Rachel Leviss is finally coming clean about her now-infamous kiss with Tom Schwartz — something fans have long suspected was done to cover up her affair with Tom Sandoval.
In Vanderpump Rules season 10, Leviss and Schwartz — who is Sandoval’s longtime BFF and business partner — shocked their co-stars when they locked lips during Scheana Shay’s wedding trip to Mexico in August 2022.
Schwartz was newly-single after divorcing Katie Maloney and Leviss had been secretly hooking up with Sandoval for weeks.
The affair wasn’t exposed until March 2023 when Sandoval’s now-ex girlfriend Ariana Madix discovered a sexually explicit video of Leviss on his phone.
The former beauty queen, 29, admitted on her new iHeartRadio podcast this week that the kiss with Schwartz was ‘definitely staged and definitely produced.’
She also claimed that he knew about the affair ‘from the very beginning’ — something he’s denied — and that Sandoval gave him the ‘go ahead’ to kiss her on camera.
Rachel Leviss is finally coming clean about her now-infamous kiss with Tom Schwartz — something fans have long suspected was done to cover up her affair with Tom Sandoval
In Vanderpump Rules season 10, Leviss and Schwartz — who is Sandoval’s longtime BFF and business partner — shocked their co-stars when they locked lips during Scheana Shay ‘s wedding trip to Mexico in August 2022
‘I don’t think he would do it without Sandoval being okay with it,’ she said, adding that they both went into it ‘knowing that I had a thing with Sandoval.’
Sandoval ‘was in on it and definitely okay with it,’ she alleged, and that he even celebrated the moment by cracking open two beers for her and Schwartz.
Leviss speculated that the show’s producers may have also had a hand in pressuring Schwartz to ‘put a move on me.’
To make matters worse, her kiss with Schwartz led to the end of her friendship with Katie Maloney, who ‘set a boundary’ about friends getting with her ex-husband.
Though she intended to respect Maloney’s request, Leviss claimed that producers stepped in to remind her that they are ‘making a reality TV show.’
In the same podcast episode, Leviss recalled the moment she knew that Sandoval had confided in Schwartz about their affair.
Leviss and Sandoval first hooked up in August 2022 following a flirty night out in West Hollywood.
‘I got a phone call from Tom the next morning after we hooked up for the first time, and my mind was racing,’ she recalled.
‘I was feeling so much guilt and shame about it. And I finally got a phone call from Sandoval and he was at Schwartz’s apartment when he called me, and that was like a safe space for him.’
The former beauty queen, 29, admitted on her new iHeartRadio podcast this week that the kiss was ‘definitely staged and definitely produced’
She also claimed that Schwartz knew about the affair ‘from the very beginning’ — something he’s denied — and that Sandoval gave him the ‘go ahead’ to kiss her on camera; Sandoval and Leviss seen in 2022
The affair wasn’t exposed until March 2023 when Sandoval’s now-ex girlfriend Ariana Madix (center) discovered a sexually explicit video of Leviss on his phone; the trio seen in 2022
‘And so Schwartz knew before we even had a conversation to talk about it and what the game plan was going to be, because immediately I was going to film with Ariana and our group of girls that night,’ she told listeners.
It was during this phone call that Leviss asked Sandoval and Schwartz if they planned to tell Madix, to which she claimed they both responded: ‘No, we’re not.’
Leviss alleged that Sandoval got a kick out of flaunting the affair right under Madix’s nose.
She said that he sent Madix and their group a bottle of champagne during their ‘girls night’ as his ‘twisted way of celebrating and then reassuring me that oh, this is all fine and dandy, like this is something to be excited about.’
In the premiere episode of Rachel Goes Rogue, which was released on January 7, Leviss provided all the juicy details about her and Sandoval’s ‘very bad’ first hookup.
She explained that the night began with her and Sandoval grabbing drinks at The Abbey in West Hollywood, before she offered to give him a ride home.
When they arrived to his house, where Madix was sleeping upstairs, Sandoval invited her in for a drink.
However, he ended up being locked out of the the home, with him and Leviss going to his backyard.
‘We go in the back, and the sliding door isn’t unlocked, so he was like, “Well, we’ve got the fire pit here,” and I was like, “Yeah, the fire pit’s cool, we can just keep talking,”‘ she revealed.
‘We got the fire pit going, we’re chatting, and then he goes, “You know what the best thing about this pool is? That it’s heated.”‘
The pair then took a dip in the swimming pool: ‘I took my jeans off, and I had this corset top on, so I left that on, and I was in my underwear, and I went in his pool and it was heated.’
Meanwhile Sandoval stripped down to his boxers, and while they were first swimming on the opposite sides of the pool, he eventually swam over to her to ask her to turn down the music she was playing on her phone.
In the same podcast episode, Leviss recalled the moment she knew that Sandoval had confided in Schwartz about their affair
Leviss claimed that Sandoval got a kick out of flaunting the affair right under Madix’s nose; Sandoval and Leviss seen in 2021
‘And then he looked at me a certain way and then he grabbed me, spun me and kissed me and I was like surprised but like happy,’ she shared.
Rachel then added, ‘Ugh, so bad, so embarrassing.’
‘I knew it was wrong, Tom knew it was wrong. Right after Tom kissed me, he like sat on the stair of the pool and he was like, hands on his face, his mind must have been running a million miles a minute, contemplating what to do,’ she went on.
Rachel said she started to get dressed and thought she should leave, but Sandoval asked her to sit down while he assessed the situation.
‘Hang on, I just need to think for a second. I just don’t know what to do right now because I really like you,’ he reportedly told her.
Meanwhile Rachel said she’d feel more comfortable talking in her car. After the duo made their way back to the vehicle, they proceeded to hook up.
When her co-host asked if they did ‘everything,’ Leviss replied, ‘It was very bad.’
During the podcast she also revealed that hearing Sandoval speak on a recent podcast interview caused her to feel like she ‘was going to throw up.’
‘His voice repulsed me. And I’m like, “OK, this is a good sign.”‘
Prior to their first kiss, Leviss explained that Sandoval was ‘always there for me.’
‘It felt like he was always there for me because we would FaceTime literally all hours of the day, every single day, and he would come over to my apartment and we would just, like, kick it on my balcony and vent about our filming experience, and we bonded over that unique situation of being on a reality TV show and the things that happened behind the scenes that aren’t talked about, and you know, viewers don’t really know about that,’ she said.
‘He understood, and so I felt seen and I felt heard by him. I felt validated, and it just seemed like he was always ready to drop anything to come see me.’
In the premiere episode of Rachel Goes Rogue, which was released on January 7, Leviss provided all the juicy details about her and Sandoval’s ‘very bad’ first hookup
‘I knew it was wrong, Tom knew it was wrong,’ she said
Leviss also explained why she chose not to return to Vanderpump Rules for season 11, after the affair was exposed.
‘I don’t want to be with Tom and I’ve made the decision to cut Tom out of my life. Going back to do the show, it would force me to interact with him … and I know I’m on the outskirts with all the other cast, so I wouldn’t get my story across.’
‘I really believe the girls wouldn’t give me the time of day to let me open up to them, given my previous history with my interactions with them.’
‘I had become the worst version of myself through the 7 months of secrecy, deception and going along with these lies that ate me up. And part of that is my fault … and it was a really bad choice,’ she shared.
‘But I was still in relationship with Tom, we were talking on the phone when I went in for treatment and in those months I was in there, I was debating whether or not to do the show.’
However now she believes she made ‘the right decision by leaving.’
Season 11 of Vanderpump Rules premieres January 30 at 8pm ET on Bravo