Why Jersey Belle is Not Continuing
Many Americans first met the loud, funny, outspoken Jaime Primak Sullivan in the 2014 Bravo docu-series "Jersey Belle," which followed the Freehold Township-bred entertainment publicist as she navigated life in an upscale Alabama suburb — with the help of Southern-belle friends she'd made there. This fish-out-of water story followed her marriage to the area's "most eligible bachelor."
Now, Sullivan has written a sort of follow-up book to that show — "The Southern Education of a Jersey Girl: Adventures in Life and Love in the Heart of Dixie." She's looking forward to signing it at the Barnes & Noble in the hometown both she and Bruce Springsteen share.
"When I come home, it's like I feel alive again. I feel all of my memories are there. I miss that terribly. I miss freestyle music. It is the soundtrack of my youth and nobody where I live now has any idea what it is. [And] I miss the food," says Sullivan, singling out pizza and bagels especially. "And to be honest, I miss the people who, when you say 'Bruce,' don't say 'Bruce who?'…People in Alabama go, 'Bruce, who?' How do you answer that?"
Despite some homesickness, Sullivan has grown roots in Dixie, because of her coterie of belles, and more importantly, her beloved husband, lobbyist Michael Sullivan, and their three young children. (And yes, even because of the mother-in-law, Carole, who took a good while to warm to her.)
She decided to write the book, she says, as "sort of an ode to the South." "With 'Jersey Belle,' we were only able to take the parts of my experience with the South that had a lot of humor and sort of weave them through the fish-of-out-water concept of the show," Sullivan says. "And I felt that so much of what I learned about life and love, especially, and about myself, had been learned below the Mason-Dixon. I felt like there were so many incredible lessons, and I just didn't feel like I was able to express that in the TV show."
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Then, too, about a year and a half ago, she started a daily digital series #cawfeetawk, which has really taken off. It has a global-audience and 91 percent of its fan base are women. And through that, she learned that many women had questions for her, especially about the 39-year-old's long-brewing romance with Michael Sullivan, who is 13½ years her senior. (One example: "Well, why did Michael wait nine months to kiss you?") "I thought, I can't do it all on #cawfeetawk… I just really wanted the opportunity to flesh out some of the lessons that I learned," she says.
Sullivan, who wrote the book with Eve Adamson, also wanted to dispel some of the broad-brush views that many Northerners have of the South — and she once had.
"My hope is that people read this book and go, 'Oh, we can, despite our differences, find the common thread, especially amongst women,'" says Sullivan, who discovered that despite their differences (she favored Adidas shell tops and used profanity while the belles wore pearls and were "polished and well put together" — they shared a common goal: wanting to grow as people.
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Sullivan is aware that many Southerners also hold negative stereotypes about Jersey.
Not long ago, at a #cawfeetawk event in the Garden State that drew 300 women, she says, "So many of them said to me, 'Thank you for showing the world and the country that women from New Jersey could be kind and funny and warm and accommodating and all of these things, that we're not all 'Jersey Shore' and Jersey 'Housewives,' because just like the South gets frustrated that people think they're all Honey Boo Boo, the North gets frustrated that [people think] we're all Teresa from 'The Housewives.'"
Sullivan is also working on a Facebook original comedy series, also called The Southern Education of a Jersey Girl," that will have her exploring different Southern experiences (alligator farms, NASCAR, the history of the Kentucky Derby, the banjo tune from "Deliverance") and taking viewers along on the journey.
How has living in the South changed her?
"I no longer feel that I need to fight every battle that comes to my door," she says. "I was always quite polarizing myself. I was loud, I was aggressive. I needed to be the center of attention. I was that typical Jersey girl, right? But now I feel like I have been able to keep the best parts of my home state and shed some of those stereotypes."
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As Sullivan chats on the phone, her children — daughters Olivia, 8, and Charlie, 5, and son Max, 7 — can be heard in the background. "The have two volumes — loud and louder," jokes Sullivan, who is proud that they instantly recognize the distinctive "a whoa whoa, a whoa whoa" opening bars to "Livin' on a Prayer."
"All my kids go, 'Mom, it's Bon Jovi. No matter where we are, no matter what we're doing, my children love Bon Jovi," Sullivan says. "To me, it's important that my children have some experience that I had. So, I'm raising Southern babies who say, 'Ma'am' and 'Sir," but they also know their Bon Jovi."
BOOK SIGNING
WHO: Jaime Primak Sullivan
WHAT: "The Southern Education of a Jersey Girl: Adventures in Life and Love in the Heart of Dixie."
WHEN: 7 p.m. Wednesday Aug. 3, Barnes & Noble, 3981 U.S. Highway 9, Freehold.
Source: https://www.app.com/story/entertainment/books/2016/08/02/jersey-belle-returns-freehold/87976930/
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