Sammi ‘Sweetheart’ on Seeing Ronnie Again on ‘Jersey Shore’ (Exclusive)

The sweetest bitch you’ve ever met has reentered the chat.

When Jersey Shore: Family Vacation season 7 premieres on Thursday, Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola will be part of the crew for the first time since 2012.

“I’m happy in all aspects of my life and I was like, ‘You know what, Why not go back?’” Giancola, 36, tells PEOPLE. “I’ve missed it for so long.”

Her castmates Deena Cortese, Pauly “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio, Jenni “JWoww” Farley, Vinny Guadagnino, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino didn’t expect to Giancola to be part of the trip to the mountains. In fact, Giancola had lost touch with her costars over the years.

“It was very nerve-racking,” Giancola admits of walking into the house for the first time. “It’s definitely overwhelming because I haven’t talked to anybody in a really long time. I haven’t seen anybody in 10 years or however long it was. It’s like, ‘Are these people going to be the same? Are they different? How did they grow?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know them anymore. They don’t know me. How is it going to be?’”

Nothing dramatic happened between Giancola and the other Jersey Shore stars, she says they simply “went our own ways” after everyone besides her returned for the revival in 2018.

“It’s hard when people are continuing on a show that you no longer are a part of,” she says. “I definitely stayed in touch after deciding not to come back in the beginning, and then we just lost touch for years. That was a sad part.”

Despite feeling nervous heading into season 7, Giancola found that not much had changed with her castmates. “They just have kids and babies, but they’re all still the same,” she says.

Since stepping away from Jersey Shore, Giancola has been focused on running her online boutique and her Ocean City, New Jersey, store Sweetheart Coast. She got engaged to Christian Biscardi in 2019 but confirmed in July 2021 that they’d broken off the engagement. Later that year, she made her relationship with Justin May Instagram-official.

May actually has a Jersey Shore connection — he worked at Karma nightclub during the show’s first go-around. “He’s familiar with everybody just from seeing them way back when, so he knew who I was,” Giancola says. “It’s kind of funny how things work out. I just love him so much.”

Giancola says viewers will get to see May on the upcoming season of Family Vacation. They’ll also see someone else Giancola dated when her infamous ex Ronnie Ortiz-Margo makes an appearance.

“I probably wouldn’t have came back if I knew he was still on the show, honestly,” says Giancola, adding that she hasn’t spoken to Ortiz-Margo, 37, in approximately 11 years.

Now that she finds herself in a “very loving” and “supporting” relationship with someone who “I absolutely adore,” Giancola says she simply views Ortiz-Margo as “just some guy I dated in my 20s at this point.”

Regardless those blowups back in the day with Ortiz-Margo, Giancola looks back on Jersey Shore with positivity. “It’s nice to look at the good old days having fun at the Jersey Shore,” she says. “I wouldn’t want it to change. It’s a part of my life. It’s surreal.”

Her presence on the show stuck with fans all these years, too. “Everybody always says to me, ‘I’m the sweetest bitch that you’ll ever meet,’” Giancola shares.

And she knows viewers will never forget the now-iconic note to her from Farley, 37, and Polizzi, 35, about Ortiz-Margo’s actions at B.E.D. and Klutch nightclubs. It even gets memed in the upcoming season of Family Vacation, with the cast printing it on blankets and pillows.

“I can never live down the note, that’s for sure,” Giancola acknowledges. “I can actually laugh about it now. It’s silly to me. It’s funny. There’s no hard feelings over the note anymore. It’ll forever be a part of me.”

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Jersey Shore: Family Vacation season 7 premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on MTV.