Andrea Giovino Talks Get Gotti, John Gotti Friendship, Michael Franzese, Mob Wives

​The following quotes are excerpts from the latest episode of the Allison Interviews podcast with host and entertainment journalist, Allison Kugel interviewing former organized crime figure, media personality, and interview subject from Netflix’s #1 docu-series, GET GOTTI, Andrea Giovino.
 
This interview delves into Giovino’s mafia past, the contract put out on her life, her friendship with the late John Gotti, the success of the Netflix docu-series, Get Gotti, her fued with Michael Franzese and Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, and her new podcast, The Andrea Giovino Show.

GET GOTTI’s Andrea Giovino goes in on Sammy Gravano and Michael Franzese:
 
“When you talk about this life and change, so Sammy Gravano, they let him out and you see he went right back in, because he formed his own ecstasy ring.  He did that again.  It is very hard for these types of people to change.  Michael Franzese, he was involved in a multimillion-dollar oil [scam] and he got in trouble for that back in the day, which was many guys.  It wasn’t just Michael.  Now Michael has done very well for himself, by I feel he is a fraud again. He’s lying, making like he is this Christian man when a Christian man doesn’t get into bed with a man like Sammy Gravano.  He is the devil.  Michael will have people on his show… I’m a practicing Catholic.  I don’t care how much they pay me.  I’m not going on their shows.  That is the devil.  Then he will come back and maybe say, and I’m just putting it out there, ‘I was thinking I’m going to change him.’  No, you’re not changing anyone. This is to benefit you.  It is all about benefiting [Michael], so how changed is he?”
 
On signing on to the Netflix series, GET GOTTI:
 
“When they first contacted me, I didn’t get back to them right away, and then I wanted to know what it was going to be about, because I’ve done a lot of [these documentaries].  What I liked about [Get Gotti], apart from all the other ones that I’ve done, is that it was so organic with the real people that brought down Gotti.  The prosecutors and the agents, and the whole law enforcement team. They came to me because they wanted to have a woman’s point of view on what he was really like outside of the John Gotti in the streets, and outside of his family.  They just wanted a perspective of someone that knew John Gotti as a friend.  I was a friend.  John Gotti knew me well, and liked me very much. ‘What was he like hanging out with?’  I think that is what they wanted to bring to light, and it was #1 [on Netflix]. People loved it. People loved me, but then you have that small amount of men in this genre that didn’t like it. 
 
On how John Gotti was as a friend, as a man, socially?
 
“They had asked me, ‘How was he? Were you afraid of him?’  He was not like that.  When you were hanging out and sitting with him in a party setting and they are drinking and partying, he wasn’t like someone you could fear.  Than you take him into the next element of business, and yes, he was notorious for that. But he was always polite. If there was cursing in front of me, and all the men were there, [John] would always say, ‘There’s a lady sitting here.’  He was always polite and he was very reserved. John knew I was from the streets. He knew they would be comfortable where I could sit there, and if I overheard something, of course, I’m not going to repeat it. But he was always a gentleman, always.”
 
“John was very charismatic.  He didn’t act like a lot of them. Let’s face it, he would never cooperate. John came from a family of eleven kids, a lot of poverty, and uneducated, same as I came from.  That was the only thing they knew, was to make a living in the streets and to be the man in the streets.  You want to support your family. Was he a good guy?  No, of course he wasn’t a good guy. None of them were good guys.”
 
On Michael Franzese and Sammy Gravano publicly questioning Netflix’s decision to put Andrea in the popular docu-series GET GOTTI:
 
“I never met Michael Franzese.  He was in another family.  I don’t know him.  I was in Manhattan, while he was out on Long Island.  How do you have such a strong opinion about me when you never met me?  Do you think a show like 60 Minutes or a billion-dollar company like Netflix is going to put people on that aren’t authentic and vetted? I think he gets very jealous, and maybe he needed to be in [GET GOTTI]. He wanted to be on it. ”
 
“What I’m learning is that in the YouTube world, when the show hit #1, I was the hot commodity, so it’s like, Andrea Giovino, let me attack her. But you know what is really sickening to me as a mom, as a grandmom, and as a woman?  It turns my stomach, and that is why I wanted to do my own podcast (The Andrea Giovino Show on YouTube); it turns my stomach how they come on and boast about their crimes.  They love what they have done. They sit there like they are still in the streets, or they are still Mob bosses, or how they hit somebody or murdered somebody or extorted somebody. It is all pure evil.” 
 
“I think Michael Franzese was a fraud back then, and he is a fraud now.  If you were a true Christian man and you were really following what a Christian man does, you don’t attack someone the way he attacked me.  You just don’t do that. I’m not someone who is going to allow that.  I’m going to come back at you.”
 
On Andrea’s daughter being on the final season of VH1’s Mob Wives:
 
“Actually, my daughter was on the last season. If my daughter was asked to do it again she probably wouldn’t, because it was so toxic with so many different things. And were they really ‘mob wives?’ No, they were mob daughters.  You had Karen Gravano, Renee Graziano.  They were mostly daughters. There wasn’t really anybody that was a mob wife. A lot of those woman are much younger than me, and I kind of felt bad for a lot of them, because they’ve been through a lot. Drita [D’Avanzo] I really like, and she went through a lot with her husband, Lee, who was a street guy. With  Renee, my brother did time with her husband, but Renee, again, did she know any better? Because of her father, she was picking guys like that. Look at her heartache. It is really sad, because again, that is all you know.”

On Andrea’s 1992 arrest, the contract hit on her life, and forced relocation out of New York:
 
“I was arrested September 9th, 1992, but the deal was made where my husband and my brother would cooperate to release me before the indictment came down, because I was facing 10 years. 
 
I didn’t want to move, but they said I had to move because the government went to my attorney and said there was a contract out on my life, which that was real.  People are still in prison for that. The DEA and the FBI funded my relocation,  but it wasn’t witness protection. Witness protection is U.S. Marshalls.  The DEA and FBI funded the location of the move, to move me safely. I had four kids and they said I would have lost custody of my children, because I was putting them in harm’s way if there is was a contract out on me. So, when people say on social media, ‘She is a rat,’  I never actually ratted, because I didn’t have to. My brother and my husband did that. I don’t like when certain high-profile podcasters say they didn’t rat. In that life, if you went in and just talked to a government agent back then, you are going to be killed. You were considered a rat back then.”
 
About Journalist and Podcast Host Allison Kugel
Allison Kugel is a veteran entertainment journalist and host of the Allison Interviews podcast. Watch and embed the entire interview video with Andrea Giovino @YouTube. Listen to the audio podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Follow Allison Kugel on Instagram @theallisonkugel and at AllisonInterviews.com.
 
SOURCE: ALLISON INTERVIEWS PODCAST