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Was part of the Vanderpump Rules‘ Scandoval saga actually an orchestrated attempt by Ariana Madix? That’s what Rachel Leviss’ publicist claims.
On Friday, March 29, Leviss handed the reigns of her podcast, Rachel Goes Rogue, to her rep in conversation with longtime entertainment journalist Lanae Brody in order to discuss the full Scandoval timeline — and what she claims really went down.
Leviss’ publicist, Juliette Harris, came onboard the reality star’s team in March 2023 in the immediate aftermath of the drama, in which news broke that Pump Rules star Tom Sandoval had cheated on his longtime girlfriend, Madix, with costar Leviss.
As the scandal unfolded, Leviss entered a treatment facility for her mental health — which meant Harris took on the public-facing responsibility of defending her client, which, Leviss explained at the beginning of the podcast, was why it was Harris, not her, who was speaking to Brody on the episode.
“This isn’t a cop-out for me to like, not take accountability, before people say that, I just physically and mentally was not there for the heart and the meat of the chaos. Thank goodness,” she explained. “But Juliette was. And she earned every dime of her rate during that time.”
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Of the many questions Brody had for Harris was her take on the timeline of events. The affair was revealed once Madix discovered a NSFW video of Leviss and Sandoval on Sandoval’s phone — which happened during Sandoval’s Tom Sandoval & The Most Extras concert in March 23.
“They were at the show together — Tom’s concert —the phone came out of the pocket and that’s how Ariana found it,” Brody stated. “How this was kept quiet was one thing, but how do you think it came out when it did and why do you think it came out why it did?”
Harris’ take on the situation, she explained, “is not going to be a popular one but I stand by it, and I will go to my grave believing it.”
“If I think my husband is cheating and I can walk right over to his side of the bed when he’s asleep and can check his phone because clearly she had his password. Right?” she said. “When you drop your phone it doesn’t unlock, so she had to unlock it. She unlocked it, if the story is true, to check it at that moment, why? Why — if you suspect anything at any time [would you do that then]?”
Therefore, Harris continued, “I don’t believe that, I don’t believe that’s how it happened. I believe that was propped and sent, I don’t know, maybe she thought the day before and she told production and off they went.”
Harris added: “If you think your partner is cheating, you have access to their phone 24 hours a day, wait until they are asleep, wait until they go to the bathroom, go look at the phone, she had the password. So I don’t buy it fell out of his pocket and I looked at it … I think it was set up for the whole thing,” noting that Pump Rules ratings skyrocketed after the scandal.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.