Dayna Kathan briefly returned to Vanderpump Rules season 11 nearly three years after her series departure.
“I filmed a tiny bit,” Dayna, 33, said during a Thursday, January 4, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “This year I did think about coming back. I filmed and immediately I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’ So, I don’t know if what I filmed will make it.”
Dayna explained to host Nick Viall that the “next morning” she called Katie Maloney for support. (Katie, 36, met Dayna during season 8 of Vanderpump Rules and they became close friends.)
“I had a full-blown screaming, crying panic attack and I didn’t realize [it at the time],” she said. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m in a better place now and so mentally stable blah blah blah,’ and then, nope. So, funneling that into a podcast.”
Dayna and Katie announced on Thursday that they were teaming up to cohost a podcast titled “Disrespectfully” under Nick’s new Envy Media parent company. The two women plan to release weekly episodes about their “brutal” experience in the dating scene. (While Dayna has been single for many years, Katie divorced costar Tom Schwartz in 2022 after a decade together.)
Katie has been a Pump Rules mainstay since 2013. While working at SUR, she met Dayna during 2020’s season 8. Dayna announced one year later in April 2021 that she was leaving the show.
“People always assume that I was just a server but I was actually in healthcare sales, like I had a corporate job, and they had me work at the restaurants to fit me in because I was a random,” Dayna recalled of joining the Bravo franchise. “I had a work situation that went really south because my company at the time was not OK with the show. And so, I [had] been with my current company for three years, and I liked my job and I was immediately like, ‘Holy s—t, I cannot threaten my livelihood’ and it just wasn’t worth it.”
Dayna further claimed to Nick, 43, that she also left the show because it was a “toxic” environment.
“There was a lot of shouting,” she said. “The day that I filmed, this situation erupted and the cortisol in the room was like [shocked]. … I don’t know maybe they have a better iron stomach than I do. I’m good at confrontation when it arises, but it’s not something that I like. I don’t like always feeling like there’s a fight around the corner.”
