Bravo recently announced that they were rebooting Vanderpump Rules with a brand new cast and dropping the former SURvers and bartenders that have made up the show for the past 11 seasons. But now, one of the original cast members has revealed that she was already on her way out of the show and planning to leave before Bravo let them all go.
Katie Maloney says she was already planning to leave Vanderpump Rules
On her Disrespectfully podcast, Katie Maloney talked about the future of Vanderpump Rules and revealed that even before Bravo announced that they were rebooting the series, she was on her way out of the show.
She told her co-host, Dayna, that the people close to her knew that she "didn't plan on returning" and went on to say that she had informed the producers of this and discussed it with them well before the network had made any decisions about what they were going to be doing with the show going forward.
Katie Maloney said, "I had made a decision months ago after this past season. I mean, I just needed to move on with my life. And this is before we knew the show was gonna be put on pause, before any of that."
Considering Katie Maloney has moved on to such a different place in her life than she was when she started on Vanderpump Rules, starting out as a cocktail waitress at SUR and now owning a sandwich shop with co-Vanderpump Rules star Ariana Madix, it's no surprise that she was ready to do something new with her life.
In over a decade, Katie Maloney says she's "lived many lives" while appearing on Vanderpump Rules and told her co-star that she didn't know if she could continue being on the show and living as the person she's grown into if she was going to continue being on the series.
Considering she's been on the reality show since 2013 and the whole original cast is in a very different place from where they started when the show was focused on a group of SUR employees, it's no surprise that Katie feels like she's not the person she was when the show started.
On her podcast, she said, "I just got to a point where I was like, 'I don't know if I can live and grow and be the version of myself I want to be on this show any longer.'"
A VPR insider claims the show had "no path forward" with original cast
Katie Maloney isn't the only one who has changed since she started on Vanderpump Rules.
Although there have been a lot of rumors about what caused Bravo to make the decision to give the show a full reboot, a Vanderpump Rules insider has revealed that the cast's fractured relationships with one another and the fact that so many of them have moved on to new places in life was the sole cause for Bravo deciding to let the original cast go.
The source told PEOPLE that Bravo informed the original cast the day before they made the news public, but that production had been on hold since the reunion due to the division among the cast.
"Everyone was still stuck in their feelings and refusing to bend. The network felt there was no path forward with the group in that capacity," the source shared with PEOPLE.
The fact that so much of the cast was no longer on speaking terms wasn't the only thing that lead Bravo to making such a drastic change to the show.
According to the source, the fact that none of the cast really had any connections to SUR anymore, the location that spawned the show in the first place, meant that Bravo felt like the show had strayed too far from its roots.
Despite the fact that the cast was let go from Vanderpump Rules, the source says that Bravo isn't ruling out working with them in the future -- and considering some of the cast have already been reportedly filming on The Valley, it seems like this isn't the last time we'll have heard from our favorite former SUR workers.