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Lisa Vanderpump Defends Supporting Tom Sandoval in ‘VPR’ Season Finale Despite Fan Backlash
Lisa Vanderpump isn’t apologizing for her somewhat forgiving treatment of Tom Sandoval in their discussion about his affair with Raquel Leviss during the Vanderpump Rules season 10 finale on Wednesday, May 17.
“Everybody else was chastising him. I didn’t feel like joining the pack. I mean, it seemed so kind of slanted. Everything was against him, you know?” Lisa, 62, told Us Weekly at the Vanderpump Dogs Gala on Thursday, May 18.
“I’ve known him for a long time. Of course, I’m condemning what he did. That’s why I said, ‘You’re not a bad person. You just did a bad thing.’ And my heart was always with Ariana. Maybe I didn’t kind of, you know, scream at him and lambast him, but everybody else had done that,” she continued.
Lisa responded to Ariana Madix‘s claims during a May 17 appearance on Watch What Happens Live that she “was a little too nice to” Tom during the finale.
“The man that was sitting in my living room, it felt like a broken man. So, I just didn’t want to pile on, to be honest,” the SUR owner explained. “Have I had conversations and held ’em accountable? Yes, I mean, I felt the same way, absolutely, that everybody else did. But at some point, they’re like my children in some way.”
Lisa feels so close to the members of her show’s cast, as some, like Tom and Scheana Schay, have worked with her since 2009 when she opened her first Beverly Hills restaurant, Villa Blanca. The reality show built around Lisa and her employees at hotspot SUR debuted on Bravo in 2013.
“They’ve grown up with me. … You might scream at him for a second, and I did that before, but when I saw him, then you’ve gotta try to at least move forward or look for the path forward — even though it was too early to move forward [or] look for the path forward,” the entrepreneur shared, adding, “But of course, we were all very upset. We felt duped. We were disgusted, we were hurt — all of those things.”
During the season 10 finale, Ariana was the first to talk to Lisa after she discovered Tom and Raquel were having an affair. The restauranteur was a supportive shoulder for Ariana to cry on and assured her that life would get better once time helped her move past the pain.
Tom later visited Lisa, who disapproved of what he did and how he handled things, but did not scold him.
“Well, what’s she going to have now? I mean, this isn’t a trusting place when you’re sleeping with one of her best friends,” the PUMP restaurateur calmly told the TomTom club owner about how he hurt his girlfriend of nine years. About the affair, she told Tom, “It looks terrible in retrospect,” but when he broke down crying and hyperventilating Lisa assured him, “You have to stop. It’s going to get better from here on in.”
