Tom Sandoval, the villain at the center of last year’s Vanderpump Rules cheating scandal, is doubling down on the victim narrative he’s been peddling ever since he was caught stepping out on his girlfriend of a decade, Ariana Madix, with co-star Rachel Leviss.
In a huge coup for the disgraced Sandoval, his latest platform is a beautifully photographed profile in the New York Times Magazine, published on Tuesday.
“It’s frustrating because, you know, everybody cashed in,” Sandoval said about the post-“Scandoval” media frenzy. “Everybody won on this. The cast, the execs, the network—everybody made so much money. But I try to put it on myself, to make the best opportunity out of it that I can.”
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While Madix has capitalized on the attention with several brand collaborations and even a role on Broadway, Sandoval has mostly appeared disheveled on multiple ill-received podcasts.
“I feel like I got more hate than Danny Masterson, and he’s a convicted rapist,” Sandoval told the Times, name-checking the That ’70s Show star who was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison last September for raping two women.
When he was asked why the scandal became such a paradigm-shifting moment—for months, all people could talk about was the devious subterfuge required to conduct an affair with your girlfriend’s close friend, all while going undetected by reality show producers—Sandoval gave a baffling response.
“I’m not a pop-culture historian really,” he said, “but I witnessed the O.J. Simpson thing and George Floyd 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?”
The author of the Times profile, Irina Aleksander, attempted to contextualize Sandoval’s tone-deaf answer by writing, “I think I knew what he meant. He was trying to express the oddity of becoming the symbolic center of a nationwide discussion and a major news story; what he communicated instead was something more honest, which is just how much the experience had made him lose perspective.”
Amid rapidly gathering backlash Sandoval quickly apologized, writing to his Instagram Story: “My intentions behind the comments I made in New York Times Magazine were to explain the level of national media attention my affair received. The Comparison was inappropriate and ignorant. I'm incredibly sorry and embarrassed.”
Elsewhere in the profile, Sandoval gave another eye roll-worthy response while self-assessing his years as a working model. “I had a versatile look,” he told the Times, “because I could do this, like, ‘Daddy doesn’t love me’ emo look, and I could do a more slicked-back look.”
Vanderpump Rules is currently midway through its 11th season; the fourth episode airs tonight on Bravo.
