The Vanderpump Rules Season 11 red carpet event signals the premiere of the new season on January 30. All the stars were out in full force, ready for the next round of reality TV.
Naturally, Rachel Leviss wasn’t expected to be there. But her absence was very much noticed and commented upon. The cast members that were most vocal towards her after her affair with Tom Sandoval was discovered are now, ironically, claiming that they would have welcomed the former beauty pageant contestant had she chosen to return.
It seems reporters knew better than to ask Ariana Madix about the matter. But Katie Maloney and Lala Kent were asked to comment about Rachel. And their answers were surprising.
Katie and Lala think Rachel “had a place to come back”
“I thought that she needed to come back to the group after dust had settled and people were willing to hear her out, make her amends in a calmer setting and then ride off into the distance,” Lala told Page Six.
The podcast host suggested the group needed “an element of some sort of closure,” and had Rachel returned, “it would’ve added” that.
“I wish that she would’ve come back,” she pined. “No one’s gonna care about Scandoval forever. This is gonna like at some point fizzle out, and then what do you go and do?”
Finally, Lala suggested that she and the rest of the cast have calmed down from the level “100” they were on when filming the Season 10 reunion. And that the atmosphere would have been “different than she [Leviss] thought it would be.”
For her part, Katie claimed to be open to filming with Rachel again. More so “than someone else.”
“I don’t think anyone was like, ‘Dang I wish Rachel was here,’ but I think given everything that had went down, I think now that she’s got a podcast I think it would’ve been good,” Katie explained.
Rather than using her podcast, Rachel Goes Rogue, as a platform, Katie thinks she “should’ve just come back.” Had she apologized, “no one would’ve been upset if she came back.”
“She had just as much as a place to come back as anyone else did,” Katie concluded. “As much as Sandoval had a place to come back, as much as anyone did I think if she was gonna eventually wanna tell her side or speak her peace, she should’ve just come and done that on the show.”
Is that in consensus with Ariana’s feelings?
Vanderpump Rules Season 11 premieres Tuesday, January 30, at 8/7c on Bravo.
TELL US – WHAT IS YOUR REACTION TO KATIE AND LALA’S COMMENTS? DO YOU THINK RACHEL HAD A SAFE SPACE TO RETURN TO? WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF RACHEL HAD RETURNED FOR SEASON 11?
