Bravo has announced that Season 11 of “Vanderpump Rules” — which became a sensation earlier this year during its 10th season because of the #Scandoval, a cheating scandal within the cast — will premiere on Jan. 30. Two of the three #Scandoval principles, Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval, who broke up in March after she learned of his months-long affair with fellow castmate Rachel Leviss, will return to the show.
Leviss, formerly known as Raquel, will not be coming back; instead, she will be launching the podcast “Rachel Goes Rogue,” also in January.
On Dec. 12 at 10:15 pm PT, also premiering on Bravo will be a new “Vanderpump Rules” special, “A Decade of Rumors and Lies,” which will revisit the many previous scandals on the show, presumably culminating in the #Scandoval. The next day, NBCUniversal’s Peacock will stream an extended version of the special, which will include a sneak peak of Season 11.
In the summer of 2022, Leviss and Sandoval began a sexual affair, which was happening during (and long after) the filming of the show’s 10th season — hiding in plain sight, as it turned out — and a few members of the cast voiced their suspicions of them on camera. But it wasn’t until Madix went through Sandoval’s phone on March 1 and found an intimate video of him and Leviss that the story exploded into the open. Madix called production the next day, cameras went back up on March 3 and TMZ broke the story about the cheating scandal later the same day.
The #Scandoval was born, which launched “Vanderpump Rules” to record-breaking ratings, and yielded two Emmy nominations for the veteran Bravo show.
Along with Sandoval and Madix, Lisa Vanderpump, DJ James Kennedy, Katie Maloney, Lala Kent, Scheana Shay and Tom Schwartz are also returning for Season 11. Kennedy’s girlfriend, Ally Lewber, and Shay’s husband, Brock Davies, return as well.
Bravo also released first-look images from Season 11, which contains an extremely photoshopped-looking cast photo of the group, which places Madix and Sandoval next to one another. At BravoCon in November, the former couple appeared far apart onstage, and Sandoval was booed continuously.