There was one bittersweet scene during last night’s Season 11 Vanderpump Rules premiere. We saw Ariana Madix returning to the scene of the crime: TomTom. It was there that on March 1, 2023, Ariana picked up her longtime boyfriend Tom Sandoval’s phone after it fell while he was playing pathetic sequined mid-life crisis rockstar.
Ariana caught an unwelcome eyeful when an intimate video of Rachel Leviss that Tom had saved somehow popped up. This confirmed their months-long affair, which would come to be known as Scandoval.
Understandably, Ariana says she had pause about heading back to the place that served as the backdrop of one of her life’s toughest moments.
Ariana Madix “definitely had some anxiety”
At a Season 11 premiere event, Ariana told PEOPLE that she harbored some hesitation ahead of her return to TomTom. It’s the West Hollywood bar where the exposure of one of its namesakes’ despicability went down.
Ariana went to support her co-star James Kennedy’s DJ set. She shared that she “definitely had some anxiety” about visiting that cursed place.
“Since March 1, I hadn’t stepped foot in there, and then I found myself sitting in the same spot,” she recounted. “It felt odd for a moment, like, really weird,” said Ariana.
Ariana confessed her “nervousness” to her new boyfriend, Daniel Wai during the premiere. She explained to him that she hadn’t “been there since that night everything went down.”
She asserted in a confessional that, “I shouldn’t have to make my life smaller because Tom messed everything up. And if I can go there and make new memories maybe it won’t have power over me anymore and I’ll be able to look at it as just some bar,”
Although greeted by her friends upon her arrival at the bar, she acknowledged feeling “a little shaky” about being in the very same spot as before. At one point, Ariana was visibly emotional about being there. She even made Lisa Vanderpump’s chin wobble.
“All of these feelings surfacing right now were unexpected,” she said. “You think it’s just a place, or just a chair, or just a table, but I’ve sat at this table so many times, and now those memories are overshadowed by that incident,” she added in another confessional.
Another place that obviously kicks up some Tom barf for her is the house they bought and continue cohabitating in. They’re still working out the details of how to offload it. It’s unclear who will ultimately get the wooden penis flute.
Vanderpump Rules continues Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
TELL US – WAS ARIANA’S ANXIETY ABOUT RETURNING TO TOMTOM UNDERSTANDABLE? WILL WE SEE HER THERE AGAIN AS SEASON 11 CONTINUES?
