The Scandoval Is All I Can Think About
Never count out "Vanderpump Rules"
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Usually this newsletter would come on a Friday, but the “Vanderpump Rules” cheating scandal broke right before I was going to send last week’s edition out, and I wanted time to address it. Back to our normal schedule at the end of this week!
It’s the Scandoval that nobody could stop talking about over the weekend.
Where were you on Friday when TMZ broke the news that Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval had broken up after she found out that he’d been cheating on her with their “Vanderpump Rules” co-star Raquel Leviss? I was playing pickleball on a friend’s 30th birthday trip to Boca (no, not with pickleball aficionado Randall Emmett). Thankfully, a majority of the friends I was with are Bravoholics, so I had plenty of people to discuss the shocking news with for the rest of the weekend. Every time a new update or comment or post or piece of gossip came out, we blurted it out to the group with a level of drama that would’ve had any onlookers thinking that someone had declared war. Actually, you know what? Someone had declared war, and that someone was Tom Sandoval.
I’m not going to rehash every single detail here, but essentially what we know now is that Tom and Raquel apparently made out at Coachella last year and have been carrying out an affair since at least last summer. Ariana reportedly found out at Tom’s band’s show on Wednesday night when she saw a screen recording he’d made of an X-rated FaceTime with Raquel after his phone fell out of his pocket. She later called Scheana, who was with Raquel in New York filming “Watch What Happens Live,” who is then rumored to have confronted Raquel and hit her in the face in the process. Production rushed to start filming again to capture it all in time to include it in this season, which Andy confirmed on Monday (while also sharing an interesting tidbit he observed during a “WWHL” commercial break). Ariana deactivated her social media accounts, while Tom released a ridiculous statement that I’ll get to in a bit. Everyone from Chrissy Teigen to Kristen Doute to Dorinda’s realtor to a confused Sonja Morgan weighed in.
One of the only heartening things about this whole situation is how much the women not only of “Vanderpump Rules,” but of Bravo in general, have rallied around Ariana in the days since. They’ve pretty much all shared #TeamAriana posts to support her, and they’re all going off in the comments and on their Stories about Sandoval and “Rachel” (Raquel’s real name that the internet is now almost exclusively referring to her as). There’s obviously a more cynical read to their support, which is that scandals are good for engagement and they’re all capitalizing on the increased attention that this is bringing them to gain more followers. That’s probably part of it, but to me that’s part of the game of being a reality star. This is how they operate. We live in an attention economy, and social media clout is currency. While their support feels genuine (they’ve all also unfollowed Raquel), I don’t blame them for also feeding the beast, however dramatic some of their posts may be. Scheana and Lala are even going on one another’s podcasts this week to talk about it! They all know that fans clamor for any new details we can get in situations like this, and they’re going to give us what we want. It’s good for business.
At the time of writing this, we haven’t heard directly from Ariana aside from that video on Kristen’s Instagram, though some of her closest friends have essentially posted on her behalf. One of her friends responded to those photos of Tom “packing his bags” with a clown emoji, while her pal Logan called Tom’s singing “pitchy” (Tom performed with his band hours after the news broke). The ladies of “Pump Rules” visited her, too. After Page Six published photos of Ariana getting McDonald’s and flipping off paparazzi outside of her house, her friend Simon tweeted that he was “sitting next to Ariana on her couch atm and she’s asking me to let you know that [the] photographer cursed and taunted her, in her own driveway, to get this pic,” calling the intrusion “traumatic and disgustingly abusive.” Ugh.
We have heard from Sandoval, though. He released a rushed statement urging people to “leave Schwartz my friends and family out of this situation,” stop attacking his restaurants online and said he’s taking a “hiatus,” whatever that means. Obviously notable was that the statement made no mention of his partner of nine years, Ariana, who he was two-timing with one of their close friends; the reason people were flooding his establishments with bad reviews to begin with. It was an embarrassing way to break his silence on this debacle of his own making, and I truly can’t believe that that is what he went with. It makes you think that he cares more about his restaurants than the woman he’s been in a relationship with for almost a decade.
While I’m heartbroken that Ariana has to go through this, ultimately it’s pretty clear that this will end up being a blessing in disguise for her. Several reports have indicated that their relationship (whether the rumors that it was open are true or not) had been troubled for a while, and the vibe I’m getting from some of the people in their circle’s posts is that a lot of them have been biting their tongues and holding in their gut feelings about him for a while now. He never really deserved her, and we all knew that. She’s always been the most relatable person on “Vanderpump Rules,” and I think that’s part of the reason the reaction has been what it’s been. We’re all — viewers and co-stars included — protective of her, and we just want what’s best for her. So to see her wronged in such a massive, public way has activated the fanbase like never before. (Imagine if social media was what it is now back when the Stassi/Jax/Kristen/Sandoval situation went down in season 2…)
I don’t really have much to say about Raquel, other than that it feels like one of the things that happened here is that, after she got out of her relationship with James, she tried way too hard to ingratiate herself with the group to stay on the show, to say the least. I’m glad that the ire has been fairly evenly placed on both her and Sandoval, as we all know that the woman tends to get more of the blame when situations like this play out in the public eye — and Tom was the one in the relationship, after all. That being said, they’re very much both to blame here. Sources keep saying that they consider themselves to be “in love,” which is both hilarious and probably an attempt to save face (don’t even get me started on the matching necklaces). But maybe they deserve one another, who’s to say?
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to continuing to overanalyze the rest of this already amazing season of “Vanderpump Rules” until we get to the actual footage documenting this fallout. The fact that this is coming on the heels of a season that was already an overdue return to form for this show is almost too overwhelming to think about. This is going to be a season for the ages.
If there’s anything else positive to glean from this, it’s that it’s bringing a bunch of people back into the fold when it comes to this show. While it went through a few rough seasons, I was still surprised at how many people jumped ship. There will always be ebbs and flows to reality shows so, as Lauren Ashley Smith said, let this be a lesson to always stick with your faves; things always come back around:
We’re #TeamAriana around here, so until the next round of updates come along, we’ll be sending our love to she who was born fucking cool and hoping that the below idea comes to fruition:
Keep reading for more recommendations for this week:
Read
“‘The Idol’: How HBO’s Next ‘Euphoria’ Became Twisted ‘Torture Porn’” by Cheyenne Roundtree (Rolling Stone)
“Why Is Everyone on “Real Housewives of New Jersey’ So… Red?” by Coleman Spilde (The Daily Beast)
“In Search of Tom and Katie’s ‘Bubba’ Painting” by Tom Smyth (Vulture)
“Aubrey Plaza in Real Life” by Tyler Foggatt (The New Yorker)
“Hayden Panettiere is Standing Strong After Battling Addiction and Postpartum Depression” by Vera Papisova (Women’s Health)
“Sex, Love and the State of the Rom-Com” by The New Yorker (The New Yorker)
Listen
Kelly Cutrone on Whitney Port’s Podcast “With Whit”
Kelly and Whitney went viral when they reunited during New York Fashion Week last month, and Whitney smartly capitalized on that interest by inviting Kelly onto her podcast a few weeks later. Their whole conversation was such a treat (as is pretty much everything Kelly does), but I think my favorite part was just how much Kelly clearly loves Whitney. They’re an unlikely pairing, but their shared time on “The Hills” and “The City” bonded them for life. Listen to it it here!
RELATED: “PR Legend Kelly Cutrone Is the Dominatrix of NYFW” by Taylore Scarabelli (Interview Magazine)
Watch
“The Traitors UK” on Peacock
After several people yelling at me to watch the British version of “The Traitors,” I gave in last week after it was put on Peacock. Unlike the American version of the show, there are no previous reality stars on the cast; it’s all normies, which works just as well. They picked great traitors on this one, and there’s a secret couple on the cast, which is a fun twist. I’m halfway through and absolutely addicted.
Bravo, Bravo, Fucking Bravo
Larsa Pippen on “The Tamron Hall Show”
Larsa was on Tamron Hall’s talk show last week, and I found the interview to be kind of painful to watch. Tamron grilled Larsa about her relationship with Marcus Jordon, their age gap, whether them dating is a betrayal of her ex and more, and it left me wondering what the big deal is. Why should she have any loyalty to her ex after their bumpy divorce? Why are we still questioning famous women who date younger men? The whole interview felt very mid-2000s to me, and not in a good way.
Self-Promotion
“We Should Talk” feat. Danielle Olivera from “Summer House”
My interview with Danielle from “Summer House” from last week is one of my favorites I’ve ever done. She was incredibly open with me when it came to her falling out with Lindsay and her split from Robert, and we both ended up getting emotional towards the end of our conversation. Listen to it below or watch it above.
“We Should Talk” feat. Jackie Goldschneider from “RHONJ”
I also ran an interview with Jackie from “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” last week, which was another great one. I’ve chatted with her during every one of her seasons, but this one was different because it came after her demotion to a “friend of” the cast this season. She was very candid about the situation, which I found refreshing — not very many Housewives would admit that she’d taken an “ego hit” from being made a “friend of.” We also talked a lot about her forthcoming memoir, “The Weight of Beautiful,” which you can preorder here. Listen to our interview below or watch it above.