Sarah Shahi | From Sex/Life to the Messy Middle of Real Life!
Off The Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe
PodcastOne
4.5 • 21.5K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
#917. This week on Off the Vine, Kaitlyn sits down with actress and author Sarah Shahi for a conversation that’s raw, funny, and completely unfiltered!
Sarah opens up about growing up feeling like she didn’t quite fit in, her family’s escape from Iran, and the winding path that took her from pageants and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders to Hollywood — including a chance encounter with legendary director Robert Altman that changed everything. She shares honest reflections on motherhood, divorce, and what it looks like to rebuild when the life you planned no longer fits.
They get into the Sex/Life TV show phenomenon, the flood of DMs from women around the world that followed, and how that moment sparked her new book, Life Is Lifey. Nothing is off-limits — from intimacy on set to trusting your gut, fighting fair, and choosing yourself one step at a time.
And just when you think you’ve heard it all… Sarah reveals her favorite chapter she wrote — spoiler: it’s the one about blow jobs. You don’t want to miss this one!!
If you’re LOVING this podcast, please follow and leave a rating and review below! PLUS, FOLLOW OUR PODCAST INSTAGRAM HERE!
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
- (6:15) — Sarah shares that her father was on a hit list to be executed — and how he escaped!
- (16:05) — The chance encounter with legendary director Robert Altman that changed Sarah’s life and launched her acting career.
- (31:50) — How the Sex/Life TV show led to an influx of DMs from women — and sparked the idea for her new book, Life Is Lifey.
- (44:55) — Sarah reveals her favorite chapter she wrote in the book… yes, it’s the one about blow jobs!!
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Off the Vine with Caitlin Bristow. |
| 0:08.5 | Hey, Vino's real quick. If you are listening right now, which obviously you are or you |
| 0:12.6 | wouldn't be hearing this, can you hit the subscribe or follow button on whatever platform |
| 0:16.4 | you're on? Please, that one simple thing helps more than you even realize it allows me to keep growing on this |
| 0:22.4 | podcast and making these episodes the best they can possibly be obviously for you. That's the only |
| 0:28.1 | favorite I'm going to ever ask, okay? It truly means the world to me. Thank you. Now let's get into it. |
| 0:32.9 | Hey everybody. Welcome to Off the Vine. I'm your host, Caitlin Bristow. And today I think I fell in love with a woman. I really do. She was amazing. Her name is Sarah Shahi. And she is an actress, an author. And I just feel like her story goes much deeper than roles that we have seen her play. She is a light. She told me her favorite chapter to write in her book that's coming out was the chapter on |
| 0:54.5 | blowjobs, which I then realized she was the girl giving blowjobs to a carrot in the movie old school, and I didn't know it, and I brought it up, and she was like, that was me. Anyways, I'm getting off track as I do in this whole podcast, but while the show's sex life was blowing up, Sarah's real life was also blowing up and changing behind the scenes. And women around |
| 1:11.8 | the world started flooding her DMs, needing validation, needing permission, wanting to feel seen |
| 1:17.1 | and heard, which the connection kind of made her realize that she needs to write a book. And she |
| 1:21.5 | wrote it from a place of her life where it was really messy and not the highlight reel, not a |
| 1:25.9 | how-to, not a memoir, just like a messy place that you can |
| 1:28.8 | open up at any time of the day of any page in the book and feel seen. The book is called Life is |
| 1:33.8 | Lifey, which is just raw, funny, and an honest look at navigating motherhood relationships, |
| 1:39.2 | reinvention, all the things that any woman would want to read. So today we talk about identity, |
| 1:43.9 | desire, starting over, trusting yourself, blow jobs, and what path you're on and how it will always get better. So Sarah, welcome to Off the Vine. I don't know what it is. For me, I force myself to drink water. Yeah. But for some reason, like I don't like the taste, even though people are like, there is no taste I'm like, there is to me. Do you have to add stuff to it to like make it taste okay? But even the stuff I add to it, it doesn't taste okay because it's like this creatine powder and then it's the amino acids and then this other thing from my gut and it tastes terrible. Well, I hate you because your skin is so pretty and you don't drink water. Like I'm over here guzzling to try and get skin like you. No, I don't know what it is. My parents actually both, I look at their skin and I'm like, I won the genetic lottery with both my parents' skin. Yeah. But you beautiful skin. Oh, thank you. I mean, I'm sure it gets old in your world of like the fact that you started in |
| 2:35.9 | pageant world, I think at like eight years old. You dug deep. I dug really deep. You dug. Wow. What else are you going to uncover? Oh, my. I'm nervous. I like to do my research. But I'm like that. the beauty standards that you've probably had from such a young age is I feel like we'll get into that. |
| 2:52.7 | We'll get into that. |
| 2:52.7 | We'll get into that. |
| 2:53.7 | But yeah, it was different because I have a Persian mom who very much came from the world of less is more. |
| 3:00.4 | Yeah. |
| 3:00.7 | So while other kids were like piling on makeup and mascara at like eight or nine, she was taking hairspray and a toothbrush and like |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PodcastOne, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of PodcastOne and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

