An unexpected strategy. Jax Taylor called out Tom Sandoval for allegedly not owning up to his mistakes toward Ariana Madix while discussing his affair at the upcoming Vanderpump Rules reunion.
“From what I heard, he was going in on her and deflecting. He didn’t just tuck his tail between his legs and say, ‘You know what? I screwed up. I made a bad decision and I am sorry,'” Taylor, 43, told wife Brittany Cartwright during the Tuesday, April 4, episode of their “When Reality Hits With Jax and Brittany” podcast.
According to the former Bravo star, Sandoval, 40, “deflected and went after everybody” while taping the season 10 special. “It keeps getting worse and worse and worse with all the stuff I hear. I’m waiting for the empathy. I am waiting for Tom to say, ‘I f—ked up,'” Taylor, who left Vanderpump Rules in 2020, added.
Meanwhile, Tom Schwartz hinted that Madix stood her ground while confronting Sandoval and Raquel Leviss for their cheating scandal.
“I have never seen such a ruthless denunciation of two human beings in my life,” the TomTom co-owner, 40, said on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Wednesday, April 5. “Ariana had a fire in her. I mean, she eviscerated those two and I’ve never seen anything like that. I didn’t know she had it in her.”
The Minnesota native also offered more insight into when he found out that his business partner was being unfaithful.
“I learned about the affair in August. The one-night stand was in August and then it became, from my point of view, it became an emotional affair,” he added. “Which is still inappropriate, but I didn’t think it was linear. [Then] in January, he came to me and told me that he was in love with Raquel.”
Us Weekly confirmed in March that Sandoval and Madix, 37, had split after nearly a decade of dating because of his infidelity. “The cameras haven’t stopped rolling. It’s not an understatement to say this will be the most explosive season of Vanderpump Rules ever,” a source exclusively told Us in the aftermath of the drama.
The Missouri native later issued a public apology to his now-ex-girlfriend after only addressing the backlash his Los Angeles business received when he initially broke his silence.
“I want to first and foremost apologize to everyone I’ve hurt through this process. Most of all, I want to apologize to Ariana,” he wrote via Instagram in March. “I made mistakes, I was selfish and made reckless decisions that hurt somebody I love. No one deserves to feel that pain so traumatically and publicly.”
Sandoval added: “I can only imagine how devastating this has been for Ariana and everyone around us. I feel really horrible about that. My biggest regret is that I dishonored Ariana. I never meant to disappoint so many people, including our loving families and friends.”
Leviss, 28, for her part, reflected on the drama in her own statement. “I want to apologize for my actions and my choices foremost to Ariana, and to my friends and the fans so invested in our relationships. There is no excuse, I am not a victim and I must own my actions and I deeply regret hurting Ariana,” she wrote via Instagram.
The trio reunited on screen to address the scandal while filming the season 10 reunion late last month. After the taping, Andy Cohen teased what went down between the cast members.
“I did separate one-on-ones with Tom, Ariana and Raquel so that I could get all of their stories just in conversation with me,” the Bravo executive producer, 54, said on his SiriusXM’s Radio Andy on Monday, April 3, noting that he re-asked “a lot of the stuff in front of the group” too. “I also had things — I had my own concerns. I had my own things that I wanted to confront them about. Things I had noticed so I got to do that. So that’s how we started and then we brought them to the filming group.”
Lala Kent also revealed that things nearly got physical, saying on Amazon Live late last month, “I’m not gonna say who it was. I will say Andy [Cohen] got involved. He could hardly control it, so security got involved. I won’t say who was trying to brawl or whatever, but it was very heated the entire day.”
