It has already been six months since Scandoval — when Tom Sandoval infamously cheated on his girlfriend of nine years, Ariana Madix, with Rachel (formerly known as Raquel) Leviss — made headlines, garnering Vanderpump Rules two Emmy nominations.
The scandal, which snuck its way into the end of VPR‘s Season 10, and prompted the series’ executive producer Natalie Neurater and her production team “to come back on and start searching through footage for more like clues.”
In an interview with The Wrap, Neurater discussed how they “had all these puzzle pieces” that “felt like they were from different puzzles” amid their footage, but they “didn’t know how to put them together.”
“We had locked through Episode 11 and thought we had three more episodes left for the season,” she explained, noting that “everything was put together.”
“But there was a little bit of footage that didn’t make sense to us, footage that we were mulling over at the time,” she added.”
She then highlighted the footage featuring Leviss showing up late to a tasting at SUR, series matriarch Lisa Vanderpump‘s restaurant, after she hung out with Sandoval and Tom Schwartz and ultimately spent the night at Sandoval’s home, while Madix was away at her grandmother’s funeral.
“The three of them had hung out a lot that year so it didn’t seem strange,” Neurater said. “But the way they all spoke about it is what made it stand out to us. The fact that the guys lied about it. That didn’t make a lot of sense to us until the affair was revealed.”
Although “it feels obvious in retrospect,” Neurater highlighted how “the fact that Tom didn’t want to move forward with fertilizing Ariana’s eggs” was something that didn’t add up, as “it was something that he had seemed really keen on in the past.”
“And that the second she started talking about it with him again… he was shutting it down” she said was something “that felt strange to [her].”
“And it didn’t fit with everything we had known about his desire for children in the past,” she continued.
She also credited series star Lala Kent, who “sometimes sees things that other people miss” due to being “just slightly removed from them.”
In terms of red flags surrounding Leviss’ behavior, she said “nothing that jumps out at [her].”
Neurater thanked her production team “for figuring out the most interesting way to present their truth to the world,” but also expressed how Scandoval truly changed things for everyone on VPR.
“But it’s hard not to think pretty constantly of how much the lives of the cast have been changed forever because of it,” she said. “And that changes things.”
Vanderpump Rules is streaming on Peacock.