I just look like s***.”

Polizzi also confided that the reality show itself was partially why she and her teammates acted out the way that they did. The pressure of being the stars of their own show was getting to them.

“It messes with your head,” Polizzi said. “That’s why we go crazy. That’s why we fight with each other. That’s why we drink. We’re living in a house for two months with that shit. We can’t have cellphones, TV, radio or the Internet. If the president died, we’d have no idea. There’s no normalcy. It’s just like prison, with cameras.”

Nicole Polizzi once compared ‘Jersey Shore’ to being in jail

Polizzi and her cast made a fortune off of Jersey Shore. On the show, it may have looked like the young cast enjoyed a lot of freedom. But Polizzi asserted that doing the series could be a very restrictive experience.

“You can’t leave without a film crew with you,” she once told V Magazine.

According to Polizzi, the cast and crew couldn’t even go out on their own accord.

“If you want to leave, you have to tell them an hour before so they can get ready. There are no cell phones, no TV, and you can’t read. You can’t write or pass notes,” Polizzi said. “You can’t listen to music or do anything. It’s kind of like being in jail for two months—and people wonder why all we do is drink! It’s because there’s nothing else to do! It passes the time and makes it fun.”

Why Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi wanted to retire from ‘Jersey Shore’

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Years after the original Jersey Shore ended, the show would revisit the old cast in brand new places in their lives with Family Vacation. It would reunite the much older Jersey Shore members, with many of them having their own families. Polizzi would also find herself a part of the new series. But after four reasons, she was ready to walk away from Jersey Shore for good.

“I am not coming back to Jersey Shore [Family Vacation] for a season four, if there is one,” Polizzi said on the podcast It’s Happening with Snooki & Joey. “And there’s a lot of reasons why, but the main reason is really, I’m just like…I just can’t do it anymore.”

She shared that she was uncomfortable with being away from her children. Also, Jersey Shore Family Vacation sometimes encouraged the kind of lifestyle she left behind during her single years.

“And I wanna be home with the kids. I don’t mind a here or there going to a dinner or whatever, but it’s just really hard on me to leave the kids and film the show,” she said.

But somewhere along the way, Polizzi must’ve had a change of heart. The star ended up sticking with the series as it goes into its 7th season.