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Raquel Leviss has heard from a number of members of the Vanderpump Rules cast in recent months and shared the identities of those co-stars while appearing on Bethenny Frankel‘s podcast on Friday.
As she opened up about how she was “punished” by Bravo at the season 10 reunion and explained why she’ll never return to the series, Raquel, 28, discussed her current relationships with the cast, addressed claims of a spa stay, and confirmed the odd security offer she recently received from the network.
“Just a few days ago, somebody reached out from the network and offered for security to be at my house where I’m staying with my parents. And it’s like, it’s a little too late,” she shared on the August 18 episode of Just B With Bethenny. “All of the death threats were happening months ago and you were aware of it yet did absolutely nothing to protect anybody and after that legal letter went out, all of the sudden they’re offering services so it’s a little fishy.”
According to Raquel, aside from Bravo’s recent security offer, she hasn’t heard much from the network, even amid her mental health struggles.
“There’s no check-in from anybody to see if I was okay and just to, you know, follow up,” she revealed. “I asked for my tuition, I guess, to be covered for treatment and they refused to pay for it and I have a theory that it’s because if they paid for it they would admit to this liability.”
As she accrued a whopping $200,000 bill for her time at The Meadows, she was accused, by Peter Madrigal, 39, and Dayna Kathan, 33, of being at a spa rather than a treatment facility. And even after a fellow patient leaked the story, no one wanted to correct their claims.
“It got out that I was at The Meadows for mental health treatment and one of my peers who recognized me when I came into The Meadows was like, ‘Oh my gosh, Raquel, what are you doing here?’ … She didn’t know anything about the scandal but she watched the show so I filled her in on the situation and the things that led me up to coming to get treatment and that was my first week and her last week. That same day she left, there was news that I was at this place called The Meadows getting mental health treatment and that was a violation of my privacy and then it got picked up,” Raquel recalled.
“But then,” she continued. “There was conversations of, ‘Oh, Raquel isn’t getting treatment. She’s at a spa. She’s at Miraval.’ And so that whole narrative was being pumped out there that I’m at a spa and I had my team contact them saying, ‘Look, you guys know she’s at The Meadows, we have the paperwork to confirm it. Will you dispel these rumors that she’s at a spa?’ And they refused to do that to keep this narrative going. It was more salacious for me to be at a spa than to be really reflecting on my actions.”
Although Raquel was in negotiations with Bravo for a potential return to Pump Rules for some time, she ultimately decided to quit the show.
“I refuse to not respect myself on that level where I would endure that emotional abuse any longer,” she explained of the decision. “I can’t do that to myself. They want me back [but] I know that other people on the cast are more important than I am so I don’t even think that I would get a redemption arc… I also know that I wouldn’t be able to share all of my story. Whatever I share gets condensed to five minutes max.”
Another factor that impacted her exit was production’s refusal to meet her salary demands.
“I asked for equal pay with [Tom Sandoval, 40] and [Ariana Madix, 38] and for them to reimburse me for my treatment expenses, but they refused to pay me equally,” she shared. “I was considering going back if I was going to be paid equally because I feel like when you pay your employees I think it really shows how much you value them.”
Not only did Bravo fail to meet her salary requests, but they also robbed her of her mental support system at the reunion special, which was filmed in March, just weeks after her affair with Sandoval was exposed.
“Going into the reunion it was promised to me that I would have a mental health advocate in my trailer as I watched the first two parts of the reunion and then behind the scenes just in case for my mental well-being, and that was taken away from me the [day] before the reunion,” she recalled.
According to Raquel, she believes Bravo was paying her back for giving a tell-all interview ahead of the taping.
“I [answered] some [questions], they were very basic, I didn’t give away anything that the reunion was going to touch on and I think the network saw that and was, I don’t know, angry, disappointed and punished me by taking away my mental health advocate,” she reasoned.
Also on Bethenny’s podcast, Raquel revealed she’s been contacted by a couple of her ex-castmates in the months since she last saw them at the season 10 reunion.
“I have a no-contact policy with every single cast member. [But] Lala has reached out to me on Instagram saying that she’s willing to lend an ear,” she shared. “Tom has emailed me twice. Lala wanted me back. [And] Lisa wanted me back.”
In addition to promising herself she would not communicate with her former co-stars, Raquel said she “[doesn’t] trust” them.
“I know [Lala] has her own agenda. I’m sure she wants to create an alliance with me so she can take down [Randall Emmett] for being a narcissist and that’s her whole MO,” she suspected. “They have ulterior motives. They don’t care about my well-being. They care about their narrative that they need to portray on this show.”
Vanderpump Rules season 11 is expected to begin airing on Bravo sometime later this year or early next year.