The ‘Vanderpump Rules’ cheating scandal was intense and very real for all those involved, and also somehow became a national obsession — and Dunham even has her dream cast for the central roles of Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix.
The Covid pandemic was a weird time for all of us, with things like Tiger King becoming a national phenomenon. Then the 2023 Hollywood writers strike seemed to get us all again, and suddenly a reality television show known for cheating scandals became a national obsession for … a cheating scandal. A “Scandoval,” to be more specific.
Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules has always had a strong fanbase, but suddenly everyone knew the names Tom Sandoval, Ariana Madix, and Rachel (Raquel) Leviss, and had very, very strong feelings about all three of them. This is what happens when scripted television shows become scarce admit a work stoppage.
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The obsession even infiltrated Hollywood, with celebrities weighing in on talk shows like Andy Cohen’s network-sharing Watch What Happens Live. And in one unusual case, a celebrity went so far as to reach out to Cohen directly with a “Scandoval” pitch.
For the (somehow) uninitiated who may be out there, “Scandoval” was the unexpected punctuation mark on the end of VPR’s Season 10 that both blew up the show to its highest ratings ever and led to the end of it as fans had come to know it after it’s divided and contentious 11th season. The fallout of the scandal both revitalized the show and broke it.
What happened was that after cameras had stopped rolling on Season 10, Ariana Madix suddenly and unexpectedly discovered evidence that her boyfriend of nine years, Tom Sandoval, had been cheating on her with her one-time best friend Rachel Leviss for quite some time. All three were cast members on the show, so the cameras fired up again and all hell broke loose.
The fallout carried into an explosive Season 10 reunion and through the next season, when it was clear this friend group was irreparably destroyed by this latest cheating scandal — as it was most definitely not their first — among them.
The Season 10 reunion, in particular, became must-see TV as the cast came together after watching many scenes they were unaware of play out in the season’s final episodes. By this time, Leviss had a restraining order against another cast member (Scheana Shay) and had to appear separately, while she and Tom tried to spin a narrative that Madix was not buying.
It was juicy and ridiculous and delivered some near fistfights and instantly iconic lines like when cast member James Kennedy said Sandoval looked like “a worm with a mustache,” Madix telling him to “shut the f–k up you f–king rat,” and latter telling Leviss to “f–k yourself with a cheese grater!”
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Fans ate up every scintillating new detail of this real-life drama that was so juicy and wild and crazy that Lena Dunham thought it was the perfect subject matter for a dramatic treatment.
Appearing on the Shut Up Evan podcast with host Evan Ross Katz, the Girls creator and star said that she felt “we should basically create like a mini movie in which actors treat this as canon and get up and perform it with all the passion and virtuosity of Shakespeare.”
By “we” she, of course, meant herself, admitting she even “went so far as to abuse Andy Cohen‘s contact information to pitch him the idea.” Unfortunately, her audacity did not land her the coveted position of shepherding her vision to the masses.
She had even started building her dream cast for this dramatic presentation, picturing Adam Scott as Sandoval and Jennifer Lawrence as Madix. “I want to take these words and direct them like it’s really serious theater,” she said.
While Cohen didn’t take Dunham on her offer of a film project dramatizing the events of “Scandoval,” he did do his own “dramatic” recreation of the explosive reunion with a live reading on Sirius XM’s Radio Andy, casting Cheyenne Jackson as Sandoval, Amber Tamblyn as Madix, and Chloe Fineman as Leviss. Other members of the cast were played by Sarah Sherman, Leslie Grossman, Carson Kressly, Chrissy Teigen, Brad Goreski, John Arthur Hill, and Susan Lucci.
