Credit: Bravo
Kristen Doute said she was “appalled” by how Danny Booko treated his wife Nia Sanchez this season on The Valley, and she revealed why she thinks certain co-stars don’t like Nia. Kristen also shared her off-camera convo with the couple after watching the episodes back.
In the new season, Danny snapped at Nia multiple times while drinking. Several castmates, including Lala Kent, called Danny out on it, though some fans were confused as to why she also went hard at Nia. Throughout the episodes, Kristen defended the couple, who are her close friends, and she insisted that she hadn’t seen his controversial behavior. (For several years now, some castmates have claimed that Danny becomes a different person when he drinks).
On the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, Kristen addressed how castmates didn’t believe her about Danny.
“No one believed me [when I said I hadn’t seen] this behavior from Danny. I need people to understand, for the year prior, I was pregnant the whole time. I was not going out, I was not going to bars or parties or anything like that,” she explained, via @vanderpodrecaps on Instagram. “When I would spend time with them, I was like at their house with the kids, or at our house with the kids or something. So I didn’t witness the behavior. When I watched it back, I was appalled … [by] the way he treated Nia.”
“I still think there’s something about Danny that is extra; he’s the let’s go guy. And I think Danny as a person just rubs some people in our group the wrong way, alcohol or no alcohol,” she said. “And the audience. And I think obviously we know that alcohol raises that extra-ness and it turns into being obnoxious. But watching the way he spoke to Nia was something that really cracked me.”
Specifically, Kristen said she didn’t like when Danny was “going after” Nia when he was “frustrated about something.”
“It also pisses me off as their friend because I feel the need to defend them to the audience because everyone would say like, well, if this is how they are on camera, who knows what it’s like behind closed doors?” she added. “But I don’t condone any of Danny’s behavior. And I’ve told him that. Like privately, I’ve had that conversation with him. And of course, we talk about it at the reunion.”
She thinks certain castmates don’t like Nia because she “defends him so blindly,” though Kristen said she would “defend [her own fiancé] Luke to the death.”
“I think there’s something very admirable about them having each other’s backs as they should as a married couple with four small children,” shared Kristen, who said she doesn’t regret riding so hard for them during the season. “[But] I talked to Danny before the reunion when we watched all of the other [episodes] … I called Nia actually [when] he was on speakerphone, and I was like, ‘I can’t ride for you when it comes to this stuff. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you and care about you guys, but I have to be honest about how I feel, and this is pretty messed up.’”
According to Kristen, she hopes Danny changes his behavior.
“I know they go to couples therapy and they each do their own therapy,” she said. “But yeah, I would really hope so because it’s not healthy for him, it’s not healthy for the rest of us.”
Though Kristen thinks Danny sometimes has a problem with alcohol, she’s not going to call him an “alcoholic.”
“It’s so tricky,” she said. “Saying [someone has] a drinking problem … can be read like he’s an alcoholic. I’m never going to call him like that. But do I think he has a problem with alcohol sometimes? Yeah, I feel comfortable saying that because I know that I did,” she said. “He lied about [his drinking in the past]. He lied to [his friend] Zack. I get if you want to lie to people who aren’t your friends.”