Rachel Leviss Recalls ‘Very Bad’ First Hookup with Tom Sandoval as She Admits She’s ‘Repulsed’ by Him Now
Before the ‘Vanderpump Rules’ costars’ affair was exposed, Rachel “Raquel” Leviss says she and Tom Sandoval would FaceTime “all hours of the day … he was always ready to drop anything to come see me”
Rachel “Raquel” Leviss is looking back at the start of her months-long affair with Tom Sandoval.
On the first episode of her her new iHeartRadio podcast Rachel Goes Rogue, the Vanderpump Rules alum, 29, recalled their first night together began with drinks at the SUR before Sandoval, 41, suggested they moved on to The Abbey, a bar nearby in West Hollywood, instead of meeting up with the rest of the group.
“I think then I was starting to feel a certain way and the attention he would give me, and … it just felt good in that moment,” she explained.
Following the night out, Leviss recalled offering to give Sandoval a ride to the house he shares with Ariana Madix, his then-girlfriend of nine years.
“So we get to his house and we’re like sitting in my car just chatting for 20 minutes, and then he’s like, ‘Do you want to come in for a nightcap?’” she shared. “And I was like, ‘Oh, twist my arm why don’t you? Yeah, of course I do.’”
Leviss then confirmed that Sandoval locked himself out of the house, which Madix also mentioned on season 10, following their night out.
“She’s sleeping upstairs,” she said of Madix. “So he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m locked out. Let me try the back door, come with me around back, and I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ So we go in the back and the sliding door isn’t unlocked. So he’s like, well, we’ve got the firepit here. I was like, ‘Yeah, firepit’s cool, like we could just keep talking.’ So we’ve got the firepit going and we’re chatting and then he goes, he says, ‘Do you know what the best thing about this pool is? And I was like what?’ And he’s like, ‘That is heated.’”
She then suggested they take a swim, sharing, “I took my jeans off, and I had this corset top on, so I left that on, and I was in my underwear, and I went in his pool and it was heated.”
Leviss then began playing music on her phone and Sandoval — who was in his boxers — instructed her to turn down before they got physical.
“He looked at me a certain way, and then he like, grabbed me, spun me and kissed me,” she shared. “I was surprised, but like, happy. Ugh, god. So bad, so embarrassing.”
“I knew it was wrong; Tom knew it was wrong,” she continued. “Because right after Tom kissed me, he sat on the stair of the pool and he was like, hands on his face. His mind must have been running a million miles a minute contemplating what to do.”
“I was like, ‘I should go.’ So I got my towel, dried off, I got my pants on. And he was like, ‘No no no, don’t go, just sit down.’ So we moved to the couch by the firepit and he was like, ‘Hang on, I just need to think for a second. I just don’t know what to do right now, because I really like you, but, you know.’ I was like, ‘OK, well, I feel weird sitting here. Would you rather go talk about this in my car?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ So, we go to my car.”
When asked by the show’s producer if they hooked Leviss, responded, “Yeah, we did.”
“Everything?” the producer questioned.
“It was very bad,” she replied.
As for who initiated the hookup, Leviss said, “Does it even matter who made the first move?” Because it was like, I feel like I’m in this, like, romantic… I feel swept off my feet, I feel so infatuated and, like, loved.”
Before their first kiss, Leviss admitted that Sandoval was “always there for me.”
“It felt like he was always there for me because we would FaceTime literally all hours of the day, every single day, and he would come over to my apartment and we would just, like, kick it on my balcony and vent about our filming experience, and we bonded over that unique situation of being on a reality TV show and the things that happened behind the scenes that aren’t talked about, and you know, viewers don’t really know about that,” she said. “He understood, and so I felt seen and I felt heard by him. I felt validated, and it just seemed like he was always ready to drop anything to come see me.”
However, Leviss had a change of heart since the Scandoval. When asked about Sandoval’s recent appearance on the Two Ts in a Pod, she shared that she felt “sick” while listening.
“I’ve never had this physical reaction before, but I felt like I was going to throw up, like because his voice repulsed me,” she said. “And I’m like, ‘OK, this is a good sign.’”
