Raquel “Rachel” Leviss is spilling the tea on how Tom Sandoval allegedly manipulated her into keeping the full details of their affair quiet when she wanted to come clean.
The “Vanderpump Rules” alum revealed that Sandoval instructed her to “stick to a story” he created about their bombshell tryst to ease the fallout ahead of the Bravo series’ Season 10 reunion last year.
“The last five minutes of Season 10, you see me break down because I want to come clean and I’m still holding things back because I don’t want to betray Tom because he is the one person that I have left,” she said on her “Rachel Goes Rogue” podcast Thursday.
“In my world, it seemed like he was the only person. He got me. He understood me. He was there for me in all of this time — or so I believed.”
It wasn’t until Leviss’ one-on-one interview with producers that she broke down at the end of the show and came clean, revealing the details of her romance with Sandoval — who was in a nine-year relationship with Ariana Madix — that he tried to hide.
Leviss recalled chatting with a therapist about how she had “betrayed Tom by telling this truth” during the last few minutes of the reunion.
She explained her therapist was caught off guard, responding, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa — but didn’t Tom betray you first?”
The Bravo alum then realized how the musician, 41, manipulated her by initially getting her to lie about the timeline of their affair despite knowing she “wasn’t a good liar.”
“I expressed to him that I don’t like lying,” she explained on her podcast. “He put me in a really bad position with my friendships, and this placement of being on this international reality TV show [meant] that my reputation was on the line.”
Reflecting on the scandal, Leviss also questioned if Sandoval intentionally sought her out when she was vulnerable following her split with former fiancé and co-star James Kennedy.
“He knew I was going through this heartbreak, and I’ve heard him say on his interviews, ‘Oh, Raquel really was coming into her own.’ And that’s what attracted him to me,” she admitted.
Leviss further slammed her former beau for trying to make a move on her instead of supporting her as a friend.
“You a–hole. You could have just let me be. Like, let me live,” she concluded.
Pvnew has reached out to reps for Sandoval but did not immediately hear back.
Sandoval and Leviss’ infidelity was revealed in March 2023 when Madix, 38, found a sexually explicit video of Leviss on her ex’s phone.
