Credit: FAYES VISION/startraksphoto.com/Cover Images, Tommy Garcia/Bravo
Scheana Shay revealed that her husband Brock Davies had contact with Tom Sandoval following his cheating scandal with Raquel Leviss, shared the hardest scene she had to film, and addressed whether she believes Tom Schwartz helped cover up the affair.
Vanderpump Rules stars were shocked to learn of the scandal and are now dealing with the fallout – especially Ariana Madix, who was blindsided by her boyfriend’s secret relationship.
On her “Scheananigans with Scheana Shay” podcast, she revealed that Tom reached out to Brock after news of the scandal broke. She claimed her costar was attempting to get in contact with Raquel, who chose to stop filming amid the finale.
“One thing that I’ve never said publicly or anywhere was when she stopped filming, she turned her phone off, Sandoval had reached out to Brock and asked if we had spoken to her because he couldn’t get a hold of her,” said Scheana, via Heavy.
In the podcast, her husband Brock explained that it “turn[ed] out she was okay.” According to the father-of-one, Raquel had “just turned off her phone,” as recommended by “her crisis PR team.”
At one point, Brock also revealed that he reached out to Tom.
“When this started happening, I sent him a text message saying this is where I stand with things, and you are going to have to brunt this, and you are going to have to figure how to get through this, and honestly, unfortunately, I feel like they keep fumbling,” he explained.
On the May 26 episode of the “Scheananigans” podcast, Scheana herself said she messaged Tom after learning that his best friend Ali Rafiq passed away.
“Now with Sandoval just losing his best friend, Ali, I can’t imagine what this is doing to him, spiraling even more,” she shared. Though he “didn’t respond to [her]” message, Scheana also reached out to his friend Kyle Chan, as she didn’t “want anyone to harm themselves.”
On the May 19 episode of her podcast, Scheana shared that she hoped to talk to Raquel while being filmed, after the incident, which reportedly resulted in Raquel’s restraining order against her.
“I fully planned on filming with her, sitting down with her when cameras picked back up [for season 10], I was going to talk about what happened in New York that night with her,” Scheana explained. “I had spoken to Ariana about it and she said ‘absolutely, it’s okay, sit down with her, sit down with Tom’ because I wasn’t going to film those scenes without running it by her first, of course.”
According to Scheana, she couldn’t talk to Raquel because “she went rogue” amid the finale.
“We heard that she was in Thousand Oaks, or she was in Phoenix,” she added.
While speaking on the “Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino” podcast, Scheana revealed that she does not see a future reconciliation with Raquel.
She claimed her costar “should have reached out and apologized way sooner … I have still not heard a word from her so, yeah, if there is ever a conversation between her and I, it’s going to be a very different conversation than it would have been the week of all this happening.”
She also addressed her one-one-one confrontation with Tom in the finale.
“It was the hardest scene I’ve ever filmed in 10 years,” said Scheana, via The Ashley’s Reality Round Up. “When [Mike] Shay and I filmed our divorce, I didn’t know that that conversation was going into a divorce … I thought we were going to make up, he was going to be honest, and when I knew he wasn’t being honest, then the whole scene switched, but that was like an audible in the moment.”
Scheana continued, “This conversation, going into it, I’ve never had so much anxiety, I had no idea how it was going to go, I’m like, ‘How do we end this conversation? I’m not hugging him. Either I’m going to tell him to leave, or I’m going to have to leave,’ and at the end of it, I was just so sad, like, [Sandoval and Raquel] broke my heart too.”
In the dramatic talk, Tom admitted to Scheana that he cheated with other women besides Raquel but didn’t name names.
“I absolutely think it was Billie Lee,” said Scheana in the podcast. “Kristen Doute and I were just talking about this after watching the finale this week. This was what, Season 6, I think? There was the rumor … maybe it was Season 7? …but there was this rumor. Jesse Montana said that Billie Lee and Sandoval hooked up, and of course, Ariana and I are the first people to shut this down.”
“Fast forward, when I study Sandoval’s behavior now watching the show as a past friend, a fan, in every way, when I watch him now, I see the lies as they’re coming out of his mouth,” Scheana added.
Scheana also indicated that she’s not opposed to filming with Raquel again. “When and if [Raquel and I] do ever have a conversation, in whatever capacity it will be, it will be a very different conversation,” she said, “… But now that there’s been a restraining order filed, now that there has been so much emotional distress that I went through dealing with all of this, court, and the fact that this b**ch still has not even tried to text me, I’ve specifically not blocked her just to see if one day she’ll reach out.”
According to a conversation Scheana allegedly had with Tom, Raquel’s choice to file the restraining order perhaps wasn’t her idea.
“He blamed her family, let’s just say that,” the star expressed. “I’m not protecting them, he blamed her family. He said that they convinced her to do this. Sandoval made it sound like it was a Britney Spears situation, and she had no control over her own actions and was forced to do all of this. Whether that’s true or not, that is what he said.”
Scheana claimed Raquel revealed no emotion when confronted about the affair.
“That night [in New York] she showed no remorse, so the second she grabbed my wrist, I just had to get her as far away from me as possible because I was like, ‘How are you not crying right now? How are you not so upset?’” she said. “There were no tears, not one tear.”
She then defended Schwartz against accusations that he helped cover up the affair through his own fling with Raquel.
“I think Schwartz was put in a very tough position because, bro code, you know, you have your boy’s back, but you tell him to do the right thing,” she said. “I think that Schwartz genuinely did find out after the wedding, I do believe that. I don’t think Schwartz is the type of manipulative person who would act as a decoy, willingly, and kiss [Raquel].”
“I think those feelings in that moment, for him, were real, and he felt a spark, and he went with it, and then he even said in his interviews he felt like that kind of got his ‘Schwartz back,’ and it just felt good to be wanted by someone young and whatever,” Scheana went on. “Schwartz also had a very strong friendship with Ariana. She was a f**king groomsman for him in his wedding … So, as much as it’s like, OK, you could understand Tom’s his best friend, and he had bro code or whatever, there needed to be a time to break that out of respect for Ariana and say, ‘If you don’t tell her by this day, I’ve had enough, I’m doing it, I’m telling her,’ and he never did that.”
