Some sound advice? Kristen Doute had plenty of thoughts about Tom Sandoval‘s cheating scandal with Raquel Leviss — including how the model should address the backlash against her.
During the aftershow segment of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Wednesday, May 3, Doute, 40, answered a fan question about whether Ariana Madix will make peace with Leviss, 28, amid the drama.
“No, I don’t think Ariana should forgive Raquel and I don’t think that she will. I think she will forgive her for herself but not for Raquel,” the Vanderpump Rules alum, who left the Bravo series in 2020, answered.
While reflecting on Leviss’ involvement in the affair, Doute noted that she should “just flee the country.”
Us Weekly confirmed in March that Madix, 37, and Sandoval, 40, called it quits after nearly a decade of dating due to his infidelity.
Leviss, for her part, issued a public apology to the Florida native at the time. “I want to apologize for my actions and my choices foremost to Ariana, and to my friends and the fans so invested in our relationships. There is no excuse, I am not a victim and I must own my actions and I deeply regret hurting Ariana,” she wrote via Instagram that same month.
Sandoval, meanwhile, claimed he tried to end his romance with Madix before his cheating scandal made headlines.
“We didn’t tell anybody, but she knew,” he alleged on an episode of the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast in April. “She was trying to, like convince me not to be broken up … but that was not the case. She asked me that day as we were leaving about, like — because we had talked about fertilizing [her] eggs, which I never did. She was like, ‘So, what do you think about doing a sperm check to fertilize my eggs?’ And I’m like, ‘What? We’re broken up.’ … I was like, ‘We’ll talk about this later, I gotta go do my show.’”
That same month, a rep for the California native confirmed to Us that their client was at a mental health facility.
“Raquel and her family decided before the relationship was discovered that she would enter a voluntary facility for mental health counseling,” a statement from a spokesperson for Leviss read, noting that she was in rehab, but not seeking help for substance abuse issues. “Raquel had planned to admit herself before the VPR reunion was taped on March 23. She was scheduled to go in pre-reunion but decided she wanted to finish her filming commitment. Bravo and production were aware and in support of her journey towards better mental health.”
Meanwhile, Doute continued to publicly show her support for Madix in the aftermath of the scandal. (The He’s Making You Crazy author previously accused the TomTom co-owner of cheating on her with Madix ahead of their 2014 split. Doute and Madix, however, were able to work out their differences off screen and eventually became close friends.)
“I don’t know why I feel like I need to make this clear, but there’s so many people right now wondering if this is making me happy,” the T-shirt designer, who dated Sandoval from 2007 to 2014, said via her Instagram Story in March. “And you guys, Ariana and I’ve been really good friends for many, many years now. So, I am team Ariana — all day, every day. That’s what’s up.”
At the time, Doute weighed in on her and Madix’s respective splits from Sandoval, saying on her “Sex, Love and What Else Matters” podcast, “When I went over to Ariana’s she was just done filming interview bites for [Vanderpump Rules] and I walked in, she hugged me, we both started crying. She said ‘thank you,’ and then she said to me, ‘I’m so sorry.’ I was like, ‘Are you out of your damn mind? This is not the same thing.’”
During her WWHL appearance, Doute slammed Bravo viewers who claimed Madix deserved to be cheated on after their past drama. “I’m the one who gets to say this, nobody else’s opinions matter, it was not the same,” the Michigan native said, noting that she and Madix were “really close” now.
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Vanderpump Rules airs on Bravo Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET. Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen airs Sunday through Thursday nights and is available to stream the next day on Peacock.
