Photo: Nicole Weingart/Bravo
Tom Sandovaldouble downed on his “crocodile tears” as his ex-girlfriendAriana Madixand theirVanderpump Rulescostars called out his “victim-blaming” for hisaffairwithRaquel Leviss.
Before theSchwartz & Sandyco-owner felt the heat from his castmates on Wednesday’s episode, the first part of theseason 10 reunionbegan with Bravo personalityAndy Coheninterviewing “the principals of the scandal” separately “to hear their sides of the story.”
Sandoval, 40, explained to Andy, 54, how the downfall of his relationship with Ariana, 37, ultimately led to him hooking up with the 28-year-old former pageant queen.
“Ariana and I kept our relationship pretty private for many years. We had issues," he said. “I felt like I was like her gay BFF. We put on a front when we were filming.”
Nicole Weingart/Bravo
Ariana, however, argued the opposite in her pre-interview: “I feel like I always showed everything from my point of view.”
“He’s framing it now as something else because he has to,” she added of Sandoval. “He is desperate. He will throw anything at the wall right now hoping that it will stick.”
Tammie/AFF-USA/Shutterstock; Cindy Ord/Bravo via Getty Images; Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty Images
“He coached me on this the same way he’s coaching Rachel now,” she added, “gotta get their lies right, gotta get their story right, their spin on whatever it is….”
The next day at the reunion, Ariana made her feelings known when she saw her ex ofnine yearsfor the first time since they split: “Well he looks like s—.”
“That’s not true. We have been intimate,” she began tearing down Sandoval’s implied justification for straying. “Also having intimacy issues does not excuse literally any f—ing thing. You work on it or you break up, so going through the f—ing ins and outs of our relationship is f—ing pointless. It’s stupid. It’s victim blaming is what it is!”
After some verbal blows — mostly in the form of extended boos and free-flowing expletives from Raquel’s ex-fiancé and Sandoval’s former friendJames Kennedy— Andy asked Sandoval why he didn’t come clean to Ariana about his affair with Raquel. This was the “million dollar question” that Leviss herself said she most wanted to know as she watched from a trailer outside the studio.
As Sandoval’s best friend and business partner,Tom Schwartzrecalled when he first found out about the affair, Ariana chimed in that the first time Sandoval and Raquel slept together was“when Charlotte’s body wasn’t even f—in’ cold,”referring to her dog’s death during filming last fall.
Schwartz’s kiss with Raquelwas also called into question, with Andy asking if it had been a “smoke screen.”
Though Sandoval denied that it it was a “decoy,”Lisa Vanderpumpsaid Sandoval was “macabre” and “perverse to encourage your best friend to make out with somebody that you’ve just slept with.”
However, Sandoval responded, “I don’t think it was.”
Given the cast’s history of cheating on and with each other, Andy called out that “no one in this group has clean hands.” But Lala argued, “None of us were f—ing our best friend’s man.”
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Part 2 of the explosiveVanderpump Rulesreunion airs next Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
source: people.com
