Sandoval, Tom (1983- )

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    Vanderpump’s New Sandwich Shop Is One of Los Angeles’ Anticipated Openings

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    The most hotly anticipated opening in the city this year might be a sandwich shop from two Bravo stars.The fans control everything in the “Vanderpump Rules” multiverse, and lately what the fans want are crisp, pressed turkey sandwiches and prebiotic sodas under the soft glow of shabby-chic chandeliers in West Hollywood.Something About Her, a new sandwich shop from the Bravo stars Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney, is a two-hour drive from Kim Mykitta’s home in Huntington Beach, so she took the day off from work as a social media manager and copywriter to turn up on its first day of business.Arriving an hour before the shop opened, Ms. Mykitta settled in as the 15th person in a line that grew steadily throughout the day, snaking down the block. And it wasn’t just a line, but a cultural phenomenon, tourist destination and social event covered in detailed play-by-plays in news stories, blog posts, podcast episodes and social media reels.Katie Maloney and Ariana Madix are fan favorites who opened their new sandwich shop in May.Dylan RileyMs. Mykitta runs Bravo Breaking News, an Instagram fan account that’s part of a complex cottage industry built around Bravo’s cultish reality shows and their stars. “We are die-hard and we are dedicated,” said Ms. Mykitta, who had been reporting on the ups and downs of the opening for about two years.It might seem hard to square the devotion of these crowds with a restaurant industry in crisis. The Los Angeles Times called 2023 “the year that killed L.A. restaurants.” The article mentioned, among the dozens and dozens of notable departed, the closing of Jean-Georges Beverly Hills and three spots from the acclaimed restaurateur Nancy Silverton.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      One Year After Scandoval, What’s Next for ‘Vanderpump Rules’?

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      The biggest reality television story of 2023 launched spinoffs, a Broadway run and side projects that may cause a halt in production.A little more than a year since TMZ reported that the “Vanderpump Rules” stars Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval had broken up because he had been having an affair with another co-star, Rachel Leviss, it remains the defining story in the greater world of reality TV.The short version of the story goes: Sandoval was performing a show with his band, he lost his phone, and someone handed it to Madix for safekeeping. She went through the phone and found a screen recording of a FaceTime between Sandoval and Leviss that confirmed the affair. The long version … well, let’s reflect on the state of the Scandoval, one year later, with the help of a “Vanderpump” executive producer, Alex Baskin.A Uniquely Disastrous AffairSince the beginning of the show, cheating has been part of the landscape — arguably, a vital part of the drama. But none of the indiscretions between other castmates made it to the headlines of CNN, The New York Times and Time magazine or got a dedicated name and hashtag like #Scandoval.So what made this affair different?Baskin sees the scandal as a few different factors “swirled together to make it something that had a far greater impact than the numerous cheating scandals that had come before it on the show.”First, it was a long-term affair, meaning that Sandoval had been living a bit of a double life. That’s somewhat more intriguing for viewers and more devastating for real-life participants than a one-off kiss or one-night stand.The magnitude of the scandal also set it apart, since producers resumed shooting, despite Season 10 filming having wrapped.“It felt like this had a significance such that we should cover it in real time if we could,” Baskin said. So they borrowed the camera teams from “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and got back to filming.“It’s really chilling to watch because you were seeing in the moment the group come to terms with what had just happened,” Baskin noted.Additionally, Baskin noted that Season 10 was still airing when the news broke, so “it became then a series of Easter eggs that the audience was spotting in the show itself.”Of course, the scene of Ken Todd, Lisa Vanderpump’s husband, staggering into the kitchen to say, “I can’t believe Tom had Raquel over while Ariana is away, in the Jacuzzi as well, and she stayed all night,” immediately comes to mind.(And just in case you were wondering, Ken was confused but not that confused: Raquel and Rachel are the same person — on the show, she went by Raquel but has since switched back to her given name, Rachel).The Fallout: Leviss left the show after the end of Season 10 shooting, and in February she filed a revenge-porn lawsuit against Madix and Sandoval, in relation to the distribution of the FaceTime footage that revealed the affair. Lawyers for Madix and Sandoval have asked a court to toss the claim. Season 11 kicked off in January with the most-watched season premiere in Bravo’s history.‘A Point of Demarcation’Though production of Season 11 resumed as usual, the show exists in a time period of its own making, B.S. or A.S. — before or after Scandoval.As the season opened, Madix refused to speak to Sandoval at all, though they were still sharing their Valley Village home. With each episode we have seen Madix and Sandoval tolerating each other more and more socially.Of late, “Vanderpump Rules” has returned to some of its normal, ensemble-oriented shenanigans that made the show so beloved in the first place. There was Lala Kent’s sperm donor party, James Kennedy’s weeping breakdown over his dog Hippie (formally known as Graham), whom he considers a fur baby, and of course the race between the exes Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney to date a 25-year-old singer.“It still was important for us to serve all the other story elsewhere because we wanted everyone else to still be alive and as important to show as they were before,” Baskin said. “Also, tonally, I think that watching a series of episodes of Scandoval would grow really wearing to the audience.”It’s Not About the Pasta: There is still a Scandoval-related conversation in almost every scene.“Vanderpump Rules,” “The Valley,” “Vanderpump Villa” — oh my!To no one’s surprise, the increased publicity has led to a significant expansion of the Vanderpump universe.Bravo is currently airing the first season of “The Valley” which stars the former “Vanderpump” cast members Jax Taylor, Brittany Cartwright and Kristen Doute as they try to “adult.”Then there is “Vanderpump Villa,” airing on Hulu, which follows the staff of Vanderpump’s French chateau.More Pumptinis, please: Lisa Vanderpump is nowhere close to slowing down her restaurant empire — “Vanderpump à Paris” in Vegas is still up and running, and she and her husband, Ken, just opened “Wolf by Vanderpump” in Lake Tahoe.So what’s next?One of the biggest and most obvious results from Scandoval has been Madix’s success outside of the show. She made it to 3rd place with her partner Pasha Pashkov on the latest season of “Dancing with the Stars” and recently finished up her run as Roxie Hart in “Chicago” on Broadway.Will the show veer away from Los Angeles and follow Madix on the road?“I think that the show has always grown and expanded, according to whatever is really happening with the group, so I do anticipate that we would cover all of that, but still the central focus is the core friendships within the group,” Baskin said.A Scheana Shay-less Summer: “Vanderpump” would take a break from filming this summer, TMZ reported, though the show usually films through June and July. Madix is the one cast member who is booked and busy during that time, with a new hosting gig on “Love Island U.S.A.” More

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      Tom Sandoval’s Interview Shows the Perils of Doing PR for Reality TV

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      Publicists who work with “unscripted” people say it presents several challenges.Tom Sandoval, a star of “Vanderpump Rules,” has shared a lot in the decade that he has appeared on that reality TV show, the 11th season of which began airing on Bravo in January. But in a recent interview with The New York Times Magazine, Mr. Sandoval, 41, said things that surprised even people who were well familiar with his penchant for shocking behavior.Speaking about the public interest in an affair he had with a co-star while he was dating another co-star, a tryst known as “Scandoval,” Mr. Sandoval said that he was not a historian of pop culture, but that he “witnessed the O.J. Simpson thing and George Floyd and all these big things, which is really weird to compare this to that, I think, but do you think in a weird way it’s a little bit the same?”Mr. Sandoval also said he felt that he received more hate for his affair than the actor “Danny Masterson, and he’s a convicted rapist.” He spoke in the presence of a member of his publicity team, which to some was as astonishing as his comments.The writer who interviewed Mr. Sandoval for The Times Magazine wrote that a representative for Bravo contacted her after their conversation took place and before it was published to relay concerns about what he had said.Alyx Sealy, a publicist for Mr. Sandoval, declined to comment for this article. Bravo declined to participate. Adam Ambrose, a publicist who represents reality stars and who has represented Mr. Sandoval in the past, said in an emailed statement that working with people on reality TV could present unique challenges because of the nature of that genre.“Unscripted stars portray and are their authentic selves, so at times the lines can be blurred for them to discern between being in front of the camera and speaking to the media,” said Mr. Ambrose, the founder of Brand Influential, a public relations company in Los Angeles, who emphasized that he was speaking generally and not about any specific client, past or present. “Sometimes they may be perceived as uncoachable, making it more challenging to manage their media presence from a P.R. perspective.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Is Tom Sandoval of ‘Vanderpump Rules’ the Most Hated Man in America?

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      Valley Village is a Los Angeles neighborhood just across the freeway from Studio City, near the southern edge of the area locally referred to with both affection and derision as the Valley. There, at the end of a quiet, leafy street of ranch-style homes stands what real estate agents have come to describe as a “modern farmhouse,” which its current occupant, the reality-TV star Tom Sandoval, has outfitted with landscaping lights that rotate in a spectrum of colors, mimicking the dance floor of a nightclub. The home is both his private residence and an occasional TV set for the Bravo reality show “Vanderpump Rules.” After a series of events that came to be known as “Scandoval,” paparazzi had been camped outside, but by the new year it was just one or two guys, and now they have mostly gone, too.Listen to this article, read by Julia WhelanOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.“Scandoval” is the nickname for Sandoval’s affair with another cast member, which he had behind the backs of the show’s producers and his girlfriend of nine years. This wouldn’t be interesting or noteworthy except that in 2023, after being on the air for 10 seasons, “Vanderpump” was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding unstructured reality program, an honor that has never been bestowed on any of the network’s “Housewives” shows. It also became, by a key metric, the most-watched cable series in the advertiser-beloved demographic of 18-to-49-year-olds and brought in over 12.2 million viewers. This happened last spring, when Hollywood’s TV writers went on strike and cable TV was declared dead and our culture had already become so fractured that it was rare for anything — let alone an episode of television — to become a national event. And yet you probably heard about “Scandoval” even if you couldn’t care less about who these people are, exactly.The story has continued offscreen. After the season aired, Raquel Leviss, with whom Sandoval had the affair, entered a mental-health facility in Arizona and started going by a different name. Ariana Madix, Sandoval’s now-ex-girlfriend, garnered so much national sympathy that she has had the most prosperous year of her career. In addition to being invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and to compete on “Dancing With the Stars,” she landed ads with Duracell batteries, Bic razors, Uber Eats and Lay’s chips, as well as a starring role in “Chicago” on Broadway this winter. Sandoval, meanwhile, became the most reviled man in America and the butt of a million jokes. Jennifer Lawrence made fun of his skin. Amy Schumer called him a narcissist. One of the hosts of “The View” called him “the Donald Trump of ex-boyfriends.” And Sandoval has just been here, in the Valley, trying to process it all. “I feel like I got more hate than Danny Masterson,” he told me, “and he’s a convicted rapist.”When I arrived at his house late last year, Sandoval, who is 41, had just finished working out. He wore a black muscle shirt and a wide headband. His assistant, Miles, was at the dining-room table sorting through Sandoval’s utility bills on two laptops. “He basically does anything I don’t personally have to do,” Sandoval explained. We were also joined by Rylie, who’s on Sandoval’s new publicity team, which has a background in crisis P.R. I assumed Rylie would be an impediment, but my fears were put to rest when she didn’t flinch at the Danny Masterson comment. Rylie is 23, has watched “Vanderpump” since she was in middle school and seemed as interested in Sandoval’s life as I was. When Sandoval described how, despite their gnarly, nationally televised split, he and Madix have continued living together, sequestered in separate parts of the five-bedroom home and communicating via assistants, Rylie was curious to hear more. “So all of her stuff is still here?” Rylie asked. Sandoval wasn’t sure, but he thought Madix might have finally rented a place. “She took the dog and the cat, and I know she wouldn’t do that if she was staying somewhere temporary,” he said. Sandoval wanted to buy out her share of the home, but interest rates are so crazy right now. He was considering getting a roommate to help with the mortgage. At least he thought Madix was finally open to the idea. “It took her a while to not be spiteful about the house,” he said. (A month after we met, Madix sued Sandoval in Los Angeles County to force him to sell the home and divide the proceeds.) We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More