Stassi Schroeder believes Raquel Leviss‘ story regarding the threats Tom Sandoval allegedly made against production amid the Vanderpump Rules season 10 finale.
Days after Raquel, 28, revealed on Bethenny Frankel‘s podcast that Sandoval, 40, forced their film team to cut a scene in which she confronted him about filming an NSFW FaceTime session without her consent, Stassi, 35, looked back on her own experiences with production “[covering] for the dudes” as she and her female co-stars were forced to cope with their “dark” behavior.
“She asked about [the NSFW video] and he said, ‘I wanted you to see how beautiful [you] looked,’ and then after the scene wrapped, the fact that he got mad and said, ‘Why did you say that to me on camera? You’re gonna make me look bad,’” Stassi told listeners on the latest episode of Straight Up With Stassi shared by Bravo Snark Side on Instagram on August 23. “And then [he] went and threatened production and said, ‘I won’t film anymore unless you take that out,’ and they did. And they did!”
According to Stassi, who was fired from Pump Rules due to racially-charged behavior in June 2020, the fact that production agreed to remove the moment from the episode hurt women everywhere.
“I was just like, ‘Come on. We’re still doing this sh*t?’” she asked.
Looking back at the eight years she spent on the reality show, Stassi said production frequently had the backs of male cast members.
“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,’” she recalled.
Although Stassi got less screentime because of her refusal to spend time with certain members of the show, she was willing to cut back if it meant protecting herself from them.
Things got so bad, in fact, that Stassi actually considered going public with her complaints.
“I was like, ‘Would I ever wanna go public with this sort of thing?’ And I was like, ‘No,’ because I wouldn’t want to ruin everyone’s jobs. I wouldn’t want to shut down a show that it’s not just the cast. It’s the crew. It’s producers. There are so many people that work on it and love it. It’ll trickle down to so many people that I’m like, ‘I am tougher than this. I can heal on my own.’ And I did,” she explained.
While Stassi is years removed from Pump Rules, she said she isn’t the only female cast member who experienced poor treatment by their film team as she backed Raquel’s claims about Sandoval.
“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. So that was a straight-up truth I know that Rachel told because it’s happened before and the fact that Sandoval was able to just like get away with it again was just, ‘F*ck,’” she stated.
Vanderpump Rules season 11 is currently in production and expected to premiere on Bravo sometime later this year or early next year.
