Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney are speaking up about the Vanderpump Rules bombshell that was dropped during the third part of the Season 11 reunion.
The cast was given screeners of the remaining episodes of Vanderpump Rules Season 11 ahead of them filming the reunion. However, producers withheld the final minutes of the Season 11 finale and screened it during the reunion to get the cast’s live reactions, which Madix and Maloney thought was retaliatory.
In the Season 11 finale, Madix walked away from cameras after she felt cornered into having a conversation with her ex-boyfriend, Tom Sandoval. Madix set her boundaries and didn’t want to be part of a redemption arc for Sandoval, as she explained in the finale.
“It felt very pointed towards me,” Madix said on the Disrespectfully podcast, co-hosted by Maloney and Dayna Kathan. “It felt like, ‘Well, we have her trapped in this room now. So we didn’t get what we wanted to get [in the finale]. We didn’t get to break her down IRL [in real life] in the moment. So we’re gonna retaliate by doing that right now, in a place where she’s contractually obligated to be here, and try to force this moment now.”
Madix continued, “And that’s like, great, I cried. [Are] you guys happy now?”
Maloney said that “it just felt mean,” adding, “It didn’t affect me. It didn’t affect anyone else in the way that it was gonna affect her.”
The Broadway Chicago star noted that “the thing that’s so stupid” is that “I gave them the best f***ing ending to what that season could have had in that moment by leaving.”
“It was real, and it was exciting to watch,” Madix added. “Sorry, if you literally are only looking at it from a perspective of like good reality TV, I gave you good reality TV.”
Madix believes producers were trying to force an encounter between her and her ex-boyfriend, Tom Sandoval. She says that a scene where she is just “standing there” and listening to Sandoval “would have been a boring cap to a boring a** season, to be honest.”
Earlier in the episode, Maloney weighed in, saying she “hated the ending of it all,” adding, “I hated that they waited to show us that five minutes because I was like, this feels mean, and it’s just mean towards Ariana.”
The last minutes of the Season 11 finale show Madix walking away from the group with her boyfriend. Madix left Lala Kent fuming because she felt Madix wasn’t pulling her weight on the show by not having uncomfortable conversations. Sandoval was also left frustrated, calling Madix “lazy” for not wanting to film with him and telling his co-stars that during their relationship, Madix talked negatively about them.
After wrapping Vanderpump Rules Season 11, Bravo has paused the show with no word on when cameras will pick up again. It’s unknown if Madix will return for a potential Season 12. Despite not filming this summer, Madix will be busier than ever working at her recently opened sandwich shop in West Hollywood, hosting Love Island USA, and preparing to return to Broadway for a Chicago reprise.
