Content warning: This article contains mentions of suicide.
Ariana Madix of Bravo’s hit reality show Vanderpump Rules was propelled to stardom when her partner of a decade, Tom Sandoval, was caught having a 7-month affair with her good friend Rachel Leviss. The affair, termed “Scandoval” by the press, overtook the public consciousness beginning in March of 2023.
While Vanderpump Rules started with a focus on the lives of Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant employees, the main cast eventually gained large enough followings to ditch their serving jobs for the influencer life. As he transitioned from bartender to celebrity, Tom Sandoval started a cover band called Tom Sandoval and the Most Extras. On March 1st of 2023, Ariana was attending a show for the band when Tom’s phone fell out of his pocket into the crowd. A member of the audience handed the phone to Ariana for safekeeping, and her gut urged her to look through his camera roll. There, she found an explicit screen recording of Tom and Rachel on FaceTime. Ariana erupted into a rage and immediately ended their relationship (as she should!). Sandoval and Rachel shockingly doubled down, claiming they were in love and blaming the affair’s beginning on Ariana “neglecting Tom’s sexual needs for years”. Super yucky, I know.
After a powerful 3-part season 10 reunion where Ariana (wearing a gorgeous revenge dress) and her friends Katie Maloney, Scheana Shay, and Lala Kent tore the pair to shreds, Rachel disappeared from the public eye for months. She eventually spoke out to claim that she had been groomed by Sandoval and that the entire affair had been her way of getting over her broken engagement to DJ James Kennedy. Sandoval furiously denied these claims, insisting that they had been in love and that Rachel was only trying to save face after public backlash. Messy, right? But this article isn’t all about Scandoval, I promise. After the affair became public, Ariana began booking brand deals left and right. She did ads for Bic razors, Glad trash bags, Lay’s potato chips, and more. She even landed the role of Roxie in Broadway’s Chicago! All the while, Tom Sandoval was sneakily trying to reenter their group of mutual friends. This group–made up of Tom Schwartz, Katie Maloney, Scheana Shay, Brock Davies, Lala Kent, James Kennedy, and Ally Lewber–seemed initially hesitant to welcome him back into the fray.Â
It was then that Sandoval decided to visit his old boss and current business partner, Lisa Vanderpump, at her Beverly Hills home. During this meeting, Sandoval claimed that he had been experiencing suicidal thoughts because of how hated he was online. This prompted Lisa to call Scheana and Lala over to her house and ask them to “ease off” him for now. I want to emphasize that I am not minimizing or casting doubt on the suicidal ideation that Tom Sandoval experienced. He received an incredible amount of hate, and people on the internet were unnecessarily cruel to him. However, I was skeptical of the way the information was revealed (on camera, to L.V.P. who had recently lost her only brother to suicide) and how it came off as a last-ditch effort for some kind of sympathy from the audience and his old friends.Â
Unfortunately, both Scheana and Lala fell hook, line, and sinker. They began incessantly sympathizing with Sandoval, recalling all of the events he’d shown up for and favors he’d done for them over the years. Scheana in particular latched onto the “several thousand dollars” he’d PayPal’ed her at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when she was out of work and pregnant with her daughter Summer Moon. While this was an undeniably kind gesture, it does not excuse what he did to Ariana. As Ariana’s supposed “best friend”, shouldn’t Scheana have prioritized her happiness and comfort over the memory of a scumbag liar who sometimes sends people money? Apparently not!Â
The season ended with Ariana refusing to hear Sandoval’s apology during a trip to San Francisco. After she stormed out of the event the group was attending, they all quickly turned the tables on her. Lala in particular claimed that Ariana’s refusal to film with Sandoval was “bullsh*t” because they still lived in the same house. I thought this was such a reductive take; they had bought that house together, and Ariana knew that if she moved out while he stayed it would weaken her legal claim to the property. They lived for months before filming with no issues thanks to liaisons and go-betweens, so why would she force herself to converse with the man who ruined her life just because the cameras were on?
In my opinion, Scheana and Lala (the main perpetrators of this Ariana hate) were coming from a place of complete and total jealousy. They didn’t like that she got Dancing with the Stars, Love Island, and Chicago, so they clung to Sandoval’s narrative of Ariana as lazy and self-centered. It didn’t work, though; after the season aired, the public continued to rally behind Ariana and criticized L.V.P. for falling into the Sandoval sympathy scam. To be sure, Scheana and Lala were the true villains. They were the real bad friends. But L.V.P. was the one who enabled their villainy, who continues to be in business with Sandoval and insists that he remain on the show. Vanderpump Rules is now on an indefinite hiatus, and the group appears to be so deeply fractured that a twelfth season is unlikely. VPR might be dying, and I don’t think L.V.P. has anyone to blame but herself. By enabling Sandoval, she has risked her entire empire.