Huge blow-ups, catty fights, and some serious affairs. How much of the drama
is real? We're giving you all the proof that "Vanderpump Rules" might actually be fake.
Jax Taylor is without a doubt one of the most controversial characters on "Vanderpump Rules."
The reality star was one of the show's original cast members, and his intense love life and quick
temper played out on the show for years. That is, until he was fired from the series
following Season 8 in 2020. His storyline was characterized by multiple cheating scandals and
ill-fated relationships until he finally tied the knot with his wife, Brittany Cartwright, in 2019.
Since Taylor moved on from reality television and entered fatherhood,
he's opened up about his time on the Bravo show. In 2021, the former reality star told Us Weekly,
"I was 100 percent checked out at the end. ... I was just very irritable on the show. It was
getting a little bit too scripted for me and I just couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't fun."
While Taylor claimed that "Vanderpump Rules" is scripted, he was telling a
different story just a few years prior. In a 2018 interview with In Touch, Taylor said:
"Just because there are cameras I'm not going to be like, 'Oh,
I'm going to do this and act like this.' That's just not how our show
works. I think that's why our show works so well — because we are a real show."
As expected about reality TV series, cast members are subject to their storylines being crafted,
and sometimes manipulated, by the production team. Whether scenes are chopped to be more dramatic,
or castmates' words are minced, most reality stars have little to no creative control. Their
reputation of being villains or saints typically depends on those working behind the scenes.
No one knows this better than "Vanderpump Rules" star Katie
Maloney. She admitted in her 2016 interview with Galore magazine that
not everything is how it appears to be on-screen. Maloney revealed,
"It's pretty not-scripted, you see our relationships are real. [...] They don't
show everything that's positive, but they definitely show everything that's negative
and that can paint people in certain lights that aren't true to form but it still is real."
In 2020, former "Vanderpump Rules" editor Bri Dellinger admitted just how manipulated these
storylines can be in a since-deleted episode of the "Twisted Plot Podcast."
In a clip that resurfaced on Twitter, Dellinger said about cast member Scheana:
"If Scheana knows what's good for her, she'd befriend me, because
my favorite game is finding all the embarrassing things that Scheana does and putting them all in."
Anyone who religiously watched Bravo would remember the VPR scandal, cleverly dubbed
"Scandoval." Raquel Leviss and Tom Sandoval's secret affair was exposed in March 2023,
ending his nearly decade-long relationship with Ariana Madix. While "Vanderpump Rules" has seen
its fair share of cheating scandals throughout the years, nothing compared to the one from Season 10.
The controversy continued to shake the internet, with new info emerging each week after the initial
news broke. In May 2023, for example, Madix claimed on an episode of the "Call Her Daddy"
podcast that Leviss and Sandoval hooked up in their guest room while she slept in the next room.
Part one of the three-part reunion special became the most-watched episode on the
Bravo network in nine years. With the ratings setting new records,
fans speculated if there might be more to the affair than meets the
eye. Hollie Bohorquez of the "Vanderpump Rules Party" podcast relayed to Insider,
"I personally feel like they were mapping this out."
Katie Cee, who co-hosts the podcast alongside Bohorquez, seconded that notion, alleging:
"Production at least knew there was a strong flirtation. I think they were trying to milk it."
Podcaster Lara Schoenhals similarly told the outlet that she felt the scandal could
have been manufactured by production due to the show's viewership suffering a decline, claiming,
"They needed something to get shaken up, to get people's interest back."
Despite these allegations, Bravo and "Vanderpump Rules" cast members alike
have claimed that producers didn't know about the affair beforehand.
Lala Kent and Katie Maloney have come a long way in their on-again, off-again friendship.
The castmates clashed for years while starring on "Vanderpump Rules" together,
with insults being thrown from both sides. Their feud began shortly after
Kent debuted on the show in Season 4, which aired in 2015. During the Season 5 reunion,
Kent accused Maloney of slut-shaming her, and Maloney claimed Kent belittled
her for her weight and her relationship with her former husband, Tom Schwartz.
Though their relationship had its ups and downs through the years,
the women ultimately put their drama behind them and became friends. In March 2023,
Maloney told Us Weekly that they bonded in 2018 after years of tension, saying,
"We're so much more alike than we ever realized we were,
so I think that's kind of like where we fault sometimes."
Although the two are in a good place these days,
Maloney has previously claimed that Kent was not the same person behind the scenes
as she'd appear on camera. In an interview with Galore magazine in 2016, she said:
"I felt pretty provoked so it is a little hard when people come up to me and tell
me I'm so hard to Lala. I'm like, you have no idea actually how this person
is [...] They do stuff off-camera and then on-camera they are completely different."
For a show built around the drama at Lisa Vanderpump's restaurants,
it seems ironic that most of the cast members no longer work for her. Earlier seasons of
"Vanderpump Rules" focused on drama occurring at SUR Restaurant & Lounge, where many of the
stars worked as bartenders or servers for years as they dabbled in acting, modeling, or fashion.
But throughout the decade that the show has been on television, several of its cast members have
no longer needed serving jobs given the fame and fortune they've achieved as reality stars.
The former bartenders and waitresses, then, have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs with
the platform "Vanderpump Rules" has given them. Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz are co-owners of
their bar TomTom, Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney co-own the sandwich shop Something About Her,
and Lala Kent founded Give Them Lala Beauty. While many of them are no longer frequenting
SUR to clock in, Vanderpump explained that if any cast members are featured
on the show working — it's not a lie. She told Thrillist in 2016,
"Part of the deal is if they're working at the restaurant on the show,
they have to work there legitimately." Former original cast member Stassi Schroeder
seemed to refute that claim, however, on a 2019 episode of her "Straight Up with Stassi" podcast.
"Those of us who were pretending to work at the restaurant aren't
really having to. They are showing what's really actually going on,
and Ariana doesn't have to pretend to go clock in order to go to Mexico."