Exclusive: ‘Jersey Shore’ executive producer dishes from Miami Beach

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The ‘Jersey Shore’ cast has left Seaside Heights for South Beach, and that’s not all that’s changed.

For one thing, Snooki’s poof is a couple of inches bigger than it was last year.

And The Situation, while still proud of his rock-hard abs, is finding himself in a sticky situation, considering the competing abdominal situations on Ocean Drive.

In an exclusive phone chat from the set Friday, executive producer SallyAnn Salsano said that Snooki ‘has a few streaks but the poof is very much alive and almost a couple of inches bigger than it was last year, oddly enough. With her poof, she’s almost standing at 5 feet right now.’

The Situation, she said, is coping with living in the land of models and beautiful people.

‘According to him, he’s in the best shape of his life,’ Salsano said. ‘He’s never looked so good. It is kind of funny. It’s definitely a bit of a different crowd but it doesn’t faze them at all. These kids are who they are. They’re confident and they’re proud of who they are. For them, it’s all systems a-go.’

The second season of ‘Jersey Shore’ began filming on South Beach on Monday and will premiere on July 29 at 10 p.m. And everyone is back: Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino, Paul ‘DJ Pauly D’ DelVecchio, Jenni ‘JWoww’ Farley, Sammi ‘Sweetheart’ Giancola, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, Vinny Guadagnino and Angelina Pivarnick. But the season will end on the Jersey Shore.

Asked what brought the gang that introduced ‘Gym, Tan, Laundry’ into the pop-culture lexicon, to the Sunshine State, to live at the Metropole Hotel on Collins Avenue, Salsano replied:

‘Dude, it’s cold on the East Coast. As a girl that grew up in Long Island, this is what everybody does. The Irish, the Italians, the Jews, we’re all like birds. We migrate south for the winter. It’s 32 degrees back there today. It was the coldest winter ever there. It’s not beach weather. The Jersey Shore is closed down for the winter.’

On the streets of South Beach, the cast is ‘up to their same shenanigans and we’re learning more and about them,’ Salsano said. ‘I think the more that people learn about them, the more they’re going to love them.’

But their popularity and previous shenanigans (read: brawls and a lawsuit) have posed some challenges. Salsano confirmed a RadarOnline report that some South Beach nightclubs have not allowed them to film.

‘They did it to us in Jersey too,’ she said. ‘Some people just don’t want to do it. But it’s the same clubs that have been paying the kids to come and promote their clubs off-season. People are just weird. Sometimes these clubs think it’s cooler to say no.’

Because of the production challenges associated with the show’s popularity, Salsano had to increase her staff and become more organized, she said.

‘It’s crazy but I think the media frenzy is going to die down because the stuff doesn’t happen in the street,’ she said. ‘It’s not like we’re putting together a puppet show. It happens behind closed doors. At some point, the press is going to die down because there’s so many shots TMZ can use of them walking down a street or driving a car. We shoot 400 hours to for every one-hour episode. It’s not that entertaining for 400 hours, you know what I mean?’

‘It’s definitely more challenging but in the end the kids are still the same kids,’ she added. ‘So the kids are just doing their thing whatever it is that they do. It’s harder on us. I don’t think it’s harder on them.’

--Maria Elena Fernandez (follow me on Twitter @writerchica)

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