When Scheana Marie and Mike Shay’s separation was announced right before the last Vanderpump Rules premiere, I couldn’t help watching every episode with a bit of analysis. Whether Shay was in a scene or not, I couldn’t help reading into every single thing with the current knowledge that they were going through a divorce.
Weirdly enough, Jax Taylor was right when he said that he had “milk with a longer shelf life than that marriage.” Most viewers felt bad for Scheana after learning that Shay just left and drained all of their money, but there’s also a good amount of fans that felt like Scheana was putting up a front about how good the marriage actually was. Scheana explained why she lied about her relationship and Shay’s philandering and how she even planned out their “story line” before the show actually started.
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I really want to like Scheana. I mean how could I not feel sad for someone who (allegedly) got her checking account drained and was cheated on, but it’s just so hard when it seems like she was lying through her teeth for the past couple seasons. I don’t blame her for wanting to put up a good front and deal with her relationship in private, but she definitely has a lot to explain. Scheana shared a lot in a recent interview with Heather McDonald for her Juicy Scoop podcast.
Right off the bat, Heather asked what we were all thinking: “If you were just living your lives as Shay and Scheana [without the show] would you have gotten married at that time?” Scheana admitted, “I’ve thought about that so much and I want to say yes, but I feel like we did maybe rush it a little. I was twenty nine and I felt like that was a time when I was ready. We’d known each other for a long time, we’d been together for three years at that point. In hindsight, there a lot of red flags that I just kind of swept under the rug. It built up to be quite a large pile and I just kept walking over it.” A majority of the fandom would definitely agree with that last part.
A majority of the fandom would also agree that Shay’s appearance during the reunion was beyond awkward. Heather asked, “Why do you think he did agree to come?” And Scheana told her, “Contractually, he didn’t have a choice.” Then where was Shay all season? He skipped out on most group events for “late night nights in the studio,” so I had no clue that Shay was contractually obligated to do anything for this show.
It comes off to a lot of people like Shay was reluctant to be a part of the show, but Scheana insists, “We signed up to do this show together so I’m so sick of people being like ‘You dragged him into this. You can tell he never wanted it.’ We were together for a whole year before there was Vanderpump Rules. He knew I wanted to be in the entertainment industry and when the idea of this show got brought up, we had a really long talk about it. What should we do? And we both agreed that we wanted to do it.”
That’s not super surprising, but it got weird when Scheana said, “Jokingly, we were like we are going to get engaged Season 2 and get engaged Season 3, have a kid Season 4 or 5. We were joking about it.” That probably wasn’t the best thing to reveal when so many people have accused her of being fake.
Scheana continued to explain their “joke”: “It was all like hypotheticals and we had no idea if the show was going to be a hit or get picked up. It did get picked up and it was Season 2 and I was like ‘I don’t want to know when you’re going to propose, but do we still like stick with our plan?'”
She also shaded Tom Schwartz and Katie Maloney when she said, “We were in this together. It wasn’t like I was like forcing him the way a lot of people felt with Katie and Tom because she gave him that ultimatum.”
She even confessed, “Maybe we got caught up in our heads and the show aspect and less with the actual issues we were dealing with. Three months into our marriage is when I found out about the pills. Right before our one year anniversary is when I see the text messages.” Then why wasn’t this on the show?
Scheana finally admitted, “We just started filming Season 4, so I’m not strong enough at this moment to talk about what’s really going on. I just had too much pride to admit that this relationship is messed up and not perfect and now the whole world’s gonna know that he’s not that into me and he’s that into her. All of the Brandi [Glanville] followers are going to be like ‘Haha. Karma’s a bitch. That’s what you get.'” Scheana continued, “I freaked out and went into panic survival mode and was just like ‘I’m going to talk about the other issue we’re having instead of both.’ So I just decided to talk about his addiction because at the time I felt ‘I have to tell the story about something wrong in my life because that’s my job and there’s a lot, but I don’t want to deal with this one yet.’ So I felt like talking about his addiction on the show and how he overcame it was something that would be inspiring to others.” Or it was just a way to deflect from the infidelity. I really don’t buy that she decided to talk about Shay’s pill popping solely to “inspire others.”
Still, no matter what people think about Scheana, it’s hard to deny that Shay had some piece of shit moments. Scheana shared, “I’m literally at my uncle’s funeral and it is now ten days I haven’t seen or heard from him. Finally the day of the funeral I text him.
So he came over the day after the funeral and we talked for like twenty minutes.” She clarified, “We aren’t filming. We are in the beginning of November. The season was just about to air the next day.” So, yes that scene with Lisa Vanderpump and that couch breakup did not happen right after Tom and Katie’s wedding like it appeared in the episode. That was a few months later.
Scheana shared the moment that led to the demise of their relationship: “Literally the next day we have a premiere party at Kristen’s [Doute] house and one of my friends pulls me aside and was like ‘I saw some articles that Shay like disappeared. He was on a bender. He fell off the wagon. This wasn’t about the Adderall, right?’ And I was like’ I’m sorry, what are you talking about: the Adderall?’ And he was like ‘He’s been getting it for like eight months from me.’ And I’m like “Wait. what?’ And he goes ‘I thought it was for you or like your friends. It wasn’t for him.'” Not only should she be offended by Shay buying and using drugs, but she should also be livid that this person thought the pills were for her.
Scheana explained, “All of these things started making sense. It was the biggest wake up call ever. Two days after that was when I sat down with Lisa and I hadn’t really talked to Shay and I was like ‘Hey. Are you still down to film on Wednesday?’ because he thought after our conversation Sunday, we were going to talk on camera about working it out. That was the plan until the next day I found out this.” She added, “Had I not known for a fact that he was buying stuff still, I would have believed him because he was that believable. That was the moment that I just checked the fuck out. There was nothing in that moment that could make me stay. I could never ever for the rest of my life trust him again.” It’s crazy to see how much of this was actually orchestrated for the show, but I guess I’m naive when it comes to the “reality” in my reality television.
Unfortunately for Scheana, she didn’t get a ton of sympathy. Scheana admitted, “Until part three of the reunion aired, it was all support. Part three of the reunion airs and for the last week and a half, I’ve just been getting so much shit.” That’s not at all surprising since she fixed her eyelashes and looked into a compact mirror while her ex husband was on stage crying about the end of their marriage. Not only that but she said some unflattering things. At least Scheana admits, “It came off so wrong. I don’t even know half the things I said that day.”
TELL US- WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT SCHEANA’S DECISION TO TALK ABOUT SHAY’S PILL PROBLEM TO AVOID TALKING ABOUT HIS INFIDELITY? DO YOU THINK THEY PRIORITIZED THE TV SHOW OVER THEIR ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP?
[Photo Credit: Bravo]
