Ariana Madix, now

A few years out from finding herself at the centre of arguably the most sensational scandal to ever unfold in the reality TV landscape, Ariana Madix sat down with Vanity Fair to peel the curtain back on what life has been like lately. And between being in a Broadway production and having billboards of her face scattered throughout Los Angeles, to now landing an Emmy nomination, it’s safe to say that life hasn’t been too bad.

In conversation with Anna Peele, a culture writer and editor with VF who wrote the well-known exposé Inside the Real Housewives Reckoning That’s Rocking Bravo, which I shared my own thoughts on here back in 2023, Ariana reflected on some of what’s transpired in her life since that fateful March day. It seems to be the catalyst for getting her to where she is now, though it would be unfair to attribute all of her recent success to, well, you know, the Scandoval of it all.

One thing that becomes crystal clear in this interview is just how skilled Ariana is in alchemizing. Within three years, she has turned her life completely around, going from being the decade-long, sandwich-shop-owning girlfriend of a “worm with a moustache”, if you were to ask James Kennedy, anyway, to having a hot personal trainer boyfriend and spending six weeks in Fiji while filming Love Island USA, one of the hottest dating TV shows there ever was. Plus the billboards and Broadway I mentioned earlier. Like, hello? And through this interview, we learn more about why this was really the only way this could have gone for someone like Ariana. We learn how much of her accomplishments she can credit to just being real, to not growing up with a lot of the privileges or nepotism that so many other reality stars are born into. But being real is something she says wasn’t always real during her time on Vanderpump Rules.

“My best work is when I was drinking, because I was less inhibited and less scared. Everyone’s like, ‘We love Drunk Ariana,’” she says. “I’m a great time.”

Ariana was speaking to the nature of the environment in which the show was filmed. With filming primarily taking place at SUR and Pump, both in West Hollywood, and Villa Blanca in Beverly Hills, these well-known restaurants/lounges were hubs for excessive drinking – almost more so for staff than guests, much to the dismay of Lisa Vanderpump.

Based on what we’ve heard from other former reality TV stars, think Corinne Olympios from The Bachelor, and what we saw unfold in a 2023 episode of Below Deck, which I wrote about here, she’s not wrong to call out the prevalence of alcohol and the pressure for consumption. With this revelation in mind, you can imagine how the culture surrounding the filming of the show might have become a compounding issue for so many of the show’s stars. It’s why we saw so much substance abuse, from Lala Kent in the show’s earlier days to James Kennedy to Jax Taylor. It’s engrained in the environment. Throw cameras into the mix and the pressure to entertain becomes very real.

“That isn’t something that you can keep doing and doing and doing into perpetuity,” she said. “At some point it becomes something, at least for me personally, I have to reel in and figure out.”

And figure it out she did. As filming went on, you could see that she was becoming an independent thinker. She didn’t need the approval of anybody. She stood firm in who she was. But perhaps most importantly, she balanced that out with a deep sense of empathy that really radiated through the screen. In fact, this is what Love Island showrunner Ben Thursby-Palmer accredits her Emmy nom to - her genuine love for the people on the show. She even lauds her own ability to get honest answers out of the cast when she talks to them about what’s happening in their lives.

Part of that comes from having some serious sh-t happen in her life. She shared that she was once diagnosed with melanoma, and that she is now cancer-free. She explained that she wears body makeup and that no one really sees what her skin looks like. She shared her discomfort with the appearance of her arms, saying she works out frequently to maintain her image. She even shared that at one point in time, her eating was disordered.

During her first season on Vanderpump Rules, she wasn’t earning enough to film on the weekend and she had to bartend. Anna mentioned that some reality TV stars have revealed that they earn anywhere between $1,000 and $3,000 per episode, but that wasn’t the case here. And not having amassed enough social capital at the time, brand deals were simply not an option.

“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,’” she said, looking back at the first few years of production. But in her absence during pretty important scenes, it made the show throw more money at her to make sure she’d be there.

Between cancer, her vulnerability about her physical insecurities to having to hustle like so many of us, one of the things that has helped Ariana find firm footing in the life she’s creating is likely the trust she’s built within herself to bounce back after navigating adversity.

And given that she has been able to bounce back from a huge, public scandal, which is about as adverse as it can be, it was the external validation and support that really helped kick things into high gear for her. I mean, how would you feel if you joining a Broadway cast after your very public breakup led to such a spike in ticket sales that the production saw its highest-grossing non-holiday week in 30 years? Tom who?

It was during her time on Broadway that it was announced by Peacock that she would be joining Love Island USA as host – and the announcement was welcome news for the Love Island audience and for Vanderpump Rules fans alike. It even helped migrate audience members that hadn’t previously sat at the intersection of enjoying each show. And this has all been incredibly cathartic for her.

What stands out to me is the amount of social masking that Ariana had to employ to survive her time on reality TV – and how that primed her to be herself on Love Island. And furthermore, how just being herself could single-handedly change the course on whether dating show hosts get nominated for Emmys. To break through to Television Academy voters, of all people, who can be a bit stingy with nominations for dating shows, is a sign that Ariana knows exactly who she is and what she’s doing, and that her authenticity is now translating to appreciation among her TV peers.

It’s also interesting to think about because she was still very real and incredibly vulnerable during her time on Vanderpump Rules, but she says her exuding the coolness she did during filming was her way of masking social anxiety.

Even through all of that, she was still vocal about her insecurities. In fact, she was the first woman I ever heard admit out loud that she had insecurities about the way her vagina looked, let alone on TV. You really don’t hear that everyday. She talked about her mental health struggles, she navigated her sexuality – all in front of cameras. 

All of it leads to the question of whether you can survive reality TV without having to mask, or whether Ariana is an anomaly. And though she certainly is one of one, something tells me she’s paving the way for women in reality TV spaces to be more authentic. Because it could just mean you get nominated for an Emmy one day, too.