Mob Wives creator Jennifer Graziano regrets not knowing Hector Pagan Jr was working for the DEA
Looking back, says Jennifer Graziano, the creator and producer of “Mob Wives,” she missed one big clue that her sister’s ex-husband was not a model mobster.
Last summer, when the hit reality series was taping a second season, she asked Hector “Junior” Pagan if he really wanted to be on the show as a regular cast member.
“It’ll ruin you on the street,” she recalls telling him.
“ ‘No,’ he told me. ‘I don’t care about that anymore. I want to be in it.’
“I should have known then that something was wrong,” Jennifer said this week.
What was wrong was that Pagan — a member of the family for more than 20 years — was secretly working for the Drug Enforcement Agency, wearing a hidden microphone and taping conversations with her father, the reputed mob captain Anthony Graziano.
These days in the Grazianos’ world, finding out someone close to you is a government informant — a rat — is not unusual.
What is unusual — unprecedented, really — was that TV cameras recorded the whole thing: the betrayal, the arrest, the howling shock.
Reality TV watchers always want to know: Is it real?
Well, right now on “Mob Wives,” it cannot get more real.
The show this Sunday (8 p.m., VH1) is the last of three episodes that recorded what happened last November when Renee Graziano — Jennifer’s older sister and the show’s most memorable character — finds out that Junior was, in fact, working to save himself from a long prison sentence by putting her father back in jail.
When her father was arrested, “VH1 called me right away and asked me if I wanted to shut it down” — meaning stop filming — Jennifer said.
“I told them, ‘No, keep going.’ I would never shut down.”
Renee, too, was ‘full-speed ahead,” said Jennifer. It was, says the producer, what they’d signed up for.
On Tuesday, Anthony Graziano, 71, pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal court to attempting to collect an illegal debt. He faces another three years in prison when sentenced this summer.
Renee and Jennifer did not go this week. Too much media attention at the courthouse, she says.
No one has seen Junior Pagan since he turned himself in to police last fall, Jennifer says — though there is plenty of footage of him from before then.
Jennifer cuts the pictures into the show whenever anyone mentions his name.
“But I don’t like to talk about him, and I don’t like to think about him,” the producer says.
“He used to tell me that he was my brother,” she says. “And, it turns out, he didn’t care about me — and he sure didn’t care about Renee.”
Last summer, when the hit reality series was taping a second season, she asked Hector “Junior” Pagan if he really wanted to be on the show as a regular cast member.
“It’ll ruin you on the street,” she recalls telling him.
“ ‘No,’ he told me. ‘I don’t care about that anymore. I want to be in it.’
“I should have known then that something was wrong,” Jennifer said this week.
What was wrong was that Pagan — a member of the family for more than 20 years — was secretly working for the Drug Enforcement Agency, wearing a hidden microphone and taping conversations with her father, the reputed mob captain Anthony Graziano.
WAILING MOLL: “Mob Wives” showed the moment Renee (above) finds out her ex-husband betrayed her family. Producer Jennifer Graziano, her sister (below), told VH1 to keep the cameras rolling.
What is unusual — unprecedented, really — was that TV cameras recorded the whole thing: the betrayal, the arrest, the howling shock.
Reality TV watchers always want to know: Is it real?
Well, right now on “Mob Wives,” it cannot get more real.
The show this Sunday (8 p.m., VH1) is the last of three episodes that recorded what happened last November when Renee Graziano — Jennifer’s older sister and the show’s most memorable character — finds out that Junior was, in fact, working to save himself from a long prison sentence by putting her father back in jail.
When her father was arrested, “VH1 called me right away and asked me if I wanted to shut it down” — meaning stop filming — Jennifer said.
“I told them, ‘No, keep going.’ I would never shut down.”
Renee, too, was ‘full-speed ahead,” said Jennifer. It was, says the producer, what they’d signed up for.
On Tuesday, Anthony Graziano, 71, pleaded guilty in Brooklyn Federal court to attempting to collect an illegal debt. He faces another three years in prison when sentenced this summer.
Renee and Jennifer did not go this week. Too much media attention at the courthouse, she says.
No one has seen Junior Pagan since he turned himself in to police last fall, Jennifer says — though there is plenty of footage of him from before then.
Jennifer cuts the pictures into the show whenever anyone mentions his name.
“But I don’t like to talk about him, and I don’t like to think about him,” the producer says.
“He used to tell me that he was my brother,” she says. “And, it turns out, he didn’t care about me — and he sure didn’t care about Renee.”
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