The name on everyone’s lips will not be Tom Sandoval, at least according to a Chicago security official.
Following a recent performance of the Broadway musical in New York City, one of the Ambassador Theatre employees laid down a few ground rules for fans waiting to meet current star Ariana Madix at the stage door.
“Y’all fans of Ariana, right?” a security guard asked in a social media clip posted on Monday, March 4. “Please don’t mention her ex at all. He’s irrelevant. Thank you.”
Madix, 38, plays leading lady Roxie Hart in Chicago on the Great White Way, her Broadway debut. Per longstanding theater tradition, many fans wait outside the venue after the show to meet the cast. Many performers, including Madix, will pose for selfies with the crowd and sign their Playbill programs from the show.
Madix’s Broadway gig comes one year after she and Sandoval, 41, split after nine years of dating. They pulled the plug on their relationship in March 2023 after Madix discovered Sandoval’s months-long secret affair with Vanderpump Rules costar Rachel “Raquel” Leviss.
While both Sandoval and Leviss, 29, have apologized for their actions, Madix learned how to move forward on her own.
“This situation made me realize that I can do hard things,” Madix exclusively told Us Weekly in her October 2023 cover story. “The worst-case scenario literally did happen, and I was OK. Like, look — you can handle what’s thrown at you.”
Madix, who has since found love again with boyfriend Daniel Wai, also credited therapy for helping her cope “100 percent.”
“Some of the work I was doing in therapy right before all of this set me up to be in a much better position,” she told Us. “It could’ve been so much worse.”
While the Bravo world (and much of the internet) has rallied around Madix, Sandoval was vilified for cheating.
“I feel like I got more hate than Danny Masterson and he’s a convicted rapist,” Sandoval told The New York Times Magazine in a February profile, referring to the actor, who is currently incarcerated for alleged sexual assault. “I’m not a pop-culture historian really but I witnessed the O.J. Simpson thing [when he was acquitted of murder] and George Floyd [who was killed by police in 2020] and all these big things, which is really weird to compare this to that, I think, but do you think in a weird way it’s a little bit the same?”
Days later, Sandoval apologized for the questionable comparisons.
