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Katie Maloney opened up about the fake drama of Vanderpump Rules while appearing on a podcast last week.
While also explaining why she can’t empathize with Raquel Leviss, 29, sharing her most and least favorite moments from the show, and shading Tom Schwartz, 40, for the things he said about her on season 10, Katie, 36, accused certain cast members of acting out for airtime and revealed what she’s learned from her time on Bravo.
“[I’ve learned] to just like, live very authentically. To really tell the truth,” Katie shared on the September 21 episode of Almost Adulting. “I think when you try to self-produce or try to hide things about yourself or your life, it’s better just to be exactly who you are and not care what that looks like or what it’s gonna mean because the opinions of people that are watching just don’t matter at the end of it. I know it can be difficult to read certain things or hear certain feedback but they’re not people that should matter.”
According to Katie, she’s found that her honesty has made her more relatable to viewers.
“When you’re honest about your flaws and your insecurities and your shortcomings or your strengths, or when you’re just honest about all those parts of you, people see themselves in those parts of you,” she explained.
Although Katie does her best to be candid for the cameras, she said it’s not always easy watching others do the same — especially her ex-husband Schwartz.
“To see him talk about me in a way that was just very disrespectful and derogatory and him having conversations with [Scheana Shay] and Rachel about me, that was a little surprising because I didn’t know that that was happening,” she admitted. “It’s all humiliating.”
At the end of the day, Katie doesn’t care about the opinions of people she doesn’t know. But, when it comes to Schwartz, she says she holds him “accountable.”
For Katie, it wasn’t easy having her divorce from Schwartz play out on the show. In fact, it was her “least favorite” memory from the series.
“Last season was a particularly difficult season. It wasn’t a good time,” she confessed. “Anytime I was having to have arguments with him, it was frustrating and hard because I just knew this isn’t gonna be fun to have to go back and talk about when we have to sit in our interview chairs and go over how I was feeling in that moment and then have to watch it back. Those moments weren’t particularly fun to have in real-time, to have to talk about, and then have to re-watch. It was like having to live it over and over again.”
Luckily, Katie has had plenty of good times.
“Our trips are always fun and memorable,” she noted. “When we went to Puerto Vallarta, that trip was just a ton of fun because I think for the most part, we were all pretty much getting along so we were all just able to have a really good time. We did this ATV thing through the jungle forest.”
In addition to her drama with Schwartz amid season 10, Katie and the rest of the cast were also met with the news of Raquel’s affair with Tom Sandoval, 40, which went on for months behind the back of her then-friend and his now-ex-girlfriend, Ariana Madix, 38.
When asked if she has any empathy for Raquel, Katie said she does not.
“I don’t know that I can feel empathy for somebody that consciously made decisions, actively was making a decision every day for seven to nine months almost. I can’t empathize with that because I would never do anything like that,” she explained.
And when it comes to potentially forgiving Raquel for the affair, Katie pointed out that she will likely never have to cross that bridge.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to see her again. I don’t even know if that’s something I have to like, worry about,” she revealed.
As for her castmates’ “fake” drama on the show, Katie said that some of her co-stars have fabricated issues in an effort to nab more screen-time on the show.
“There are definitely people who have done that. It’s so obvious and I think sometimes those things don’t play very well,” she added.
Vanderpump Rules season 11 is expected to premiere on Bravo later this year or early next year.