Paige DeSorbo Dresses For Comfort. She Hustles Like A Boss.

“Are you kidding?” Paige DeSorbo is replying to a casual question about whether or not she has a to-do list, and she is emphatic, as is her way about most things in life. We’re at an Upper West Side bakery in late September, and DeSorbo — who arrived five minutes early, wearing a tan YSL windbreaker with cream-colored jeans and matching flats (which she later posts as an OOTD on TikTok) — whips her iPhone out for show and tell.

Like today’s pale pink nails, the list at hand is tidy, polished, and quite long. This is the way she’s been organizing her life since high school, she says. On the list du jour: this interview; a call with the staff of her new clothing brand, Daphne; a merch photo shoot with her Giggly Squad podcast co-host and best friend, Hannah Berner; another call; time to pack for a quick trip to Boston (where she’ll speak at Harvard Business School); and a 6 p.m. manicure.

A jam-packed fall follows DeSorbo’s first summer off in seven years. A cast member on Bravo’s hit reality series Summer House from Seasons 3 through 9, the 32-year-old had gotten used to warm months filled with on-camera theme parties (remember “50 Shades of Summer” and “Summer Apocalypse”?), beach picnics, and what some experts might consider a worrisome amount of squabbling every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from June through Labor Day.

A few months ago, she handed in her walking papers. “Being part of this show has been one of the most rewarding chapters of my life,” she wrote in her Instagram exit announcement. “But like all good things (and some bad decisions), it’s time for this chapter to close.”

For DeSorbo, departing the Summer House Cinematic Universe was a foregone conclusion. At one point, she shot three shows in one year (Summer House, spin-off show Winter House, and Southern Charm, the latter of which starred her then-boyfriend, Craig Conover). “It truly is a full-time gig,” she tells me. “There was always an expiration date because I could never do that model much longer. It did feel like, ‘OK, that is my steady hometown boyfriend. I’d live a fine life with him. ​​But could I just see if there’s more?’”

She smiles with her entire face when I ask how she spent her time “off.” “I had a really relaxing summer,” she says almost on autopilot before confessing that next year, she needs to Sharpie in “rest” on her to-do list. Because anyone who’s a true Paige DeSorbo fan knows she didn’t really relax when the cameras went down.

Sure, there were vacations (two, both to Italy). But there were professional endeavors, too. She flew to Fiji to host a challenge on Love Island USA, did a stint as guest announcer on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, filmed for a day on the set of The Devil Wears Prada 2 (more on that later), and made headlines by appearing at the Las Culturistas Culture Awards in a showstopping chapeau. That night, she won the Allison Williams Cool Girl Award and was also nominated for (and, frankly, robbed of) the “Grief of the Year” and “Scariest Moment in History” awards for leaving Summer House.

“There is a reason why the majority of couples on reality TV end in divorce. It is one of the hardest things ever. And if you can survive it, god bless. I could never. I can’t. I couldn’t.”

“Paige has the X factor,” Las Culturistas co-host Matt Rogers says. “She jumps off the screen. There is something about her that you feel like you can recognize but also aspire to. She’s like the cool girl you sat next to in science class who was also prom queen.”

DeSorbo’s recent career highs come atop a previous yearful of them. Headlining Radio City Music Hall twice with Berner before releasing a New York Times bestseller? Checkmark. Launching the clothing brand Daphne, named after her cat? Years in the making. Bouncing back from a highly publicized breakup and leaving the show that “made” her with more eyes on her than ever before? Hardly a bad showing for a TV star whose fondness for lounging around led fans to dub her a “bed bug.”

DeSorbo, who grew up and went to college in upstate New York, always knew she was destined for an unconventional career. So did her family. “My dad is the one that said, ‘You should do Summer House,’” she says.

She joined the show as a quick-witted 24-year-old, and her first appearances on camera in 2019 signaled the arrival of a reality TV darling — one who constantly turned out chicer-than-the-average-reality-star looks that became the envy of viewers. In October 2020, she and former Summer House-mate Berner launched the Giggly Squad podcast. The show — mostly two best friends gabbing and catching up, with occasional serious detours into breakups, stalkers, and restraining orders — has built a massive community and netted 44 million downloads last year. The “Gigglers” hang on their every word. “It’s like I have millions of bodyguards,” DeSorbo says. “It’s almost like having this secret society in the world where it’s like, ‘If sh*t goes down, just know I’m also here.’”

“Sometimes people can say a hate comment, and I have enough self-awareness where I’m like, ‘They absolutely ate with that.’”

It was last year, seven seasons into Summer House, that DeSorbo’s priorities began to shift, as is the natural order of things. “Honestly, I loved going out and partying like any normal human, but now I’m about to turn 33,” she says. “If I have two cocktails, sorry, I’m deceased. I’m in bed. My insides are curling up and leaving.”

She adds that returning to the show would’ve felt like wearing out her welcome, like she was taking a spot from “a girl that should be starting out her career in the same way I did when I was 25.” Of course, it didn’t hurt that her business had already begun to brew in the background.

DeSorbo’s reality TV departure places her in the rarified, Bethenny Frankel-led pantheon of Bravo stars who willingly exited their show knowing that their time on the small screen was but a launchpad for bigger, better, more lucrative, and (hopefully) less dramatic ventures. “Behind the scenes, from the day I got on, I knew I wanted to put out some type of product,” she says. “Cultivating my brand throughout these seven years was not as easy as it looked, because it could have gone really left really quickly if I didn’t jump on it. When I first started seeing our episodes [with the reaction] being like, ‘You’re just so lazy,’ I was devastated. I was like, ‘Oh my God. Everyone thinks I’m stupid? That I don’t know how to do anything?’ I truly was so upset about it. I feel like if I didn’t immediately lean in and act on it, I could have not been taken seriously at all.”

Daphne, the cozy-chic loungewear brand she unveiled in June after nearly three years of development is “filling a void in my own closet,” she says. “On days where I’m not doing something in a full outfit that has been planned for a week, I want to be comfortable and I want to be in pajamas.”

“I’m not a mom yet. I’m not in a lifestyle where I can’t get ready in the morning, but I don’t want to sometimes,” she adds. “So I want a really good T-shirt and a really good pair of pants that maybe, if I want to go to the airport, I can wear this.”

“You’re like, ‘Is this an A-list celebrity coming up to me?’ You freeze. But if I was like, ‘Yeah, you should know me,’ then I hope you would punch me in the face.”

In its initial drop, Daphne offered fellow bed bugs the chance to shop inside DeSorbo’s dream closet of knit minidresses and loose separates (the “Hannah Tee” is a favorite among favorites). The vibe is effortless, though DeSorbo insists the pieces took plenty of effort behind the scenes to get right.

“She has a total understanding of the marketplace and the category, and she’s a very tapped-in fashion consumer,” says Kyle DeFord, Daphne’s GM, who cut his teeth as a merchant at J.Crew — you may recognize him from the HBO Max series Stylish with Jenna Lyons — and has been working with DeSorbo since August 2024. “Her instincts are always spot-on and she has an understanding of how this business needs to run to be successful.”

DeSorbo invokes Victoria Beckham as her greatest business role model. “She’s an inspiration career-wise in how she was like, ‘... and I’ll pivot. I can wear a little Gucci dress and hold a microphone, but I can also give you the best silk cami you’ve ever seen in your life.’” (Yes, they’ve met — DeSorbo gave her a friendship bracelet.)

“When I first started seeing [the audience reaction] being like, ‘You’re so lazy,’ I was devastated. I was like, ‘Oh my God. Everyone thinks I’m stupid?’”

Much like with every single move she made on Summer House, Daphne has been scrutinized on the internet. (“If you’re into the look of hospital wear or scrubs then it’s for you,” proclaimed one Redditor, who later deleted their account.) Though DeSorbo doesn’t go looking for negative takes, they find her anyway. “Sometimes people can say a hate comment, and I have enough self-awareness where I’m like, ‘They absolutely ate with that,’” she says, laughing. “I wore an outfit to the TIME100 Creators gala — this gorgeous pink outfit — and someone was like, ‘OK, it’s kind of giving penis.’ I’m like, ‘Wait, she’s spot-on.’ I had to return it. I was like, ‘I’ll never wear it again.’”

Most of the feedback both online and IRL, however, has been much more positive (and much less phallic). “One of my girlfriends said, ‘When I’m wearing Daphne, I want to get things done,’” she says. “The Daphne sets, yes, they’re lounge and cotton and you can sleep in them, but when you have a set on, you’re like, ‘Let me literally run through this list that I’ve been putting off for a minute.’”

Her dream Daphne customer? “I say it’s for the girls, but it’s for me,” she says. “I love throwing a look, and I love wearing the highest heels and doing a full glam, but not every day because, like anything else, it gets mundane.”

“I think it also goes back to Giggly Squad decentering men,” she adds. “There’s so many things women do unknowingly because of our society and men and stuff. Pajamas and ruffles and bows: That’s for us.”

Though Daphne’s first drop basically sold out overnight, it wasn’t built in a day. DeSorbo even shot an early company meeting for Summer House back in 2024 that never aired, which raises the question: Did she consider the so-called “Bethenny Clause” — a contract provision that allows the network to earmark a percentage of a star’s earnings from any potential businesses they launch in tandem with their show — when she was planning her Bravo exit?

“Contracts are so intense and so scary,” she says. “Everyone has the Bethenny Clause [in their contract]. It’s kind of like when you think of a prenup — you’re doing it preemptively to protect what you have. But Bravo is also not a bitter jealous ex trying to be like, ‘Well, actually, bitch.’”

“So no, it wasn’t a factor,” she says. “In terms of Daphne, I don’t think they have any claim. Now, if I become a billionaire…”

“If I have two cocktails, sorry, I’m deceased. I’m in bed. My insides are curling up and leaving.”

It’s been helpful to have Andy Cohen’s drumbeat of encouragement as she prepared for the day she might leave reality TV behind. “I’ve always heard Andy be very like, ‘You should have things outside of Bravo,’” she says. “In earlier seasons, he’d be like, ‘You’re saving your money, right? And you’re making good financial decisions and you’re building things outside of it?’ It would be like seeing your dad and him being like, ‘And let me see your report card.’ So when he was proud of me for Radio City, I was like, ‘I peaked — and now I have to leave.’”

Daphne may not be Rhode or Rare Beauty just yet, but DeSorbo seems genuinely ready to put in the work. “She’s everything you want, which is someone who makes quick decisions and trusts her gut, but is also incredibly collaborative and respectful of everyone’s opinion,” DeFord says.

The business has grown quickly. “I employ people, which is terrifying,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Wait, I pay your health insurance?’ But it’s the most fun ever. Obviously, I feel pressure because [I’m] putting out a product and I want it to be perfect. But also, at the end of the day, similar to Giggly Squad, it’s not that serious. It’s pajamas.”

Last fall, DeSorbo, overwhelmed by the mounting obligations of her personal and professional lives, had a severe panic attack backstage on the Giggly Squad tour. And although her to-do list has only grown longer and more daunting since that day, she calls overcoming the moment the achievement she’s most proud of in the last year. “There have been so many times where I’m like, ‘Should I take a beta blocker before this?’” she says. “On the outside looking in, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, she’s doing so many cool things and how fun.’ Yes, but at the same time, ‘Am I going to freak out in the middle of it and ruin everyone’s time? Should I take a beat from this whole career in general?’”

Since then, she’s found some balance. “I’m happy to say that through this past year, I have taken beta blockers less and less,” she adds, suggesting that, had we met a year ago, she’d have taken one before showing up at our interview.

That’s not to say she’s totally figured out how to navigate her place in the celebrity industrial complex. Backstage at the Las Culturistas Awards this summer, when Kristen Wiig beelined over to introduce herself, “I actually said to her, ‘Please get away from me,’” DeSorbo says without cracking a smile. “I could feel her walking closer to me, and she was like, ‘I just want to let you know I’m a fan.’ I was like, ‘Sorry, shut up.’ You immediately revert back to the first time you saw Bridesmaids and you’re like, ‘Is this an A-list celebrity coming up to me?’ You freeze. [But] if I was like, ‘Yeah, you should know me,’ then I hope you would punch me in the face.”

“I employ people, which is terrifying. I’m like, ‘Wait, I pay your health insurance?’’

Some aspects of DeSorbo’s new life require fewer growing pains. Being able to keep her love life entirely to herself for the first time in nearly a decade, for example, feels glorious. She confirms that, yes, she’s dating, and yes, it’s one person in particular. But that’s all I’m getting from her on this score. “It’s so interesting to get out of Summer House and to know I’m going to date someone and the whole world isn’t going to be like, ‘I don’t love it,’” she says. “It feels like what dating at 32 should be.”

She continues: “Being in a relationship on reality TV is not for the weak, and there is a reason why the majority of couples on reality TV end in divorce. It is one of the hardest things ever. And if you can survive it, god bless. I could never. I can’t. I couldn’t.”

After so many years grinding on her personal brand, it should come as a surprise to no one that a post-Summer House Paige DeSorbo is a hot commodity — not just in reality TV, but in fashion and on the big screen, too. Last month, she reportedly filmed scenes for The Devil Wears Prada 2, the sequel to a movie that means a lot to DeSorbo: she first spotted it as a bootleg DVD on the streets of New York, begged her dad to buy it, then played it on the car’s DVD player on the drive back upstate. “If I didn’t sign an NDA, and if I was approached to do something in the capacity of Devil Wears Prada, it would be my childhood’s full-circle moment,” she says before confirming (without confirming) that she shot for “not even” a day. “This encompasses who I am at my core. It’s a pillar of my personality. So if they were to have reached out and asked me to be a part of it, yeah, I would say that I would cry.”

Just days after we speak, she’ll jet off to Paris Fashion Week. “I’m only going to the Victoria Beckham show,” she says, holding her hands to her face in awe. “She has invited me to get fitted in person, so I’m hoping that works out.” (Spoiler: It did.)

“It goes back to Giggly Squad decentering men. Pajamas and ruffles and bows: That’s for us.”

With Berner away on a solo comedy tour this fall, “I’m 100% Daphne for the next couple of months,” DeSorbo says. “It’s almost like my husband is away on business and I can focus on me for a second.” The next drop goes live today, with another scheduled around the holidays, and more grand plans — mens, kids, and even cat accessories — in the works.

She and Hannah are planning Giggly Squad’s next moves, too, including nascent scripted and unscripted projects. “Doing our live show, we’re scripting that,” she says. “We wrote a book. We can write what we think is funny. I feel like in 2025, there are no boundaries anymore.”

As much as she knows she made the right choice to leave, “it was so weird to go from doing something every single day, thinking about something every single day, for seven years, to then me texting Ciara [Miller] and being like, ‘So what’s going on?’” DeSorbo says, referring to her Summer House costar. “There will always be reality TV, if there really is a time in my life where I’m like, ‘What about waking up with cameras again?’” she says, before answering her own question: “I don’t see it for right now, but you have no idea what life is going to be.”

Producers did call her to talk about the Summer House spinoff (starring her former castmates Kyle Cooke, Lindsay Hubbard, and Amanda Batula) that started filming in September. But she felt like that would be “the [just-graduated] senior coming back to high school, flinging her keys around. I’m like, ‘Not yet. Maybe you guys do a season, but I don’t think it’s for me right now.’”

For now, it’s onward and upward. “Sometimes I do live in a little bit of impostor syndrome of like, ‘Yeah, but [I was] on reality TV. Who’s going to take me seriously?’” she adds. “But then I will remind myself: I do have a New York Times bestseller. I do have a top comedy podcast. There are days where I’m like, ‘No, I don’t have impostor syndrome. I f*cking did that.’”