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When Charli Burnett auditioned to join the cast of Vanderpump Rules in Season Eight, she literally didn’t realize what she was signing up for.
Charli, an aspiring actor who’s appeared in commercials and other short film projects, auditioned for the TV show in 2019 but initially wasn’t told the name of the series or that it was helmed by West Hollywood restaurateur and former Real Housewife of Beverly Hills, Lisa Vanderpump. The mystery show was positioned to Charli as a series that “followed women and men around L.A. who were trying to break out in the acting industry and show their hustle behind scenes.”
She eventually learned the audition was for Vanderpump Rules, but Charli was convinced she wouldn’t be a good fit given her lack of food service industry experience and the fact that she was completely foreign to everyone else in the group. Even the other Season Eight newcomers Danica Dow, Dayna Kathan, Max Boyens, and Brett Caprioni organically worked in one of Vanderpump’s restaurants before joining the show. It wasn’t until Vanderpump wanted to meet with Charli herself that it clicked for her that this could become a reality.
“I had to now meet an entire cast of people who have been together for years who were like, ‘Who is this new girl?’” Charli tells Rolling Stone. “And then, since I really worked at the restaurant, I also had to deal with all the SUR employees, who have also been there for a while and some of them also auditioned or wanted to be on the show.”
A new edition to the Bravo universe, Charli was more of a background character in the midst of the main cast members’ drama. Charli says she didn’t watch the show prior to filming, although in hindsight she wishes she did.
“I thought by not watching, I would take everyone how they were and just see who they are without having preconceived notions about them,” Charli says. “But I definitely should have watched, because then I would understand more of the history.”
Charli returned in a similar capacity for Seasons Nine and 10. Off camera, she also developed relationships with some of her fellow cast members, including Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval. Charli shares that she and her boyfriend admired the couple and spent time with them outside of filming, making the news of Sandoval’s affair with Raquel Leviss all the more shocking.
“It definitely has made everything feel very jaded and has brought up a lot of my old trust issues with people. It makes me question who I was with last summer,” Charli says.
While Charli hasn’t historically played a significant role in the drama on Vanderpump Rules or secured a lot of camera time, she was accidentally front and center in Season 10 because of all the scenes she filmed with Raquel. When Raquel gets into a fight with Lala Kent and Katie Maloney in Lake Havasu, Charli sticks up for her and suggests the two of them leave the lake house if Raquel’s mental health is being negatively impacted. Charli also shows up with Raquel to the guys’ night at Mondrian’s Skybar, the same night that Sandoval and Raquel reportedly began their monthslong affair. There’s another scene between the two where Charli confronts Raquel about making out with Tom Schwartz at Scheana Shay’s wedding in Mexico even though Katie asked her not to because she was still navigating her divorce. Most importantly, Charli is present when Raquel buys the infamous lightning bolt necklace, something that was reportedly a secret symbol between Raquel and Sandoval during their affair. Charli is not happy that at the time of filming Season 10 in the summer of 2022, she was an unknowing accomplice to Raquel’s affair with Sandoval.
“Watching those scenes back, anyone can be like, ‘I wish I saw or I wish I knew.’ I said to myself, ‘How could you not put two and two together?’ I was so blind to things, but I think at the time we’re exhausted from filming and there’s so much going on. There are so many moving parts and I think a lot of the time you don’t really see things in a clear vision because of that,” Charli says. “But now it kind of feels like we were all pawns in Tom and Raquel’s little game. Honestly, watching back I’m like, ‘Is Tom a fucking cult leader? What is he saying to people and convincing them of?’”
Although they didn’t become closer until they filmed Vanderpump Rules together, Charli says she knew Raquel and her family, who she says are very involved in Raquel’s life even as an adult, because they both participated in California pageants, an experience Raquel opened up about on the show.
“It was weird to me when she was crying about that. It’d be different if you almost won, but you’ve never even placed in the top five,” Charli reveals.
There was a moment when Charli confronted Raquel about what she considered to be odd behavior at the time. After Raquel showed up late to a menu tasting at SUR and revealed she slept at Sandoval’s house the night before while Ariana was out of town for her grandmother’s funeral, Charli says she asked her, “What the fuck is going on? Why are you being so weird? What’s going on with you?” Still, though, Charli didn’t suspect Raquel and Sandoval were having an affair because she says it was “very normal” for members of their friend group to party and crash at Sandoval and Ariana’s home.
“It didn’t seem like anything too far-fetched to question. And I think a lot of us were letting Ariana take the lead with things,” Charli says. “If she didn’t question it or she didn’t make a big deal or get upset, then why would other people?”
After experiencing some mental health hardships and going through her own personal ups and downs last summer, Charli bowed out of filming what was supposed to be the season finale celebrating Ariana and Katie’s sandwich shop, Something About Her, which ended in a group-wide confrontation at SUR. She says when she opted out of filming the finale, producers told her she also wouldn’t be able to participate in the reunion. Then months later when news of Scandoval broke and cameras picked back up again in March, production called Charli and asked her if she’d be willing to film a scene with Ariana, Katie, Scheana, and Lala for a night out at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood. Charli says she was so shocked when Ariana texted her in the middle of the night in early March to tell her that Sandoval and Raquel had been engaging in an affair that she thought she was being pranked. Despite taking a step back from the show, Charli says she wanted to support Ariana.
“At the time I was like, you’re going to need all the women around you that you can have. I’m a big advocate for loyalty and respect,” Charli says. “When they asked me to be there I said 100%, I would come and film and do whatever I needed to do to be there for Ariana. That’s all I really cared about.”
Charli was slightly nervous to film the scene in public at the height of the news about Sandoval’s affair with Raquel, but the cast avoided paparazzi by entering through a back parking lot and to her surprise, it was a lowkey vibe without too many crowds since they filmed on a weeknight. She was also worried that filming the scene with her fellow castmates would be uncomfortable because she wasn’t on good terms with Scheana and she didn’t want to rehash their past issues. But everyone agreed to put everything else to the side for the sake of forming a unified front in support of Ariana. Instead of fighting, Charli says she and Scheana agreed to move forward with a clean slate.
“That was actually one of the most refreshing scenes I filmed on Vanderpump because I felt like everyone had their guards and walls down. Everyone was really nice because everyone was just kind of sad,” Charli says. “I’ve never filmed in an environment like that for Vanderpump where no one is screaming and yelling at each other. I think just everyone was like, ‘We can’t fight with each other anymore. We have bigger fish to fry right now.’ It was kind of like a death in the family. When bad things happen, you put everything to the side.”
It’s been months since Charli last saw or heard from Raquel, when they both attended a watch party for the premiere of Vanderpump Rules Season 10 in the winter. Charli thought it was strange that Raquel tried to socialize with her and her boyfriend that night instead of Ariana, Scheana, and the other cast members she was typically closer to.
“We haven’t spoken in like, four or five months, and you’re trying to be my friend in front of these people. Why is that? That’s so weird,” Charli said. “Then weeks later, the news broke. I’m starting to realize they had a plan to slowly pull away. Now looking back, even that night seems calculated.”
According to Charli, she hasn’t watched all three parts of the reunion because it gave her too much anxiety. She said watching Raquel’s confession in the last five minutes was sad and frustrating.
“When she made the throuple comment I was like, Tom has to have these cult leader vibes, where he convinces people what they’re doing is OK,” Charli says. “I think it’s a very dark, twisted, mind-control game and I honestly hope she gets out of it. To be honest, the best way that I would think she would be out of it is her not returning to the show and completely removing herself from the situation.”
In terms of Raquel’s potential for redemption, Charli is conflicted: She hopes Raquel, who is reportedly in a voluntary facility for mental health treatment, gets whatever kind of help she needs, but she finds it difficult to empathize with Raquel because of the depths of betrayal she displayed when it comes to her former friendship with Ariana.
“To me, she seems like she’s in this vulnerable, needy stage because what was her thought process when she was doing this? I believe Tom had to be feeding her stuff and it had to be a whole mind game because she felt OK doing the bad things,” Charli says. “At the end of the day, we have to be accountable for our actions and maybe it’d be different if Raquel and Ariana weren’t such good friends. I think it’d be different if Ariana wasn’t helping Raquel in the summer when she had nowhere to live. So it was like, I gave you a place to live and you fuck my boyfriend?”
As for Sandoval, Charli thinks he’s handled the fallout of his affair poorly and she plans on staying as far away from him as possible while he goes through a “textbook mid-life crisis.” From his traveling cover band to his comments in the third part of the reunion when he mocks Madix for having sex with him while wearing a T-shirt, Charli finds his behavior “straight-up embarrassing.”
“This is not the Tom I knew,” Charli says. “It feels like everyone had this mask on last year and now the masks are off and everyone is showing their true colors. It almost makes me think about how even when I joined my first season, was this whole thing a façade?”
Outside of VPR, Charli is a hustler: She’s an esthetician who works with a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles helping with pre- and post-operative care for patients. She also works in VIP relations and bottle service at a club in Hollywood, and continues to audition for commercial and acting gigs. But as far as her TV career, Charli has a decision to make about whether or not to return as Bravo and Evolution Media gear up to film Vanderpump Rules’ eleventh season.
Charli says she was asked to come back as a full-time cast member but she’s undecided about whether or not to return to the show because she thinks it will be chaotic, to say the least. After filming so many scenes with Raquel last season, including pivotal moments in the Scandoval timeline, Charli says she knows she’ll end up having to film with Raquel again and have an on-camera conversation with her former friend.
“That’s uncomfortable for me because I love Ariana. I am Ariana’s friend and I’m very upset with everything that’s going on,” Charli says. “So I feel like filming next season would be very, very weird and really stressful.”
Not to mention, Charli isn’t confident in navigating the logistics of group scenes that will require the entire cast to be together, including Raquel, Sandoval, and Schwartz if they all return. “How is everyone not going to fight the entire time?” she wonders. Charli also isn’t thrilled at the thought of filming with Jax Taylor, who she exchanged jabs with during the Season Eight reunion before Taylor was fired from the Bravo series later that year.
“Old cast members are rumored to come back. I don’t know how that will look but I imagine the’’re probably going to come back with a force because they want to keep that spot again. They don’t want to lose that paycheck,” she says. “If they did bring Jax [Taylor] back, Tom Sandoval is probably going to be so fucking pissed.”
At the end of the day, Charli says anything is possible when it comes to the Vanderpump crew; they’ve been through as much drama as a group of friends and cast members could possibly endure, and a decade later, they’re still here, ready to film yet another season.
“A lot of them thrive in that chaotic environment. I also think that with this group, a lot of people flip-flop. I’m actually curious to see if everyone still stays friends like they are right now,” Charli says. “Everyone has a really core strength because we all hate Tom [Sandoval] and Raquel [Leviss], but we also know how that goes. I’m very curious to see how it unfolds and I think it probably will unfold very messily.”
