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Ariana Madix opened up about her time on Vanderpump Rules, sharing how she unintentionally negotiated a higher salary and admitting that her “true personality” wasn’t shown, during an interview on Monday.
As she also explained how her boyfriend of over three years, Daniel Wai, helps her cope with body insecurities, spoke of co-hosting the Love Island USA reunion with Andy Cohen, 58, and dished on her mental health journey, Ariana, 41, admitted that during her first season of Pump Rules, she couldn’t film on Fridays or Saturdays because her salary was so low that she had to save those nights for her actual bartending job.
“Camera time doesn’t pay my bills. It gets to a point where someone needs to either pay a living wage, or I’m not available,” Ariana explained during an August 31 interview with Vanity Fair. “Brand deals weren’t a thing [at that time] … [So] I, for many years, did not have the luxury to just say, ‘Oh, I’m making enough money to say no,’ or, ‘Oh, I have so many followers, I’ll be fine.’”
As Ariana was having to focus on her bartending gig to make ends meet, interest in her grew amongst the Pump Rules cast. And, because of that, producers ultimately offered her a higher salary to appear in crucial scenes.
Throughout her time on Pump Rules, substance use was aplenty, and Ariana’s actual life was not.
“My best work is when I was drinking, because I was less inhibited and less scared … [but] they can’t follow you to an audition. They can’t follow you to a commercial casting. They can’t show a real acting class, really. They can’t show you in a vocal lesson. They can’t really show you in a dance class,” she explained. “I don’t think my true personality was something that was shown or really even fit into a world like that.”
Moving on to Daniel, who is both her boyfriend and her personal trainer, Ariana said that while she can get to a level that is “scary” and controlling when it comes to her body, he “has a very healthy outlook when it comes to all of that stuff.”
“He thinks that I look the most amazing when I think I look my worst. But then if I’m asking him for help, he will say, ‘I don’t see it, but if that’s what you’re worried about, work out, build more muscle in that area,’” she shared.
According to Ariana, who is known to have a “crash-diet-type mindset” and disordered eating, Daniel keeps her from spiraling over her insecurities. These include her arms, which “carry fluid,” and her skin, which she claims is “mottled and blotchy.”
After being named as the host of Love Island USA for its sixth season and later scoring an Emmy nomination for the role, Ariana is being joined by Andy at the season eight reunion.
“It’s gonna be a really fun way for us to kind of…I don’t wanna say ‘good cop, bad cop’ the reunion, but I do think that there is a bit of that, because I do not have any interest in changing the way that I care about the Islanders. And if that doesn’t give somebody the quote, unquote ‘tea,’ or the mess that they care to have, I don’t really care,” she stated.
Ariana also discussed her mental health care journey, noting that she’d done inner-child work and the trauma therapy EMDR in an effort to get better at working through her feelings.
“It takes me a long time to process emotions. And then it’s almost like I judge the emotion as it’s happening in real time. Until I can know what it is and analyze it, I feel like I can’t label it. But I’m not great at it,” she shared.
Also during the interview, Ariana, who described herself as a “nerd about musical theater,” confirmed she’s “for real” about her career on Broadway, which saw her starring as Roxie Hart in Chicago in 2024 and will soon see her in the role of Connie Francis in Just in Time.