Charli Burnett Says She “Never Worked at SUR” as She Reveals How She Joined Vanderpump Rules, and Her “Biggest Regret,” Plus She Addresses Her Abrupt Exit and Who She’s in Touch With

Charli Burnett revealed how she got cast on Vanderpump Rules, and she shared her “biggest regret.” The alum also recalled feeling “lost” with “nobody in my corner,” and she addressed her decision to quit.

The concept of Pump Rules centers on the lives of real-life servers from Lisa Vanderpump’s SUR restaurant. Many of the castmates had known each other for over a decade by the time Charli joined in season eight. She stayed on for three seasons until her exit.

On the Trying To Figure It Out podcast, Charli was asked how she got cast.

“I never worked at SUR. I wasn’t a server at SUR,” she said, via @vanderpodrecaps on Instagram. “The casting was brought to me and my agency at the time as a show about young actors in LA. And we were going to follow them around for, you know, X amount of time of their journey in life … and then I got a call back, and then it turned into, ‘This is Vanderpump Rules and Lisa wants to meet you.’”

“So I had no idea of what Vanderpump Rules really was or really grasp what I was getting myself into,” she said. “I went to the casting [meeting] like, la la la, like I’m going to meet Lisa, this will be fun.”

Charli hinted that Lisa approved her as a castmate, and she was then asked to join the show, though she hadn’t been “taking it serious.”

“I was iffy, and I was like, you know what? Let me just show up to the first day and see what happens. It was just all bad timing and weird casting timing,” she hinted. “I came in at a weird time in the group, and I was the youngest, which I feel like that didn’t help me any.”

She said her “biggest regret” was not watching any of the show before she started.

“I would have gone in a completely different [direction],” she continued. “But that group was so established, and they also knew some of the new people. I was a complete, like, blind buddy. So I didn’t know anybody, no one knew me … It was completely, like, a random person thrown in the middle … I feel like I was a little lost in a lot of things I was doing. Also, I had nobody in my corner.”

Charli then addressed her “abrupt decision” to quit.

“I was getting on my way, ready to film, you know, all I had to do was sign the contract on the way there. And I just, I backed out for some reason,” she said. “And I think that I needed to. That situation really did trigger me in a lot of ways. And it really turned me off from people, [and] I needed to take that step back from everyone and everything.”

“I muted everyone from the shows,” she went on. “I was like, I cannot see this. I cannot watch this. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

Charli claimed Ariana Madix is the only co-star she still has a relationship with, and she said their relationship was the only one that wasn’t “fake” for the show.