Tom Schwartz is ready for Vanderpump Rules fans to watch what happens in his latest visit to the Bravo clubhouse — he’s just hoping it’s a little less of a free-wheeling, tea-spilling confesh sesh than his last appearance.
The reality star returns to Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen after Tuesday night’s episode of Winter House, and he plans to be a little more restrained than when he visited Andy Cohen’s late-night show on April 6 in the throes of the Scandoval.
During that appearance, he delved into the dirty details about his friend and costar Tom Sandoval’s months-long affair with castmate Rachel “Raquel” Leviss.
“It was a bit of a debacle last time,” he tells, adding, “although I don’t think it was as bad as I remember it. There were some funny moments, I think?”
Just to name a few of those moments…
He called Leviss Sandoval’s “heroin” while dropping a bombshell about when Sandoval, 41, first disclosed he’d cheated on then-girlfriend of nine years Ariana Madix, 38, with the 29-year-old SUR waitress.
He denounced vandalism at his and Sandoval’s Los Angeles restaurant Schwartz & Sandy’s — but said the gossip sensation had, in some ways, been good for business.
He admitted he thought it “would be a miracle” if Sandoval and Leviss’s relationship lasted, noting that it had become “toxic” and not “sustainable.” (Though the pair never really defined their relationship or officially ended things, Leviss gave herself the birthday gift of blocking Sandoval on Instagram in September — a move the Most Extras singer deemed “petty.”)
And looking back on his own fleeting, mid-divorce flirtation with Leviss, including a brief makeout session at costar Scheana Shay’s August 2022 wedding (a time, viewers now know, that Sandoval and Leviss were actively engaged in their affair), Schwartz admitted he didn’t think his dalliance with the former pageant queen had been “worth it.”
Seven months after his last time on WWHL, Schwartz tells he wasn’t ready for the fallout of his candor. “Oh my God, it was not good for my personal life. I got roasted on the internet and off the internet, face to face, in the DMs,” he says.
“I was a rambling fool,” he continues, “and I have vowed to be more composed this time — but not boring, not boring. Just more thoughtful and maybe considerate.”
And Schwartz isn’t just planning to step up his game through words — he’s leveling up his look too.
After his ex-wife Katie Maloney compared his jacket during the Vanderpump Rules panel at BravoCon 2023 to “a couch,” the TomTom bar co-owner calls the dig “a turning point” for him aesthetically.
“Although I stand by the couch jacket. I’m going to go on the record,” he insists. “I stand by it. It was a great jacket.”
He admits, “I’m not known for my style, but I’ve been extra schleppy lately. And I was thinking I could also use a little bit of a symbolic reset. So my friends hooked me up with a stylist and … I kind of feel like I’m getting my groove back a little bit. I’ve kind of been a sad sack, a bit of a basket case for a couple of years.”
After coming out the other side of a divorce, family health crises and a scandal that shook up his entire friendship circle, Schwartz tells: “I felt like I was kind of falling apart, and now I’m kind of feeling like I’m getting it together again.”
Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen airs weeknights after Bravo’s primetime shows (check listings), Winter House airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET and Vanderpump Rules can be streamed in full on Peacock.