Can I Pull You for a Chat? Ariana Madix Makes the Case for Ariana Madix

Ariana Madix’s past and present are represented by two images involving her ass. The first was captured on Vanderpump Rules, the Bravo reality show where Madix was a cast member for 10 seasons. In the clip, filmed at her 36th birthday party, Madix careens through a bar and lands directly onto her left cheek without attempting to break her fall; her hand is busy holding up her cocktail, which stays miraculously intact.

“My best work is when I was drinking, because I was less inhibited and less scared,” Madix says five years later at the Mandarin Oriental lounge in New York, teeny in an oversized Off White jersey and jeans she cut off because they were too long. She’s quick to list more of her greatest hits: making snow angels on the floor, blacking out at the club, dancing with someone dressed as a gorilla. “Everyone’s like, ‘We love Drunk Ariana,’” she says. “I’m a great time.”

But eventually, last call comes for us all. “That isn’t something that you can keep doing and doing and doing into perpetuity,” says Madix. “At some point it becomes something, at least for me personally, I have to reel in and figure out.”

We are here, enjoying two glasses of Champagne a fan sent over as homage (everything in moderation), to discuss her other formative butt imagery: the slowed-down struts Madix performs as host of Love Island USA, the reality dating series that, during Madix’s first season, became the most-watched streaming original series in America. Season seven, which aired in 2025, had more than twice that already-high viewership. This year’s season eight beat those numbers by two billion minutes. And now, for her work slinking through heart-shaped arches to deliver (usually unsettling) information and turning to camera to deliver a “shh” finger to the audience, Madix has earned her first Emmy nomination for outstanding reality host. The ceremony is in just a few weeks; two days before that, Madix will have returned to Broadway to star as Connie Francis in Just in Time, a musical about the life of singer Bobby Darin.

If the VPR birthday fall represents a critical time in Madix’s life—a period where she had a triumphant but barely-there grasp on an out-of-control situation—her Villa entrances embody this new moment. When there’s a slow-mo close-up of her body—one she trains year-round to deploy on her own terms—it’s because she suggested it. “That’s up to me, actually,” she says. “It’s an option that I can exercise if I feel like it.” Now, Madix is producing herself.

Madix wound up on Vanderpump Rules by accident. She grew up in Florida fulfilling what she calls the “eldest-daughter trope”: overachieving in all areas, including the accrual of sun damage after many hours frying on the beach using the dermatological nightmare concoction of Coca-Cola, sea water, and baby oil. (In 2018, Madix learned that she had developed melanoma, which necessitated the removal of her lymph nodes. She is now cancer-free.) Madix tanned in part to cover up her skin, which she describes as “mottled and blotchy.” When I start to disagree, Madix cuts me off. “I have body makeup on right now,” she says, recommending the brand Tinge. “No one ever sees what my skin looks like.”

Her skin is only one item on a long list of Madix’s body-image issues. She is self-conscious about her arms, which she says “carry fluid.” She used to try and be “as skinny as possible.” Like tanning, the “cure” turned out to be worse than the ailment: When her eating became disordered, Madix found that her metabolism would drop to match her caloric intake. She was starving herself for nothing. Those “are the things that are going to end up giving me osteoporosis and mobility issues and health issues,” Madix says. “I don’t want that to be my future.”

Despite her self-consciousness, Madix always wanted to be an actor. Performing felt like a constructive and positive channeling of the unease she felt all the time; to have few surprises and a director telling her what to do sounded like heaven. As a child, Madix would put on shows for her pug, Ming, and a doll of Fievel, the mouse from An American Tail. In high school, she starred in the musical Once on This Island. “I’m a nerd about musical theater,” she says.

In 2007, after graduating from Flagler College—where she went after her parents declined to send her to acting school—Madix moved to New York and “really had to hustle” to pay her monthly $1,900 rent. She spent several nights a week bartending, a couple go-go dancing, and a few giving out Miller Lites or Camel’s tobacco pouches at parties in exchange for people’s email addresses. She’d hit her quota by inventing the names of fake revelers.

Around this time, Madix reached out to manager Kasra Ajir, with whom she still works today. It was a bet that would pay off for two people with few credentials.

Madix moved to LA in 2010, where she squeezed acting classes and auditions between bartending gigs at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant Villa Blanca and at the now defunct nightclub Create. When she, like many other comely Vanderpump employees, entangled in each other’s lives and shifts, was asked to be on Vanderpump Rules, Ajir was hesitant about its potential impact on Madix’s inchoate acting career. His fondness for the show helped him come around. “We were all firmly ensconced in the world of VPR because, if I’m honest, I found it to be really good television,” Ajir says.

During her first season, Madix made so little money that she couldn’t film on Fridays or Saturdays; those days conflicted with her actual bartending job. (That’s typical; other Bravolebrities have told me they made between $1,000 and $3,000 per episode during their first seasons on various shows.) “Camera time doesn’t pay my bills,” she says. “It gets to a point where someone needs to either pay a living wage, or I’m not available.” When I talked to her last summer for my book Enter the Villa: The (Unauthorized) Reality Behind Love Island, Madix reflected on how different things were for nascent reality stars in an era where, as she puts it now, “brand deals weren’t a thing.”

“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 says of the early VPR years. Eventually, Madix unintentionally negotiated a higher salary by being absent during crucial scenes; the show paid up to ensure she’d be available.

Vanderpump wanted Madix to be a central part of the drama. It did not want to show her aspiring acting career—and even if it had, that would have been impossible given the number of releases required. “They can’t follow you to an audition,” Madix says, sipping an iced latte in what has become a three-beverage outing. “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.”

So instead, it showed Drunk Ariana—and Drunk Everyone Else. Reality shows with repertory casts reward behavior that would, in real life, usually be symptomatic of a personality disorder. Performing on a show like this can also promote heavy substance use, and can prompt stars to frame life events so that they can be captured on camera and made into storylines. “Otherwise, the show suffers and then either you lose a job or everyone loses their job,” Madix says. “That becomes just part of how you’re living life. I tried to live that way, but I don’t think I was very good at it.”

This internal dissonance was made worse when the show’s cast got too famous for producers to force them to take shifts at SUR, eliminating the organizing principle of the show and leaving them with no structure—except to play out conflict ranging from squabbling to betrayal. “I don’t think my true personality was something that was shown or really even fit into a world like that,” Madix says now. “When I show up to film something, I want someone to tell me what to do so that I can be told I did a good job.”

During her first few seasons on VPR, Madix exuded coolness, which she says was a way to mask anxiety. I get a miniature version of this experience during our first hour together, when Madix is so reticent that I begin to wonder if she will leave the interview without saying anything. Hours later, Madix reveals that in settings like this, she merely gets terrified she’s not being herself the right way. “There’s so many times where I’ve done interviews where people ask me questions and afterwards I’m like, I was just saying things. I don’t know what the fuck I just did,” Madix explains. Ajir recently gave Madix a book called Are You Mad at Me?, which she says, includes a case study about people with extreme anxiety who are often described as “very chill.” But internally, she says, “they’re constantly reading micro-expressions and they’re hypervigilant.”

Despite her negative self-assessment, Madix did do a good job on Vanderpump Rules. She was honest about her mental health struggles, her ambivalence about having a child, and her sexuality. She also remained empathic and kind despite being surrounded with degeneracy.

In March 2023, Madix’s life was upended when she discovered her longtime partner cheated on her with another cast member. The incident and its aftermath—if you’re reading this, you know it was annoyingly named after her ex—resulted in record ratings for Vanderpump Rules.

The next part has been documented in most known forms of media, from magazine cover stories to podcasts to the crime scene of VPR itself. After the show that blew her world up blew up itself, Madix left to begin doing what she’d been planning to do the entire time. It was as if the explosion of drama had cleared space for drama-free ascent. Madix was in a new relationship with trainer Daniel Wai, who, rather than storing up personal moments for reality TV fodder, is “allergic to press,” according to her publicist. Whenever Madix mentions him, she beams, amber eyes narrowing to make room for the breadth of her smile. She shows me a bracelet that says DBG: “Dan’s Baby Girl.”

By December 2023, Madix was competing on Dancing with the Stars. (She got third place.) A month later, she debuted on Broadway as Roxie Hart in Chicago. I ask about her motives: Even though that show is known for stunt-casting celebrities with limited musical theater skills, did Madix want to use it as an opportunity to show her bona fides? “Yes,” she says. “I’m for real.” Ticket sales jumped, resulting in the highest-grossing non-holiday week in the production’s three-decade run. Producers extended Madix’s contract and brought her back to reprise the part when she was free again months later. While she was on Broadway, Peacock announced that Madix would be joining Love Island USA as host.

The role felt made for Madix, though she was the third person to host the show’s American iteration. She had been a vocal fan of Love Island for years; Madix calls watching hundreds of episodes of three countries’ franchises “R&D,” for “research and development.” It was also corporate synergy, since Bravo and Peacock have the same parent company, NBCUniversal, and Madix had guest hosted on Love Island’s previous season.

Most crucially, the vulnerability and power Madix demonstrated during her breakup had completely changed her public perception. “She’s had really emotionally high highs, low lows,” Love Island USA’s showrunner Ben Thursby-Palmer says. “She’s not just lived in this happy bubble all her life. So she is emotionally smart and is really empathetic, because she’s been on the love roller coaster.” And on a reality show, no less.

As host, Madix is always happy to watch cast members make out. Her overt lustfulness, coupled with her role introducing producorial obstacles to the Islanders, has prompted fans to call Madix “Horny Jigsaw.” Younger viewers seem particularly squeamish about the show’s sex positivity. Madix doesn’t get it. “I disagree with the notion that sex is not, or lust is not integral to a love story,” she says, calling the issue a “generational thing.” Or, more plainly: “As an elder millennial, y’all need to start fucking.”

“What I hear online is that they are afraid to be cringe, they’re afraid to dance,” she continues. “On some level, I get why they don’t want to take in alcohol. I get it health-wise. But at the same time, live a little. Smoke a little weed.” (Another Madix adage I’d have cross-stitched and framed in my home: “Fuck AI.”)

In addition to facilitating physical affection, Madix is skilled at getting contestants to answer honestly when she asks how they’re doing, and gently pushing when people are scared to speak. “You want them to feel comfortable saying how they feel,” she says. “Because if I’m asking how you feel and you’re saying, ‘I’m fine,’ but you’re clearly not fine, we want them to be able to express what it is.” Madix is always an advocate for the women on the show. “She really does love those girls,” says Thursby-Palmer.

When she’s shooting Love Island, Madix stays in Fiji from preproduction through the show’s entire six-week shoot. The process requires her to be nimble; she’s frequently pulled in to address an unexpected plot twist, or asked to pivot after a challenge has to be delayed because unfolding drama has rendered it moot. To regulate herself, she’ll walk to the gym via a grassy route that’s distanced from the Villa’s neon signs and bright plastic.

Madix concedes that she has to work out constantly—not just during the season, but year-round—to look the way she does. When she inevitably gets bogged down in self-judgment, her partner, Wai, is able to offer perspective, both as boyfriend and personal trainer. “He has a very healthy outlook when it comes to all of that stuff,” Madix says. “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.’”

Which is different from criticism. “I think that there’s a healthy level of…I don’t even want to say critical self-talk, but motivational self-talk,” she says. “And then there’s a level that it gets scary—it gets into this control thing, and it gets into this crash-diet-type mindset.” Wai, she says, helps steer her out of the spiral. Inner-child work and the trauma therapy EMDR have also been part of her mental health care journey.

“It takes me a long time to process emotions,” Madix says. “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. Probably another reason why people think I’m chill when I'm not.”

The time Madix feels most “in her body” is when she’s dancing to live music. She is evangelically excited while laying out her dream of seeing Madonna perform Confessions II in the Sahara Tent at Coachella 2027. She imagines DJ Martin Garrix coming out and remixing the album with songs from its predecessor, Confessions on a Dance Floor, while Madonna dances—not too hard, Madix cautions, because “I think she just had an injury, so I don’t want her to put herself out. I just want her to vibe and have fun.” Madix talks to the audio recorder as if it’s a direct line to the musician. “Madonna, if you’re listening, we’re willing it,” she says.

When Wai visits the Love Island set, he and Madix will spend her weekly day off with local friends who live an hour and a half down the island’s Coral Coast, snorkeling and riding horses. If they’re hungry, someone will jump in the ocean and catch fish for lunch. They eat lovo, a Fijian meal cooked on leaf-covered hot stones.

The Love Island crew is working together to produce a show that’s filmed for 24 hours a day and turned around in the same timeframe. “Everyone wants to feel good about it,” Madix says, comparing the show to the similarly supportive environment of a musical or the sitcom St. Denis Medical, on which she has a recurring role. “So I think that that is an atmosphere that I love and I need. I’m already anxious about if people are mad at me or if everyone hates me”—though Are You Mad at Me? promises they don’t—“or if I’m saying something wrong or I’m doing something or, like, Am I in trouble? If I’m in an environment that compounds that, I’m quiet.”

Peacock has secured Madix for the third season of Love Island Games, which will air this winter, and next summer’s ninth season of Love Island USA, which was announced on August 26. People with knowledge tell me the streamer is also developing a scripted series with Madix, which she declines to discuss on the record.

This season’s reunion episode will stream on Peacock at 9 p.m. August 31. In it, Madix wears a yellow chiffon vintage Versace runway gown from 2006, which she borrowed from the vintage luxury rental company Isle of Monday—and which, naturally, shows off her ass. For the first time, the reunion was also taped in front of a live studio audience; the fans who voted winners Bryce Alakai and Trinity Tatum into their thrones.

It will, if we believe the relevant parties, be juicy. Unlike previous years, finalists Alakai, Tatum, Zach Georgiou, Kayda Bosse, Aniya Harvey, Carl Schmidt, Melanie Moreno, and Sincere Rhea have abstained from the usual postseason longform podcast tours, saving their thoughts for the show, aside from some well-manicured Q&As. “People are online and they’re following everything so closely,” Madix says of how the relative lockdown has freshened the reunion. “The discourse is discoursed. And so if we then discourse again, it feels really tired.”

Madix will again be cohosting with gossip impresario and Bravo frontman Andy Cohen, with whom she has a playfully oppositional relationship. Last year, she told me, “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.”

Thursby-Palmer says Madix is “doing herself a disservice” by underselling the amount of tea she extracts. “I think in the same way that a big sister or a good friend would be like, ‘Anna, you did fuck up last night,’ Ariana would,” Thursby-Palmer says. “She can just do so much with just a look. That’s all she needs to do.” (About that look: “People always try to guess who my favorites are, and what I think,” Madix says. “They don't know.”) Madix admits to inquiring about who was still together and who had hooked up after leaving the show—and being surprised by the answers to those questions.

In the meantime, Madix is contemplating what it will mean to attend the Emmys as a nominee. She is anxious about the lighting on the red carpet, but excited to bring her mother and, God willing, meet fellow nominee RuPaul. “I love her poise,” Madix says before wistfully expressing her desire to be a guest judge on Drag Race. “Ru could step on my face.” No matter who wins, Madix will always be an Emmy nominee—though she was responsible for Vanderpump Rules’ nomination, during the year her life changed, I tell her. “Thank you,” she says quietly but firmly.

It all feels like a permanent gold star for the woman always looking for validation. Bravo chairwoman Frances Berwick called Madix while she was on the treadmill one night recently and told her to drive around Los Angeles. Red-faced and sweaty from her workout in the car with Wai, they saw billboards of Madix everywhere, urging Emmy voters to consider her. “I couldn’t believe it said my name on it,” Madix says—before admitting she’d always thought it would.