Morgan Stewart made ‘rich best friend’ her brand. She says people still don’t quite get her.

For more than a decade, Morgan Stewart has been the internet’s rich best friend, equal parts aspirational and disarmingly honest, delivering hot takes while in the season’s newest Chanel shoes and Renggli denim.

But the version of Morgan Stewart people think they know — stylish, blunt, a little unbothered — isn’t necessarily who she is offscreen. With her new SiriusXM podcast, The Morgan Stewart Show, those two versions are finally starting to meet.

“I think the podcast is the internal me, and the Instagram is the external me,” she tells Yahoo. She laughs. “I can’t even talk — how did that just come out of my mouth?!”

That mix of humor and self-awareness is precisely why fans have followed her through every version of her life for more than a decade.

Stewart, now 37, first broke out on E!’s Rich Kids of Beverly Hills in 2014, where she was introduced to audiences as a witty, fashion-obsessed socialite. It’s a persona, she says, that has stuck with her ever since. There’s no bitterness in her voice — just an understanding of how the industry works.

“I love Rich Kids. I have no shade at all and never bite the hand that feeds you — it launched me,” she says. “But it is crazy how in this business, you are [only] as good as the most notable thing you’ve done.”

And yet in an era in which influencers and reality stars are routinely picked apart — and just as quickly replaced — Stewart has done something harder to pull off: She has lasted.

I think the podcast is the internal me and the Instagram is the external me.

In a space where likability is often fleeting, hers has proved surprisingly durable — not by reinventing herself entirely but by letting people watch her evolve in real time, from reality TV breakout to host, fashion founder and now a mother of two.

“I’m not performing,” she says, simply, when I ask what she attributes that to. “I’m changing and growing.”

She has also watched how quickly that perception can shift, sometimes in a single moment. Take the backlash that influencer Jake Shane faced after hosting the red carpet coverage at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party.

“I love Jake. I think he’s so funny,” Stewart says. “It’s a really hard job. And I think he did his best and tried to communicate with people and just be sort of real. And I think there’s an invisible higher bar that people don’t realize.”

Despite plenty of online discourse arguing the opposite, she believes influencers should get the chance for these kinds of hosting opportunities and that people don’t realize how hard it is. “I’m terrible at it,” she says, “and I’ve done it a thousand times.”

It’s exactly why she’s thinking more carefully about how — and where — she shows up now.

For years fans have asked her to start a podcast. Stewart resisted. But now the timing finally makes sense … even if she’s the first to admit the reasoning sounds a little predictable. Now that she’s a mom, she wants a good work-life balance and prefers being at home with her kids. She and husband, musician Jordan McGraw, are parents to daughter Row, 5, and son Grey, 4.

“I couldn’t go into a studio every day. I didn’t want to film a reality show that was going to have me shooting all day,” she says. “I can’t be stressed, running around. I did that.”

Instead, the podcast offers something that feels both sustainable and freeing: one hour a week, no producers, no filters, no forced conversations. It’s just Stewart, saying what she actually thinks.

“I just want to connect with my audience and have them kind of see different parts of me that they never have, in the 12 f***ing years I’ve been doing this,” she says.

Motherhood, Stewart admits, has reshaped everything, from how she works to how she defines success. And it’s not always easy. A trip to New York this week left her “hyperventilating.”

“It is very difficult to leave them,” Stewart says. “I don’t want to be away all day, every day. So I think that’s how I make my choices now. I’m not just flying somewhere for no reason. I make sure my time away is meaningful.”

That instinct — to protect her time, her energy and her family — now guides nearly everything she does. It also shapes the podcast itself, which will feature both celebrity guests and the people closest to her, including McGraw, who appears in the first episode, out now. (McGraw is the son of Dr. Phil McGraw.)

“He is my sounding board,” she says. “Jordan is an unbelievably balanced, calm individual who really understands things very quickly.”

I think people think I am way more vapid and way more materialistic than I am.

But even as her life has shifted, she knows the perception of her hasn’t always caught up. When I ask what people get wrong about her, she doesn’t hesitate.

“I think people think I am way more vapid and way more materialistic than I am,” she says. “I think people think I’m different than who I am inside.”

How does Stewart see herself? “Inside, I am 9 years old and very sweet and want to spread love and then get very sensitive when it’s not reciprocated. I get very frustrated when people don’t validate my feelings, emotions and actions toward that. I think I present differently than I feel inside. And I think the podcast is going to probably reveal that.”

Still, don’t expect Stewart to abandon the sharp humor and unfiltered opinions that made her a fan favorite in the first place. There will be hot takes. Plenty of them. Just ask her what rich people are wasting their money on.

“The Oran Hermès sandals,” she says almost instantly. “F***ing kill me, I hate them so much. And I love my Hermès family so much, but those sandals, I haaaate, with a passion.”

Her parenting opinions are just as blunt.

The Oran Hermès sandals. F***ing kill me, I hate them so much.

When it comes to screen time, she draws a firm line: no iPads, no phones — but television is fair game. “You want to watch The Little Mermaid? Get f***ing drunk and do it,” she jokes. (An iPad phase, she adds, “became unmanageable” and was quickly shut down.)

And as for the one parenting trend she can’t stand? “Parents judging other parents,” she says. “We’re all just trying to get one foot in front of the other. It’s very hard.”

That mindset extends to how she and McGraw are raising their kids, particularly in a world shaped by privilege. When I ask if that’s something she and her husband talk about, she quickly says yes — recalling how much she wrestled with the decision of where to send her daughter to school.

“My mom gave me really good advice,” Stewart recalls. “She said, ‘You’re her mother. You raise her. She gets that from home. She doesn’t get that from outside sources. So you raise her grounded and humble and make sure she has her head f***ing straight. That’s your responsibility. So do it.’”

If there’s one thing Stewart knows, it’s straight talk. The podcast world is about to get a lot of it.

You can view the original article HERE.