Stassi Schroeder shared her thoughts on Raquel Leviss’ interview with Bethenny Frankel — and there was one part that rang true to her own experience on Vanderpump Rules.
Stassi, 35, believes Raquel, 28, embellished the truth at some points during the three-part chat with the RHONY alum, but she thought the story about Tom Sandoval successfully convincing producers to cut a scene that made him look bad sounded realistic.
“That happened all the time on Vanderpump Rules when I was there. All the time,” Stassi claimed during the Wednesday, August 23, episode of her “Straight Up With Stassi” podcast. “There were so many times that I remember crying to producers and being like, ‘You guys have covered for certain people that have done really dark things — men — that I can’t even be in the same room as some of these men, and I’m getting less screen time because of it and I’m willing to get less screen time because of it. I’m willing to film less because this is so unfair and this is so wrong.’”
Stassi went on to say that she didn’t want to speak out while she was on the show because she was worried about how it could affect other people’s jobs. “I wouldn’t want to shut down a show [where] it’s not just the cast — it’s the crew, it’s producers,” she explained. “There’s so many people that work on it and love it. It’ll trickle down to so many people that I’m like, ‘I’m tougher than this, I can heal on my own,’ and I did. And there are so many other female cast members on Vanderpump Rules who have gone through the same thing, where production has covered for the dudes and we’ve just had to heal ourselves.”
During a lengthy interview last week, Raquel told Bethenny, 52, that she and Sandoval, 41, had an on-camera conversation about the private video of her that some of their castmates allegedly saw. According to Raquel, however, Sandoval demanded that the scene be cut from the season 10 finale, which aired in May.
“When Tom and I were filming at my apartment, after filming got picked back up, I said to Tom, ‘How can I trust you? You filmed me without my consent.’ And he admitted to it,” Raquel claimed. “But then after that scene wrapped, he said, ‘Why did you say that? Why did you say that on camera? You made me look bad.’ And I was like, ‘Well, because that’s what happened.’ … He ended up boycotting filming the rest of Scandoval so that he could have editing rights to that scene to take out that specific [scene].”
Bravo denied Raquel’s story, telling Us Weekly in a statement: “Tom Sandoval was never offered a producer credit on season 11, and had absolutely no creative control over any editing during any season of Vanderpump Rules.”
Stassi left Pump Rules after season 8, but she thought Raquel’s story was believable based on things that happened in the past.
“That was a straight up truth I know that [Raquel] told because it’s happened before,” Stassi claimed. “The fact that Sandoval was able to get away with it again was just like, f–k. But I also understand that producers have a job to do. They want to get him to film more, so if that’s what they have to do [they’ll do it]. It’s so dark. It’s such a f–ked up way of working, but I understand why they have to do it sometimes.”
When Raquel told the story last week, Bethenny also claimed she’d witnessed similar occurrences during her time on The Real Housewives of New York City. “I’ve seen that happen before,” said Bethenny, who starred on RHONY off and on from 2008 to 2019.
