Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino engaged to girlfriend Lauren Pesce

The hard-partying cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore, who popularized the narcissistic dream life of GTL (gym, tan, laundry), and who were always DTF (down to um, never mind), may be gone from the airwaves, but most of them have managed to eek out far more than their 15 minutes of fame. From spin-off shows to brand-building to a federal courtroom, this wild bunch has continued to be a spectacle long after leaving Seaside Heights, N.J. Here’s where the cast of Jersey Shore is today. hat The Jersey Shore Cast Looks Like Today
Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino
Of all the Jersey Shore cast members, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino seems to have been the most successful at turning his eponymous show image into a brand. Wasting no time cashing in on his reality TV stardom, Sorrentino landed endorsement deals with Devotion Vodka and GNC, as well as produced and starred in his own workout DVD, recorded a rap song, and partnered on the clothing line Dilligaf (which stands for ‘Does it look like I give a f**k?’), according to
Gazette Review. He also made it a family affair, starring in a reality show, The Sorrentinos, with his mother, sister, and two brothers, who have since parlayed their own fame into a Manhattan real estate business . Mike also brought his brother Marc in on some tanning salons, as well as the management of his various enterprises through the entities Situation Nation, MPS Entertainment, Situation Productions and GTL Management, according to NJ.com . Sounds great, right?
Except Mike and Marc were indicted in 2014 for tax fraud on the charge of “conspiring to defraud the U.S. and filing false tax returns for the years 2010 through 2012.” Whoops. Mike characteristically shrugged it off by saying, “The situation will sort itself out.” Only years later the case is not only ongoing as of this writing, but new charges were added.
In an August 2017 show called Reunion Road Trip: Return to the Jersey Shore, in which five former castmates got together for a day, Mike claims his tax evasion case should be wrapped up in a month. He also says he’s been sober for 18 months after two stints in rehab and is “looking forward to getting engaged” to his long-term girlfriend, Lauren.
Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi has come a long way from her days of hooking up with almost everyone in the shore house and drunkenly urinating on a nightclub dance floor. Since the show ended, she has maintained a more
consistent television presence than any other cast member with appearances on Dancing With the Stars , The New Celebrity Apprentice , and Snooki & JWoww —the only successful
Jersey Shore spinoff. She also married Jionni LaValle, her boyfriend from the show, had two kids, and even wrote a New York Times bestselling book.
The pint-sized reality starlet has once again teamed up with BFF and Jersey Shore alum Jenni “JWoww” Farley for a web series called
Moms With Attitude. It currently streams on Go90 Awestruck and YouTube and “gives viewers a peek into their new lives as moms,” according to producing partner Complex .
During her appearance on Reunion Road Trip: Return to the Jersey Shore , Polizzi revealed that Mike Sorrentino’s tax troubles led to “everyone getting audited.” However, that dubious claim also came right after she couldn’t remember what day it was, which led to equal confusion over how many birth control pills she had or hadn’t taken that day, so who knows? She also told everyone she got breast implants and outed Farley for getting “injections” in her butt. It was classic Snooki.
Joking aside, Polizzi has made a significant impact on society. In March of 2017, New Jersey Assemblyman John DiMaio introduced legislation seeking “to cap spending of state money for speakers at public universities in New Jersey at $10,000.” What does that have to do with Snooki? Oh, just that she was paid $32,000 by Rutgers University for a speech she gave in 2011 that encouraged students to “study hard but party harder.” USA Today pointed out that Polizzi was paid $2000 more than Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize winning-novelist who gave the commencement address that year. Wow, that little factoid just made this whole thing way more depressing, huh?
Jenni ‘JWoww’ Farley
As previously mentioned, Jenni “JWoww” Farley is now the proud co-star of a web series with her tiny sidekick, Snooki, and their kids. Since there’s apparently a market for watching former reality stars doing things around their houses, JWoww’s got a whole other show with her husband, and former
Jersey Shore flame, Roger Matthews. It’s called Jenni & Roger: Domesticated , and it follows the tanned and tattooed duo through their journeys parenting their two young kids , Meilani and Greyson. The web series is under the Awestruck umbrella, and as of this writing, it has only aired its premiere episode called “Mornings with the Matthews .” In it, the family showcases its morning routine, which includes JWoww declaring, “Sometimes Meilani is a b***h” and Roger making repeated references to how he wishes the couple had more sex. So, it’s already going great is what we’re trying to say.
Farley recently spoke to ET about the constant bullying she has faced online, as well as plastic surgery rumors that have plagued her since her MTV days. “This is how bad it can get, like at the VMAs, someone wrote, ‘You’re a drug addict and your kids should be taken away from you,'” she said, addressing how she recently discovered the joy of turning off the comments on her Instagram.
As far as the plastic surgery rumors go, thanks to Snooki’s admissions on Reunion Road Trip: Return to the Jersey Shore, we now know that JWoww has gotten breast implants, as well as was the aforementioned “butt injections.” But that’s apparently all. She claims she’s had no work done to her face, but she’s open to “non-invasive surgeries and things like that to stay youthful,” which is nowhere near as interesting as her calling her daughter a b***h, which we now realized we should have closed with. Moving on.
Paul ‘DJ Pauly D’ DelVecchio
Out of all of the castmates, Paul “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio was the one who already knew what his post-shore future had in store for him. With his signature Italian flag laptop in tow, the mushroom-coiffed gym rat had his eye on becoming a professional record-spinner. Toward the end of the show’s run, Pauly D signed a record deal with rapper 50 Cent’s G-Note record label, created his own line of headphones, launched a clothing line and tanning lotion brand, and was the first cast member to land a spinoff, The Pauly D
Project, though the show only lasted one season. He ended up making more than $11 million dollars in 2012, the year Jersey Shore ended, according to Forbes, and he has continued to be a mainstay at the hottest clubs ever since.
In 2016, Pauly D found himself on reality TV again on the show Famously Single , where he met his current girlfriend, Aubrey O’Day, a reality star and former singer in the girl group, Danity Kane. In an echo of Pauly D’s classy past, O’Day spilled the beans in one episode about her man’s ” special piercing” and how it “triggers the right spots.” Despite that ironclad indicator of a rock solid relationship, reports circulated in late June 2017 that the couple had called it quits for good, but Pauly D cleared that up—sort of—during Reunion Road Trip: Return to the Jersey Shore. He spoke vaguely of some issues that he and O’Day were working through, apparently in reference to the breakup headlines.
He also revealed that he hadn’t spoken to Mike Sorrentino in five years due to Mike “going to a dark place,” but by the end of the show, they seemed to be thick as thieves once again. Sorrentino even remarked, “I got my best friend back,” apparently in reference to Pauly D.
Vincent Guadagnino
Known as the nice guy of the group, as well as an admitted “momma’s boy,” it was no surprise that when it was Guadagnino’s turn for a spin-off in 2013, he chose to do it from his parents’ Staten Island home and invite basically his whole family onscreen with him. While the premise sounded charming, The Show with Vinny flopped. Variety said it felt like “a week’s sentence to hang in Staten Island, with no TV and all the cool clubs closed.”
Since then, Guadagnino hasn’t been up to much in the public sphere, although he told
Fox News, “Since Jersey Shore I always took improv classes and sketch comedy classes and I always do that underground and just educate myself. I’m a huge comedy nerd. I watch every comedy show and I would love to just do something in comedy one day, whatever that is.”
Thus far, Guadagnino’s comedy dreams have mostly manifested themselves on his Twitter feed, where his greatest muse is The Bachelor . So while he’s waiting for that to take off, he’s gone back to the well with another family-centric show, Vinny & Ma Eat America. As the name denotes, the former fist-pumper travels across the United States with his mother, Paola, and they sample exotic cuisine, including insect-filled tacos and Rocky Mountain oysters. “Everything is a surprise for my mom. She has never been off of Staten Island. She emigrated here when she was 10 years old from Sicily and she never left,” Guadagnino said. So, it’s like Fear Factor crossed with Bizarre Foods starring the real-life cast of The Sopranos. Sounds great.
Sammi ‘Sweetheart’ Giancola
Stop us if this is starting to sound familiar. After the show, Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola launched a range of products , did a bunch of talk show and reality TV appearances, and continues to be a public figure via the mainstream-adjacent route taken by most reality TV stars. She now co-hosts a podcast called Just Sayin’ with Clare Galterio that “features the type of honest and hilarious talk you’re only used to getting from your closest friends.”
The big question, of course, is what happened between her and Ronnie? The pair’s tumultuous relationship on the show was basically the only plot outside of people getting drunk and having questionable sex, so when they announced they were moving in together during the show’s finale, fans were left wanting to know if they’d go the distance. Though preferring to keep her relationship status private, Giancola finally addressed the issue on her podcast (via Inquisitr) in December of 2016, admitting that yes, she had gotten back together with Ronnie, but they had broken up again, for good. “Everybody knows my relationship with Ron so we broke up, obviously in May [2016], because things were not working out and I left. And I will always love Ron and we always had like, he was somebody I was with my whole 20’s but it’s just better off that we’re not together cause it’s really up and down and it was a crazy ride always.”
Giancola was more blunt during a later appearance on Reunion Road Trip: Return to the Jersey Shore , saying Ronnie was not her favorite person, and she does not talk to him. “That door is shut and will remain closed for a long time,” she added. Ouch. Good thing he skipped the reunion, huh?
Ronnie Ortiz-Magro
After Jersey Shore, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro iancola basically walked away from the spotlight. Though he briefly dabbled in the personal branding game with his line of low-cal, pre-mixed adult beverages that was grossly named Smush Cocktails, Ortiz-Magro eventually returned to what he was doing pre-GTL days: real estate. “I have a real estate company back in New York. I flip houses and investment banking and stuff like that,” he told TooFab.
But the lure of fame must have still had a pull on him, since he recently returned to reality TV for the second season of Famously Single. Yep, the same show where Pauly D met the love of his life. In fact, it was Pauly D who reportedly convinced Ortiz-Magro to do the show, despite the latter’s admission that he felt ” traumatized ” by Jersey Shore. In the course of filming, Ortiz-Magro fell for castmate Malika Haqq, who is famous for being Khloe Kardashian’s best friend, which makes their union a cross-pollination of reality TV worlds we’re not sure anyone was ready for. (Think Rob Kardashian with a blowout and rocking an Ed Hardy tee. No one wants that. No one.)
Season 2 of Famously Single hasn’t even aired yet, but Ortiz-Magro has already told E! News that he and Haaq are no longer together, so we’ll consider that a bullet dodged. Unfortunately for Ortiz-Magro, it also means rumors that he’s still secretly pining for Giancola have already begun. You were out, Ron, and you let them pull you back in. Why?
Deena Nicole Cortese
While Giancola and Ortiz-Magro had the most volatile relationship on the show, Deena Nicole Cortese, who joined the series after Angelina Pivarnick’s Season 2 exit, maintained a relationship with her boyfriend, Christopher Buckner, throughout the whole show. Soon after the end of Jersey Shore , the two appeared together on Couples Therapy, but they must have overcome whatever issues they were having because they got engaged.
Outside of a few appearances on Snooki & JWoww , Cortese hasn’t done any other TV work. She’s fairly active on Instagram and even advertises a management company to contact “for bookings” in her Twitter profile, so we assume she’s still getting paid to just show up at events. Not bad work if you can get it. Other than that, not much else is known about what Cortese’s daily life, but hopefully, she and Bucker can continue to be the anti-SamRon.
Angelina Pivarnick
Though she was only on the show for two seasons, the self-described “Kim Kardashian of Staten Island” was certainly memorable. Angelina Pivarnick actually fled the shore twice, the second time for good following an argument with Snooki over hooking up with the same guys. Pivarnick launched a quasi-acting career that included a brief stint as a
TNA wrestler and a single appearance on the ABC FBI drama Quantico.
It turns out Pivarnick’s true passion was helping people, because in July of 2016, she graduated from the FDNY’s EMT school. “All smiles today while I graduated and became part of one of the biggest families in the world. The FDNY. The last three months were hard but I did it!!!” she posted on her Instagram (via InsideJersey ). She also had a pretty big month in September 2016, getting engaged to boyfriend Louie Gero and returning to catfighting with Snooki about lip injections. “It’s funny how she goes and gets her lips done at the same exact place that I got mine done. Yeah, so now all the times on [Jersey Shore] she used to call me ugly, now she’s trying to look like me,” Pivarnick told
inTouch Weekly . Maybe she’s mad because her fuller lips serve a practical purpose, like making CPR more effective, whereas Snooki’s are purely for vanity? We know it’s a stretch, but we’re really trying to hang on to the concept that Pivarnick has become a selfless person here.