Kristin Cavallari on her new podcast and why she's done with reality TV for good

When Kristin Cavallari is first introduced to audiences in the pilot episode of "Laguna Beach," the high school junior floats in her pool, wearing sunglasses and a mismatched red and flower print bikini.

She gets out to answer her cell phone, and chats with a friend about her plans with Stephen Colletti, her sometimes-boyfriend who works at the local surf shop. She appears every bit the typical California teen: Pretty, popular, and put-together. But "Laguna Beach" viewers have already been told they're meant to hate her.

"Wherever Kristin went, drama followed," the show's narrator and de facto protagonist Lauren Conrad says moments before, by way of introducing the cast. "She thinks she's hot. Okay, I guess she is. But she can't stand me."

After gossiping, flirting, and fighting her way through two seasons of the MTV reality series "Laguna Beach" and two seasons of its spinoff "The Hills," Cavallari, now 36, knows she could step into the role of reality TV villain with her eyes closed. Not that she wants to — the CEO of the jewelry and lifestyle brand Uncommon James and mom of three has plenty else going on.

But upon reflection, she admits she put on the façade of a confident, conflict-centric high schooler on "Laguna Beach," which aired on MTV for three seasons until 2006, to cover up deep insecurities.

"At the time, I was really upset because I felt like they really kind of screwed me in a lot of ways because they definitely made me look like the villain," Cavallari tells Insider of how she felt seeing herself on "Laguna."

It was hurtful, but reflecting on her teenage self nearly two decades later, she realizes she was an easy target because she was faking confidence to mask her sadness. Ultimately, she's made peace with the portrayal.

"I'm really happy with how everything turned out," she says. "I think that sort of jump-started this self-discovery journey that I've been on. It didn't happen overnight, but I got here."

On Tuesday, Cavallari launched her first solo podcast, "Let's Be Honest with Kristin Cavallari." The Dear Media-backed show focuses on relationships in weekly episodes, featuring guests who run the gamut from celebrities, such as fellow reality TV star Stassi Schroeder, to experts. Cavallari tells Insider it's like no other project she's done in her career. Despite the name, the reason is not because she's been lying to her over 4.5 million Instagram followers about who she is. 

It's because she finally feels free for the first time in her life. Now, she's taking control of her own story.

It took Cavallari years to let go of the 'sad' girl we met on 'Laguna Beach'

"What I had to do is cut my dad out of my life. That's been the most freeing thing I've ever done," Cavallari tells me over the phone from Nashville the week before her podcast launches. She's sitting on a porch swing in front of her home while we chat, taking in the view.

While Cavallari has spent years in the public eye, she's managed to keep her relationship with her family relatively private. But on the podcast, Cavallari goes there, describing her father as a narcissist and explaining how being raised by him affected her worldview.

"How men saw me was really, really important to me. I was essentially looking for men to fill a void that I felt within myself," she says on her first solo episode released Sept. 12, titled "Holy Sh*t This Is Really Happening."

Cavallari tells me she realized she was attracting men similar to her father, and that she has a tendency to push down her emotions to avoid getting hurt. So she turned to hypnotherapy and a type of psychotherapy called shadow work to help her access her subconscious mind and let go of her childhood trauma.

"I was so sad deep down," Cavallari says, reflecting on the teenage girl the world met via reality TV. "I was really longing for a connection with someone."

She's removing the glossy lens from her life in favor of personal growth

Two years after "The Hills" ended in 2010, Cavallari became a mom to son Camden Jack Cutler in 2012. She knew it was the most important role of her life.

Then, she became a wife, too, marrying former NFL star Jay Cutler in July 2013. The couple settled into their new family life in Nashville, having two more children by the time Cavallari published her 2016 New York Times best-selling book, "Balancing in Heels."

Part autobiography, part lifestyle guide, part cookbook, the book presents Cavallari as a woman who has it all: a family, a husband, a business of her own. But in covering so much — "Balancing in Heels" offers everything from relationship advice to recipes to exercise tips — Cavallari now feels it fell short, calling it "a watered-down version of what it could have been." She says she was too guarded to be truly vulnerable in the book. Thinking about the image she was trying to present at the time makes her cringe.

"I didn't really want to let people in. I was trying to figure out my own shit," she says, adding that she probably would have said she was being real at the time because she had evolved since she was a teenager making eyes at Stephen Colletti from across the table. It just wasn't real enough.

In 2017, she launched the jewelry and lifestyle brand Uncommon James, named in part for her youngest child, daughter Saylor James Cutler.

Then, almost a decade after saying goodbye to Brody Jenner in favor of Europe on "The Hills" series finale, Cavallari returned to her reality TV roots for the E! show "Very Cavallari" in 2018.

This time, Cavallari happily relinquished the role of the villain and picked up the title of executive producer. Though she's the face of the series that bears her name, the show, which ran for three seasons, mostly focused on the messy lives of the Uncommon James staff. That was largely by design: Cavallari is open about the fact that she did the show to promote her business as she prepared to open her flagship Uncommon James store in Nashville.

"The storylines were complete bullshit for the most part," Cavallari says. "I mean, that's marketing. And I think I'm pretty good at marketing."

Being an executive producer also afforded Cavallari more control over her image than she ever had on "The Hills" or "Laguna Beach."

I'm much happier not being on TV. My life is just way more peaceful not having a TV show about my life.

"I had the freedom to take things out if I wanted to, and I did," she says.

As someone who doesn't put her kids on social media, the only glimpse of Cavallari's personal life present on "Very Cavallari" was through brief scenes with Cutler, and those never exposed more than a few marital spats. "I felt as though I had the safety net, which was really nice," she adds.

But a month after Cavallari and Cutler announced their divorce in April 2020 after nearly seven years of marriage, Cavallari announced she'd chosen not to continue "Very Cavallari" as she embarked on this "new chapter" of her life.

Don't expect the topic of divorce to come up on "Let's Be Honest," either.

"To be completely honest, it's been three and a half years, I'm really sick of talking about divorce. I just feel like, 'Can we move on from that, please?'" she says. "I just feel like I don't need to identify with being divorced."  

She is dating, but says she's saving some of those stories for the podcast and will be keeping her suitors anonymous. "It just seems like if I'm dating someone, people want to talk about me more," she says. She knows why, but that doesn't mean she has to like it.

These days, Cavallari is more focused on her personal growth. "I just feel like everything I'm doing now, there's a real sense of freedom in it, and that feels really, really good."

That means she's done with reality TV, too.

"People think I live this very glamorous, big life. I really don't," she says. "I'm much happier not being on TV. My life is just way more peaceful not having a TV show about my life."