Stassi Schroeder is the latest Vanderpump Rules star to blast Bethenny Frankel‘s “lazy” interview with Rachel “Raquel” Leviss on her Just B podcast, which was released in three parts last week.
Leviss, who came under fire earlier this year for her affair with Tom Sandoval, has been keeping it low-profile since coming out of the mental health institution she called home for three months after getting brutalized by her former castmates at the Season 10 reunion.
For the first time since the explosive sit-down with Andy Cohen — which was filmed weeks after Ariana Madix uncovered the affair — Leviss opened up about Scandoval in an interview with the former Real Housewives of New York City star.
However, Schroeder — who was a cast member on Vanderpump Rules from Season 1 to Season 8 and has remained close with some of her former co-stars — accused Frankel of “trying to make Ariana look bad” since she’s still living in the same house as Sandoval.
“It’s, like, that’s not the route we should be taking right now. Ariana hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said on her Straight Up with Stassi podcast. “She’s not living with Sandoval because she’s forgiven him. She’s living with Sandoval because she’s like, ‘This is my house too and I refuse to leave my own home,’ and Sandoval is being a gaslighting prick motherfucker who is refusing to leave.”
Another point Schroeder took issue with was when Frankel admitted that she hadn’t watched Vanderpump Rules — except for the show’s most recent reunion episodes.
“What I don’t understand is how she didn’t — when she found out she was gonna interview [Raquel] — go and binge-watch Seasons 1 through fucking 10, so that she knew everything,” Schroeder fumed. “It was lazy. It was a lazy fucking interview. Just hearing her talk — the way Bethenny talked about Ariana and Sandoval living together, that was a lazy interview. She did not do her research. She does not understand anything.”
While Schroeder believed Leviss was “lying” about a handful of things, she felt as though the former reality star was telling the truth about the scene she shared with Sandoval after the affair broke, where she claimed she questioned him about filming her without her consent on-camera — only for him to reprimand her for making him “look bad” off-camera. According to Leviss, he even threatened not to film the rest of Scandoval if they didn’t edit it out — which is something producers allegedly decided to do.
“It hurt for women everywhere,” Schroeder said, before revealing, “That happened all the time on Vanderpump Rules.“
The podcast host — who called it a “dark” and “fucked up way of working” — added, “There’s so many other female cast members who have gone through the same thing where production has covered for the dudes and we’ve just had to heal ourselves. So, like, that was a straight-up truth I know that Rachel told because it’s happened before.”
Vanderpump Rules is currently streaming on Peacock.