Last year, Scandoval was tried in the court of public opinion.
Now, Vanderpump Rules star Rachel (formerly Raquel) Leviss is taking the cheating scandal to a court of law.
In a new lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Leviss, 29, accused co-stars Tom Sandoval, 40, and Ariana Madix, 38, of revenge porn, eavesdropping, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
According to entertainment publication US Weekly, which obtained and viewed the legal filing, Leviss alleges that Sandoval recorded a sex tape of her without her consent.
Leviss and Sandoval infamously had a bombshell affair that came to light during Season 10 of Vanderpump Rules, when Sandoval was in a nearly decade-long relationship with Madix. The affair — which would go on to be known as “Scandoval” among the show’s fans — grabbed international headlines in March 2023 and brought record-breaking viewership to the show. Much of the scandal revolved around the alleged existence of a sexual FaceTime call between Leviss and Sandoval, which Leviss said Sandoval recorded without her permission.
Leviss is seeking unspecified damages and destruction of the sex tape. She has requested a jury trial.
Sandoval and Madix have yet to comment publicly on the lawsuit or the accusations.
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In the lawsuit, Leviss says the massive public attention surrounding the cheating scandal saw her “humiliated and villainized for public consumption.” She argues she “remains a shell of her former self, with her career prospects stunted and her reputation in tatters.”
Scandoval, according to the legal filing, made Leviss “without exaggeration, one of the most hated women in America.”
Leviss told the court she checked herself into a “mental health facility” for three months as public interest in Scandoval exploded.
While noting that she has apologized to Madix “repeatedly” for her “morally objectionable” actions, Leviss, through her lawyers, claimed there is more to the story than the public is aware of.
“Lost in the mix was that Leviss was a victim of the predatory and dishonest behavior of an older man, who recorded sexually explicit videos of her without her knowledge or consent, which were then distributed, disseminated, and discussed publicly by a scorned woman seeking vengeance, catalyzing the scandal,” the filing read.
Leviss said she was “misled” by reps at Bravo, the network that airs Vanderpump Rules, into believing she could not publicly comment about the situation.
“It is clear that Bravo deliberately sacrificed Leviss for the sake of its commercial interests from its refusal to allow her the opportunity to tell her side of the story and defend herself, which she repeatedly begged for permission to do,” the lawsuit reads.
Earlier in 2023, Leviss also hit several of her Vanderpump Rules co-stars with cease-and-desist letters insisting they stop speaking about the intimate video, as it constituted a violation of California’s “nonconsensual pornography” laws.
(One Vanderpump Rules cast member, Lala Kent, would go on to apparently earn enough money to pay the downpayment on her house after calling out Leviss for the cease-and-desist online. Kent told Leviss to send the legal notice to her lawyer, Darrell, then capitalized off the sale of merchandise reading, “Send it to Darrell!”)
Bravo, NBCUniversal and the Vanderpump Rules producers, including Andy Cohen, are not named as defendants in the lawsuit. As of this writing, there has been no public comment from any of these parties, either.
Leviss has so far not appeared in Season 11 of Vanderpump Rules, which is currently airing.
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