Selling Sunset star Heather Rae El Moussa did not return for Season 7 after going on maternity leave, much to the surprise of fans everywhere. Though she previously said she was “excited to get back to work” with Netflix, it appears that she’s found greener pastures at HGTV.

El Moussa confirmed during a recent appearance on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast that she wasn’t asked to come back to Selling Sunset after she went on maternity leave. But her newfound freedom has let her focus on The Flipping El Moussas, the new HGTV series she co-hosts with her husband, Tarek El Moussa.

“It was a blessing that I wasn’t asked to come back because I’m so much happier filming my show with Tarek,” she said. “We’re co-producers on our show so we pick the hours.”

El Moussa confessed that the Selling Sunset environment was “very toxic.”

“With Selling Sunset, I never knew when I was going to be filming,” she said. “It was last minute, it took over my life, it was hard to do my real job — real estate. It was hard to do anything else.”

She continued, “It was crazy. They just want more and more and more, and you saw me on the show.”

El Moussa revealed the show became “worse and worse” the more popular the show became. “In the beginning was it just all fun, not crazy drama. We were all friends. Any drama was just simple,” she said. “Then it just got worse and worse and worse. They started adding in more girls. It just became out of control.”

She confessed that she often came home “crying from the stress” of filming.

The real estate agent starred on the Netflix reality series since its premiere in 2019. Though she sees it as a “blessing” now, El Moussa said that is was “frustrating” that she hadn’t been called back in March 2023, when Season 7 had already began filming.

“Season 7 is filming right now, but I’ve been off maternity leave and I’ve been excited to get back to work and so far I have not been called back,” she said at the time.

“It’s been a little frustrating. So [I’m] not sure what’s been going on,” she added. “I’ve been there from the pilot, from the beginning.”