As reality TV fans, our favorite refrain is that the shows we love aren’t really real. “This is so scripted,” we whine during each dinner-table screaming match. Then we watch The Valley, Bravo’s experiment showing what happens when former West Hollywood party girls and boys move to the suburbs, have kids, and find themselves swallowed up by the unrelenting machine of adulthood. Suddenly our gripe is that maybe what we’re watching is too real.
Brittany Cartwright is navigating divorce and raising a son with special needs. Kristen Doute is dealing with raw postpartum anxiety. Michelle Saniei grapples with the pain of seeing her ex give his current partner the affection she never got. Janet Caperna opens up about being assaulted. Wait, why is nobody flipping a table or ruining a wedding?
Then there’s Nia Sanchez and Danny Booko, the seemingly perfect couple and parents to four young children who have become season three’s most dissected storyline as viewers debate the complexities of their marriage: his relationship to alcohol, her role as a partner, and the ways they’re navigating conflict in front of the camera. Their arc has defined the ultimate reality TV paradox: We say we want things to be real, then get mad when they are.
Sanchez, the woman at the center of the conversation, is also kind of a paradox. On The Valley, she’s presented as the picture of a certain kind of aspirational motherhood: a former Miss USA with a house full of kids, a loving marriage that occasionally hits snags, impeccable highlights, and an endless supply of prairie dresses. But she’s also, which is less talked about, a serious martial artist, having become a training instructor at age 12, a certified instructor at 15, and a women’s self-defense teacher at 23.
This season the show has positioned the 36-year-old as a saintly foil to her husband’s unpredictability, which the internet has downright lost its mind about, debating everything from her faith to her femininity to her sometimes unnervingly placid nature to the way she picks up her baby.
Does she care? Does she read the comments? Is she concerned about her marriage and her friendships, or are the so-called issues just the product of savvy editing to incite discourse? After watching the season, these are some questions I came away with. So I jumped on a Zoom with Sanchez on a recent July afternoon, me in New York, she in Santa Clarita, to hear how she’s been processing the season and the fan reactions.
Glamour: I’d really like to hear more about your martial arts training. It sounds like it’s a lot more intense than you’d hinted at on the show.
Nia Sanchez: My parents separated when I was six; by the time I was almost eight, my dad had primary custody. Originally he worked at Folsom Prison, and then he transferred to Chino in Southern California. So he saw the worst of the worst people on a regular basis. With moving and my parents’ divorce, I was introverted, shy, and always curled inside myself. I didn't want to be extroverted or make friends. And so, being the person that my dad is—he grew up in a military family—he wanted to make sure that I had confidence and could be aware of my surroundings.
So he suggested martial arts?
I didn’t want to do it—I said I was too shy—so he ended up signing up with me and my brother. We all went through the ranks together. We got our black belts together. We trained for years. I trained from age 8 to about 18 in tae kwon do, specifically. We learned a little bit of jujitsu too.
And then, when I was 18, after living in Germany, I moved to Washington State to live with my mom for a bit. My instructor up there started training in mixed martial arts, so I started training in MMA on the side. And then I moved to Hong Kong when I was 22, and there I was like, Well, I want to do something different. So I trained in Muay Thai.
Have you been consistently training since then?
I started regularly training in jujitsu in 2019, and then the pandemic hit. I trained from home a bit, and then I started having babies. During the last month and a half, I’ve gotten back into jujitsu regularly. I became a training instructor in tae kwon do at 12, a certified instructor at 15, and I started teaching women’s self-defense workshops in shelters at 23. I’d also teach kids stranger danger and how to use their voice to get the attention of nearby adults who can help in an emergency.
Is it fair to say that these skills have come in handy when it comes to navigating conflict in your everyday life?
Absolutely. The life skills and the Zen approach to intense situations that I learned at a young age has helped me in so many areas of life, whether it was being Miss USA or being on reality TV. I’m used to intense situations when I’m in a competition or training really hard.
Speaking of intense, season three of The Valley. People online have had really strong reactions to you and your family. What has it felt like to see strangers dissect your relationship with your husband? You sign up for it in a way, but it must be strange.
It’s very surreal—I feel like most long-term relationships have ups and downs. Season three has been one of our higher-conflict windows of time in our relationship, and not always a great space between the two of us. But everybody has their strong opinions. This is what we signed up for, and at the end of the day, we’re in it for the long haul as long as we’re both willing to work hard on our relationship.
It’s so easy to give people hell because they’re on TV when, if fans held up a mirror to their own life, they’d see a lot of situations that probably feel familiar. Maybe the hostility stems from people being uncomfortable with how real your show is.
I agree. I’ve seen comments that say, “If there were cameras at my house at midnight, you’d see me snapping at my man or him snapping at me.”
I want to ask a couple of questions about your approach to style. On the show, it’s very signature. It’s like prairie-style dresses and puff sleeves, which isn’t particularly subversive, but people have had strong reactions. Has that always been your vibe?
I get a lot of criticism for it. After every single pregnancy, flowy dresses with puff sleeves and scrunch tops have been my go-to. Easy access to the boob for the baby, nothing tight around my belly, which is still a belly. And then, I get really self-conscious about my arms, so anything that can cover them up. That’s my go-to style for the first year after giving birth. Always has been. It just makes me feel safe in a body that doesn’t feel like mine.
I get it. People can be clueless.
Someone DM’d me once and was like, “That’s not a good look on you.” And I was maybe three or four months postpartum. I responded, which I normally don’t do, and said, “It’s the only thing I feel comfortable in while I’m freshly postpartum and breastfeeding.” And she was still like, “Well, it makes you look worse.” Come on. Do we not have grace for mothers?
Are you surprised to see people online digging deeper into the way you dress, saying it communicates things about your values, your marriage, or the kind of wife and mother you are?
Oh my gosh, yes. The “traditional wife” and all that. It makes me giggle when I see people assign a way of living based on a dress while I’m postpartum. Daniel and I have a modern millennial approach to our relationship and raising kids. We’re both very hands-on. There’s no “This is your role, and this is your role.” We both work. We both bring in income. We both change diapers. We both get up at night with the kids. It feels very 50-50. I know there were moments where he was giving me a huff and a puff about whatever in San Diego, but we’re fully both all-in with the kids. There are times where he does more than me in certain areas.
Hearing you talk about your intense martial arts training, there’s such a dichotomy there too. People can make assumptions because of a dress, but you're also obviously physical and strong and the opposite of what they think those dresses signify.
Totally. You can be feminine and soft, and you can be strong and a badass, and you can do both. You don’t need to be put into a box. I love getting a good workout and lifting weights at the gym or going to a jujitsu class and figuring out the easiest way to get into a choke hold. And then, I love being gentle for my family. Both make life interesting. You don’t have to be one or the other.
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Each season of any reality show that follows a close-knit group of people seems to have a main offender. Do you feel like maybe there’s a little bit of a villain arc happening around you and Danny?
Yeah, I do. I’ve always said they can only use what you give them, but at the same time, I know there’s not enough time to show the full moments of everybody’s story, like fun, sweet moments with kids and with each other. I don’t feel like the whole breadth of our relationship was shown. You could see it in season one, for example, when Daniel was so supportive and there for me in my postpartum moments. This season I feel like there was, like you said, more of an arc this time.
Are there things that viewers think they know about your relationship from watching the show that feels incomplete or misunderstood?
I always try to put myself in the audience’s shoes. If I zoom out—as if I’m someone who doesn’t know me or Daniel me personally—I can absolutely understand why people would have strong opinions. I get it, that particular window of time they’re watching may not have always been great. But we also acknowledged it, and started going to therapy consistently. We’ve always done kind of check-in therapy—going a few times a year for a tune-up to make sure we're good in our relationship. We started weekly therapy before the show even started airing. We have our ebbs and flows, but I feel like we’re in such a better place.
Why do you think people love The Valley so much?
Probably because it’s a really a raw glimpse into how people are moving through life in a transitional phase. I don’t feel like there’s been a show—at least that I’m aware of—that does exactly what ours does. With the Real Housewives, their kids are usually a bit older and the women are more financially established. Then there are shows with groups who are in their 20s and early 30s, and they're still partying and dating but not so much ready for kids. We hit that middle ground—going from hanging out and partying to having small kids. We’re trying to figure it all out and still maintain friendships. It’s a familiar transitional window that we’re living out in real time.
This interview with Nia Sanchez has been edited and condensed for clarity.
