'Chasing Maria Menounos' star Maria Menounos didn't "cut throats or sleep her way to the top"

Chasing Maria Menounos, a new docu-reality series which features TV host Maria Menounos' personal life and how she makes untraditional choices, premiered Tuesday night at 10PM ET/PT on Oxygen.


Maria, 35, is an entertainment reporter best known for her role as a host on Extra. She also appeared on Dancing with the Stars' fourteenth season with professional partner Derek Hough in Spring 2012 and the couple finished in fourth place.

Maria currently lives with Keven Undergaro, her boyfriend of almost 16 years, and her traditional Greek immigrant parents Costas and Litsa, who are pushing her to wed and have kids.

During a recent conference call with reporters, Maria and Keven talked about their new show Chasing Maria Menounos. Below is the concluding portion of their interview. Click here to read the first half.

What did you have to sacrifice to have the career you have today?


Maria Menounos: I mean, I feel like, you know...

Keven Undergaro: Weekends. Right, Maria? Vacations. Like I'm sitting here being really quiet about this. I don't know why she's like [quiet] -- I mean, I've been on the bench watching this and watching her sacrifice for 16 years. And, you know, when I think of, I mean, I think we went on a five year stand when we hadn't even been on a vacation, and even still, vacations were never over two or three days.

I mean, even when we go on vacation, there would be some kind of news tragedy because the news business never stops, where Maria would have to fly home, you know, midway through the few times we ever tried.

But I mean, I think the main thing sacrificing -- you know, one of the things that I always say at AfterBuzz -- we have over 200 hosts at AfterBuzz, our network, and we do these career seminars -- and the one thing I say to them is, "If you guys aren't willing to cut anyone's throat and if you're not willing to sleep your way to the top, well guess what? You have to work so much harder and sacrifice so much more than everybody else."

And that's Maria. You know, because she's not a throat cutter and she's not, obviously, well, not willing to sleep with anyone but me. So she has to work that much harder and it's that much more difficult in Hollywood.


And it's one of the reasons why we have Mom and Dad living with us, because they help us so much with everything that we do and I think, you know, hopefully you'll see them on the show.  But yet, you also maintain all the good things, you know, the love, the support, the values. And for us, it's even more crucial because it's a very cruel business.

How do you relax and unwind from your busy career, Maria?

Maria Menounos: How do I relax? I guess it's definitely not the easiest thing for me to do, but I love, I love being at home with Keven and the dogs and my parents. And I love cooking. I love watching movies. I love going to the beach. Keven and I have been going to the beach lately and just kind of reading and just breathing and taking it all in. We're making conscious efforts to do that a little bit more.

So I mean, this weekend is my first weekend off in a long time and I think we're going to rescue some poodles from a hoarder situation and groom them and get them all beautiful and try to place them in some homes, so that will be our idea of resting this weekend.

Keven Undergaro: Yes, we love to work with the animals. That's always fun. When we get to do stuff with the shelters, it's always fun. It's hard to walk away without taking on more dogs, but that's always, that is fun.


What won't viewers get to see on TV? Is there anything that you weren't allowed to film?

Keven Undergaro: I mean, no. I could tell you lots of things. Don't get me going. Well I, you know, I run a network. I have two hundred hosts in AfterBuzz TV. We're the largest new media platform on the Web and you see some of this but you don't see, I don't think you see a lot of the work that I do.

But it's not my show, which is fine. I didn't even want to be on the show. To be honest, I love the idea that Maria's doing a show. I'm not crazy about being on it because I, if you notice I haven't been on the red carpet for 15 years for a reason. You know, spotlights are not for me. I'm more of an introvert. Maria's more of an extravert, but yes.

Maria Menounos: I mean, we're obviously not going to let them film us in our bedroom when we're, you know, doing anything. So that's off limits, but other than that, there is nothing that is off limits.

Keven Undergaro: No, everything in the house, you know, just stays in the house. That was my little-too-much information shared. But again, what are you going to do when you allow this to happen, you know?


Were you hesitant to be on TV, Keven?

Keven Undergaro: Yes. I mean again, I don't know how much you know about me even with your job. But I've made a conscious effort to not be on-camera and to not go to events with Maria, not be photographed. And Maria's been great because she's already expected that. It's just not for me.

I wanted to produce this show because I love the idea of showing Maria and Mom and Dad off to the rest of the world. And I think it is a very exciting -- it's a fun life. I want people to get sort of [see that]. Hopefully good, more good things will come out of it. But I didn't want to be on it myself because I, you know, fought it even throughout the process.

It just, I don't know. It's not, I'm not a performer. I'm not a personality. That's not what I am. I like to think I'm a writer. I'm a producer. I love the behind the scenes stuff. I like being in a support position but being in front of the camera, that's not just me. But what the producers have said was, you know, how do we really tell Maria's story? And I understood it. It didn't really make sense.

What's the most glamorous, lavish thing about your life?


Maria Menounos: I mean, I guess the business that we're in and, you know, Sunday I was at the Oscars and you're getting drenched in diamonds and gorgeous gowns. And then the next night you're going to Chili's and having dinner in your sweats. So there's like the me that works in this business and then there's the real me that is outside of that. So I enjoy definitely the perks of all of this but there's a reality to it too.

What would surprise us about your lives?

Keven Undergaro: I think, I mean, for people who know Maria, there might not be a lot of surprises. But for people who don't know her, they might be surprised to see that she is so normal. You know, when she mentioned... "I'm at the Oscars on Sunday and at Chili's on a Monday night," she means it. You know, we, those are the places that we eat at. We still do drive-through.

We're very, very, very laid-back in terms of, you know, yes we work in the scene but we're very normal. I mean, it's hard to think. We do have a beautiful house, but even that house was on the market forever. No one wanted it. It was a dump.

We fixed it as a family -- myself, Costas, Litsa and Maria. Literally, the four of us worked non-stop on it for about a month straight when Maria came home from work. And we renovated this property that now is an exquisite estate.

But I'm proud of it, you know, because the reason we have it is more because we were willing to put in the work that any family you would see do it. When they buy a house, they renovate it if they're handy.


But I think that, with Maria, you know, like she is very down to earth and I think the problem is she's getting -- although it's a unique situation in Hollywood -- a lot of the problems I think are everyday, which is Mom and Dad getting older, having to take care of them, Mom and Dad wanting grandkids. You know, being 35, do I [want to] have children right now? Do I wait a little longer? Pressures.

I think those are very relatable and I think you get that surprise with Maria that, you know, we shop at Target. Then we go to Home Depot literally two or three times a week. I mean it's, I don't see it being so much different.

Yes, we have a screening room and things like that, but we built those. It's something that I think at least my friends at home from Boston relate to. They have mothers and fathers that come and help them at their houses and things like that.

Maria Menounos: I think for me, holding onto the Greek traditions is really important because, you know, I want to be able to pass them down to my kids some day and the whole thing.

So obviously, you know, we celebrate all the holidays the same way, we eat the same foods. I cook. You know, I make sure whether my Mom's in town for a holiday or if she's back East for a holiday, I'm cooking all the traditional meals. And we go to our church here and in L.A.

So, you know, I'm still tied to all of it in a very real way. I love going to like the Greek restaurants here and Greek dancing. I love Greek music. I'm always listening to my Greek music... We're very, very routed in all of it.


Above is the concluding portion of Maria and Keven's recent conference call with reporters. Click here to read the first half.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski