With Season 12 of Vanderpump Rules currently on pause, cast members– notably Lala Kent and Scheana Shay– have plenty of time to continue trying to set the record straight on the motives behind their Season 11 actions.
As those who tuned in to watch the first full post-Scandoval season know, Season 11 concluded with Ariana Madix’s friendships with Lala and Scheana on the fray after the Season 11 finale saw the latter two voicing their frustration over Ariana allegedly not carrying her weight on the Bravo series by refusing to have an on-air conversation with her ex-boyfriend, Tom Sandoval.
As The Ashley told you earlier this month, Scheana has since attempted to justify the behavior she exhibited towards her so-called “best friend” Ariana throughout Season 11, claiming her actions were motivated by production.
“[‘Vanderpump Rules’ Executive Producer] Alex Baskin had said that midseason, like, the show was not in a good place, it was, you know, ‘X, Y and Z needs to happen or we’re going to have a short season and the show’s going to be canceled, and that’s it, you know, go live your lives,” she said on the May 31 episode of her Scheananigans podcast.
Scheana went on to claim that, following the conversation, both she and Lala “felt a lot of pressure” to keep the show going and that other members of the cast began to grow more frustrated with Ariana for refusing to have meaningful interactions with Sandoval.
Lala was asked to comment on Scheana’s remarks during this week’s episode of Two Ts in a Pod with Teddi Mellencamp and Tamra Judge. During the podcast episode, Lala noted that, while Scheana is “a dear friend” of hers, she considers herself to be “a lone wolf” and claims she acted on her own accord throughout Season 11.
“I have never been a puppet to production,” Lala insisted. “I, in no way, shape or form felt that production was trying to get me to lean one way or the other.
“ … There was a meeting midseason,” she noted. “What I gathered from that meeting was not what Scheana gathered.”
During a “Reality Producers Tell All” panel at Variety’s TV FYC Fest, Alex refuted Scheana’s claims as well, calling the comments Scheana made on her podcast “a pretty dramatic, heightened account of what happened.”
“We did get the entire cast together and we thought we had hit a point in the season where I actually think that they were impacted by what was happening on social media,” the show’s executive producer said. “We basically were telling them to drown out the noise and to make the show that they had made over the previous 10 seasons–and that didn’t mean we asked them to manufacture anything.”
Alex also claimed that the cast was not given “any specific talking points” to address on-camera during the midseason meeting.
“It just meant that we had made a show that worked because it was everybody rowing in the same direction and reacting to each other,” he continued. “And we’ve gotten away from that. So we thought that we had to intervene in that sense.”
As for Season 12 being on pause, Alex said the break will allow producers to “have a clearer picture” than they did going into Season 11, as cameras had picked up just months after the news broke about Scandoval.
“I think we will do an analysis of what else we need to consider for the show– and that’s who returns, and what the complexion of the cast looks like,” he said of Season 12. “I think everybody needs a little bit of time to live their lives, and then we can pick back up on them in a different spot.”
While there have been rumors that Lala and Scheana may jump ship and join ‘Vanderpump Rules’ spin-off The Valley, Alex told The Hollywood Reporter in May that the cast of ‘The Valley’ is “pretty full right now” and not in need of any added cast members– or drama– at the moment.
“I would imagine you’ll continue to see crossovers [between ‘The Valley’ and ‘Vanderpump Rules’] like you have, but that cast is bursting at the seams,” he said. “It’s not like we’re in need of additional cast members.”
Alex confirmed recently that the entire Season 1 cast of ‘The Valley’ is set to return for Season 2 and that production will begin “very shortly.”
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(Photos: Bravo)
