Snooki finally took to the cover of Us Weekly this week to confirm what we've all been suspecting -- she's pregnant. So why did the pouf-haired reality star lie to "Good Morning America" and others when asked if she was expecting a baby?
The "Jersey Shore" star sat down for numerous press interviews in early February to promote her forthcoming spin-off show with Jenni "JWoww" Farley, and each time denied that she was expecting. But in her pregnancy confirmation interview with Us, she admits that she knew she was pregnant in early January.
"'S--t, I've been drinking!'" was Snooki's first thought when she found out about her baby news, according to the magazine. "I was worried. It was New Year's Eve and we were in Vegas, so I did go crazy."
"All along, Snooki wanted to make money off the announcement and sell the exclusive to a magazine," one tabloid editor tells me. "It's not unusual for stars to do this. Britneys Spears' sister made over $500,000 when she told the story that she was pregnant. But now, times have changed and no one is getting that sort of money anymore. Snooki would only have earned anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 for her story."
But was waiting to sell her story worth lying to her fans?
"We all know that celebrities and their publicists don't always tell the truth," another weekly magazine editor tells me. "For weeks, Jennifer Aniston's people said her marriage to Brad was not in trouble, the same with Jessica and Nick. But what makes this different is it wasn't Snooki's people that were not honest, it was Snooki herself. She was asked directly if she was pregnant and lied."
Asked point-blank on Feb. 2 if she was expecting by Lara Spencer of "Good Morning America," Snooki said, "the rumors said that an insider said something but I never said I was pregnant, so I'm thinking people are thinking I'm fat or something. It's like an insult, kind of ... Being pregnant should be a real thing and a happy thing and I'm not."
From now on, members of the press and the public will have to take everything Snooki says with a meatball-sized grain of salt.