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Raquel Leviss said Tom Sandoval secretly recorded the “intimate FaceTime” video that led to the revelation of their long-running affair in her first post-Scandoval interview on Bethenny Frankel’s Just B podcast.
In Vanderpump Rules lore, Sandoval’s on-the-record partner, Ariana Madix, discovered the affair after Sandoval’s phone slipped out of his pocket during a concert. When Madix flipped through his phone, she discovered a saved FaceTime video of Sandoval and Leviss masturbating to each other. (When asked if she believed the phone-falling-out-of-the-pocket story on Just B, Leviss said, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”)
Leviss said the FaceTime call occurred in March 2023 when she was in New York City doing press for Vanderpump. “I decided to be adventurous and look at the adult section on the TV,” she recalled. “And Tom and I FaceTimed a lot, so it turned into something more of an intimate FaceTime. I expected to have privacy in that moment, so that happened.”
Leviss spent the following day doing press and feeling on top of the world, only to suddenly receive a text from Madix that contained “two screen recorded videos and a text that said, ‘You’re dead to me.’” That’s how Leviss learned Madix knew about the affair — and it’s also how Leviss learned “that I had been recorded without my consent.”
Leviss said she sent an “immediate cease and desist letter” to keep the video from spreading but suggested a lot of people had still seen it. “Some of Ariana’s friends have described the video in great detail online,” Leviss said. “And she also sent it to me, so I don’t know who else she sent it to. I wouldn’t be surprised if she sent it to other people, but it’s not legal.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging conversation (which was just part one of two), Leviss spoke about “the hurt” she caused with the affair and coming to grips with her “love addiction” during her post-Scandoval therapy sessions. After filming the contentious Vanderpump Rules Season 10 reunion special, where Leviss was bombarded with a torrent of hate, she immediately flew to Phoenix and voluntarily entered a mental health treatment center.
Leviss said “love addiction” was one thing she learned about while in therapy, though she said it took her “a while to accept” the concept. As she explained: “It’s where you confuse intensity for intimacy… And those chemical changes in the brain are the same chemical changes that happen when you take drugs. So it is addictive and explains why I couldn’t stop seeing this person. But it also doesn’t excuse the fact that it happened — but now I know better.”
Leviss also credited therapy with bringing her back around to using her birth name, “Rachel,” instead of “Raquel.” She said she started going by Raquel in first grade to differentiate herself from the other Rachels in her class, and also because, “I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I wanted to be somebody better in my eyes.”
But when she was asked to write her name on a whiteboard in therapy, Leviss said she wrote “Rachel” instead. “I feel like most of my life, I’ve been afraid, I’ve struggled with social anxiety, I’ve struggled with judgment for other people,” she said. “So having a fear of vulnerability makes sense. So I’m really just trying to come back to my roots, and I’m introducing myself as Rachel.”
Leviss also spoke about the affair itself, admitting she “was not careful in my actions” and “was not thinking long term.” She even suggested the affair with Sandoval came about because she was still heartbroken over her split with her ex-fiance and fellow Vanderpump cast member, James Kennedy.
“I was completely wrapped up in heartbreak and wanting to get certain needs met,” she said. “Looking back now, I can see that I was still healing from a relationship from somebody who I thought I was going to marry. And ending that, I still haven’t healed yet.”
As for her relationship with Madix, Leviss said, “I don’t expect her to forgive me. I am remorseful. I do recognize that I’ve caused her a lot of pain.”
She went on to say she and Madix were never “best friends” but “acquaintances who became friends through the show.” She continued: “We never had a deep conversation that I would have with a best friend. It’s painful to think I hurt her in this way because that wasn’t my intention. … I call these people my friends because I really did believe they were my friends.”
And while Leviss was more than willing to allow Madix the space to take advantage of the copious amounts of pop culture empathy — and subsequent opportunities — that have poured in for her in recent months, she did take the chance to stick up for herself a little, too. Leviss said the way Madix spoke to her at the reunion was “uncalled” for, and she also offered up a frank assessment of Madix and Sandoval’s own relationship and how that fueled her affair with Sandoval.
“I would not be involved in this affair, secrecy-type situation if I thought there was longevity in this relationship between Tom and Ariana,” she said. “The people closest to them can see their relationship has not been what they portray on camera. Tom always told me they’re a brand, they’re an image… They’re business partners.”
