Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Reality stars secure spot in ‘middle-class show business’
When “Vanderpump Rules” made its debut on Bravo in 2013, promising a mix of messy drama and mindless fun as it followed the good-looking staff of West Hollywood’s SUR (Sexy Unique Restaurant, in case you were wondering) in California, most of the cast had dreams of breaking out beyond the restaurant’s eclectically decorated walls.
“I do want to be famous,” Tom Sandoval, then a bartender at SUR, says in the show’s first episode. “I don’t know if I want Michael Jackson-type of fame, but I definitely would love to be famous.”
As “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” spinoff is now in its milestone 10th season, there’s no question that Sandoval’s lofty ambitions have come to fruition for much of the cast. Their friendship woes, bad relationship behavior and drunken antics made them reality TV stars we couldn’t stop watching and — in the show’s heyday, especially — tried to witness firsthand, booking reservations in the hopes of seeing it all in action.
They’re not exactly pop culture icons, to be sure. As fellow cast member Tom Schwartz admits sheepishly on a recent afternoon, “Vanderpump Rules” has secured them status in a comfortable Hollywood tier: “Middle-class show business is a good place to be.”
All that is top of mind strolling into Schwartz & Sandy’s, the newish bar and restaurant in Los Angeles’ Franklin Village co-owned by Sandoval and Schwartz. The cocktail lounge, which opened last fall, is a full-circle evolution for the longtime friends, who spun their reality TV fame and years hustling in the service industry into careers as budding restaurateurs — before Schwartz & Sandy’s, they started as junior partners in TomTom, alongside Lisa Vanderpump and her husband, Ken Todd.
Schwartz & Sandy’s was still a construction zone and a source of tension when the show recently returned. Still, executive producer Alex Baskin describes the new episodes as a “real renaissance” for the show, which has struggled to find its footing again after unsuccessful cast additions and major departures. (In 2020,
Bravo fired original castmates Stassi Schroeder, Kristen Doute and Jax Taylor because of their past racist actions against Faith Stowers, a Black former “Vanderpump Rules” cast member.)
“You really fully see this group moving on in their lives,” Baskin says. “I think the challenge of the previous season (season nine) was coming out of the pandemic, and with some of the turmoil in the show, we had a hard time. It felt like we were catching the group when they were more in the state of stasis. This season is like shot out of a cannon.”
The new season, now airing Wednesdays on Bravo, follows along as some cast members navigate new business ventures and others attempt to rebuild their lives after big breakups — most notably the end of Schwartz’s marriage to Katie Maloney and Lala Kent’s split from ex-fiancé Randall Emmett; the disgraced producer faces civil fraud claims and allegations of abuse toward women, as detailed in a recent Los Angeles Times investigation.
Saying she was “very disappointed” with the revelations and allegations against Emmett, Vanderpump noted that Kent’s experience this season is the nature of the business. “That’s what they’ve signed up for. If they’re not willing to share their life, they shouldn’t be on reality television.”