Charli Burnett claims she heard that Tom Sandoval cheated on Ariana Madix with more people than just Raquel Leviss.
While appearing on Bachelor alum Nick Viall‘s podcast on Tuesday, the Vanderpump Rules star shared her thoughts on “Scandoval,” addressing why she believes Raquel engaged in the affair, why she believes Raquel may not return, and sharing what wasn’t seen of the group meeting on the finale.
“There was so much more that was said at the dinner, just of like how much Ariana was hurting. She still missed Tom at that moment,” Charli said on the May 23 episode of The Viall Files.
During season 10, Charli felt as if Raquel drove a wedge between her and Scheana Shay. And during their meeting, they realized just that.
“I was like, ‘Woah, we were both being fed lies by this person because she probably didn’t want us to be friends again,’” Charli reasoned.
When the host then mentioned that he would be visiting one of Sandoval and Tom Schwartz‘s restaurants over the weekend, Charli said her boyfriend, Corey Loftus, recently crossed paths with Schwartz at TomTom.
“From what I heard he’s there all the time now, looking sad,” Charli revealed.
After revealing that she’s known Raquel since they were 15 due to their participation in beauty pageants, Charli made a revelation about why she believes Raquel is the way she is — and why she thinks her affair with Sandoval started.
“I think she only made top 15 once or twice so to have your whole identity and cry about it on TV is really odd, and I think she just never maybe grew from [that] place when we were doing pageants, and she had this idea [for how] her life was supposed to pan [out],” Charli explained. “I honestly think that pageants were the reason that she did kinda this. When you work in an environment where you’re always competing against other women, and you don’t grow from that standpoint, and you don’t grow as a person and you search for that validation with everything that you did in pageants, it goes into the other areas of your life.”
“I don’t know why the f-ck she thought she was gonna win Miss California USA this year. I’m sorry, but like it wasn’t gonna be in your cards, especially like, you do reality TV. It’s not gonna work out for you that way. It’s like, you didn’t get that far beforehand. I think she thought because she was on the show, it was gonna help her,” Charli added.
During the finale episode of Pump Rules last week, Sandoval claimed he had a “plan” to split from Ariana, although he never went through with it. But looking back, Charli said she believes he and Raquel actually thought their relationship would be accepted.
“I think that Tom and Raquel ultimately thought that they were gonna somehow sneak their way in together, and it was gonna phase in, and they were just gonna magically be together, and we were all gonna be okay with it,” she noted. “And now that they broke up, I think that Raquel, 100 percent, is gonna come back to Scheana and Ariana.”
That said, Charli suspects that while Sandoval and Raquel “need the money,” Raquel won’t appear on season 11.
“Maybe, her parents are gonna intervene and not allow her to because they have said comments to us, or even, to me, like, ‘She’s not doing this anymore,’” Charli revealed, adding that Raquel’s parents “absolutely [do] not” like Sandoval.
“I know Raquel’s mother from pageants, and it’s just very shocking to me that this is playing out the way it has,” Charli stated. “Her mother’s a very nice woman, but it’s just, I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know the M.O. with either of them.”
Currently, Raquel is believed to be seeking mental health treatment. And while Charli considered reaching out, she ultimately decided, “[It’s] not my circus, not my monkeys.”
Charli then admitted that she actually cut ties with Raquel midway through season 10.
“I did enable the behavior in a sense that I wanted Raquel to have fun, I just didn’t know her fun was going to be an inconvenience to everyone else’s life and I actually cut Raquel off midseason last year, and that didn’t get shown,” Charli revealed. “Before we went shopping, I had a really big disagreement with her on her birthday.”
According to Charli, she began to have weird feelings about Raquel after she showed up late to her shift at SUR (after spending the night with Sandoval). However, because it hadn’t yet been revealed that she and Sandoval were sleeping together, she felt that Raquel had simply let fame go to her head.
Then, after she planned to celebrate Raquel’s birthday alongside her, she was forced to miss the outing because Raquel insisted on riding with Sandoval.
“I was actually supposed to be there, and a homeless person [had] broken into my new apartment, and I called Raquel, and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna be late to your birthday. As a friend, will you wait for me?’ And she insisted on being in Tom’s car, and it was like this thing where she’s like, ‘I can’t wait for you. I need to go with them,’” Charli recalled. “And I was like, ‘F-ck this b-tch.’”
Later, ahead of her infamous shopping trip with Raquel, during which Raquel purchased her Sandoval-inspired lightning bolt necklace, Charli asked Raquel, “Why would you not wait with your friend? Why are you so up Schwartz and Sandoval’s [butts]?”
“And I asked her, too, I was like, ‘What about these rumors about you guys and this open relationship?’ And she looked at me, and she was like, ‘I would never do that, Charli. You know,’” Charli continued.
As for Sandoval’s infidelities, Charli said she’s heard a lot.
“I always hear stuff about people,” Charli explained. “I got a call and someone came to me and they were like, ‘I just saw Tom and Raquel at The Abbey’ … And [then] I was getting my hair done and my hairdresser told me that one of the clients had to sign an NDA to f-ck Tom Sandoval but this was my first season of filming so I was like, I don’t know what to do with that information.”
“Now I kinda realize that maybe he’s been this person this entire time,” she added.
The Vanderpump Rules season 10 reunion is currently airing on Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.