Kandi Burruss made the decision to leave The Real Housewives of Atlanta on her own, which initially shocked both Andy Cohen and Bravo.
“They didn’t pause me, I paused myself, to be clear. Andy was actually sad that I left,” Kandi, 47, said during the Thursday, February 29, episode of “The Viall Files” podcast. “He and I had our heart-to-heart before anybody else in the world knew. We had our own moment.”
Kandi publicly confirmed her RHOA exit while attending the 2024 Grammys earlier this month, shortly after letting executive producer Andy, 55, know of her exit intentions.
“My agent just sent the production company and the network a nice letter, basically, just saying, ‘Thank you for the opportunity, but Kandi has decided that she’s not coming back. But thanks for all the years and whatever,’” she recalled, noting that Andy called her back later the same day. “I didn’t even know [my agent] had sent the letter … at that moment. So, when I had gotten the call from Andy, he was just like, ‘What the f–k?’ And I was like, ‘About?’ I didn’t want to speak before he actually said [because] I wanted to make sure we were talking about the same thing.”
Kandi added, “[Andy] was just like, ‘I mean, I don’t know how I feel about this at all.’ I said, ‘I don’t know how I feel about it either, but I just think that it’s time.’”
Kandi joined RHOA in 2009’s season 2 and made her last appearance in 2023’s season 15, making her the longest consecutive-serving Housewife across the franchise.
“For the last few years, I’ve been trying to debate when is my time that I’m supposed to step away. Like, am I just going to wait until they decide to put me on pause?” she said on Thursday. “What is my plan? So, every year I’d have this question to myself, but this year, what happened was they were planning to recast a couple of people. Right after the last season, we knew they were going to take a couple months to start interviewing people.”
During that period, Kandi prioritized her own film and music career — she has aspirations of earning an EGOT — and “making a lot of big moves” outside of RHOA while waiting on future contract negotiations with Bravo.
“It was my choice whether to go back. It wasn’t just they sent me a pickup letter and I have to go back, like, how it is most of the time,” Kandi said, referring to the note she would have received if her contract was active and the network optioned to bring her back for more episodes. “The more months went by, the more I started thinking, ‘You know what? If I was ever to go after some of these things I really want to do, I need to do it now.’”
Kandi, however, denied that she left RHOA due to salary demands.
“I don’t know what anybody else’s check is and I don’t go into asking what anybody else’s check is and I don’t like for them to ask about mine. So, it wasn’t about the money,” she asserted to host Nick Viall. “It’s not that I don’t need it, who doesn’t need money? I just decided that right now, I wanted to take this moment to go after the other things I really wanted.”
