Catt Sadler Reveals She Wouldn’t ‘Change a Thing’ About Her Controversial Departure From E! (Exclusive)

She’s a beloved journalist known for her longstanding position at the entertainment network E!, but television host and podcaster, Catt Sadler admits her controversial departure is something she still stands by to this day. In 2017, fans were shocked to learn one of the network’s most famous faces announced her farewell after discovering she wasn’t getting paid her worth. In an exclusive with PopCulture.com, Sadler details why she doesn’t regret her decision and how she’s now “stripping down” for her new NAKED podcast.

“Reflecting back, I don’t think I’d change a thing,” she said. “Sometimes I look back and think, ‘wow, I really did that.’” She further explained that she felt “everything aligned” even though it was a very public decision. “It wasn’t just, like a decision that was in my house and in front of my closest friends and family. I mean, it was a very public decision, but no […] I wouldn’t do anything differently.”

In December 2017, Sadler left E! after learning her male co-host Jason Kennedy was earning double her salary. “He wasn’t doing double the amount of work. He wasn’t working double the hours,” she confessed in a 2018 Vanity Fair article. “Our roles at the network were certainly different, but they were undoubtedly equal. We started at the company at the same time. We had comparable hours, workloads, skill sets, and responsibilities. We had similar public profiles and contacts in the industry. The only meaningful difference between us, it turns out, was our paychecks.”

She told PopCulture that while she didn’t “plan it,” she would have loved to have stayed at her job. “I would’ve loved to have been paid what I was worth,” she said, later adding how the timing was almost kismet-like just months before the Time’s Up and #MeToo movement, “It was just part of a bigger movement for women to use their voices in ways that make a change for other women.” In her new NAKED podcast, Sadler strips it down to respectively discuss uncomfortable conversations.

In a recent episode, sponsored by Depend, she chatted with her mother, Linda Rendleman, on an array of topics including how she struggles with incontinence. “It was just great because Depend, you know, offered to partner with me and sponsor this episode and it was just such a no brainer because — and I had never until this point really shared this part of my story — but I’ve struggled with incontinence,” the 45-year-old explained. “I’ve had two kids, I jump on the trampoline and I have some leakage. So I don’t feel the need to protect that anymore or to make it about my ego, because if it’s happening to me, then it’s happening to other people.”

Research shows that over 65 million adults in the U.S. experience bladder leakage, with nearly half under the age of 50. Sadler said she felt the need to help break the stigma. “I’ve been a journalist for 20 plus years and I’m just at this point where I wanna talk about the thins that people find uncomfortable to talk about. I think if we have these kinds of exchanges, then it normalizes conversations and then it’s not, you know, it’s not such a stigma.”

While Sadler may have walked away from her TV job, she didn’t walk away from it forever. In fact, she’s been keeping busy with her own production company and she’s ready to jump back into television. The journalist said she has a few things in the works and is also transitioning to an executive producer role while also maintaining an on-air presence. She said coming “back into people’s homes again” is her goal.