Mention It All - Emergency Report: Bethenny Is Team Rachel

Episode Date: August 16, 2023

It’s a breaking news kind of day, as Rachel Leviss finally resurfaced on… Bethenny Frankel’s podcast? Dylan is here with a full recap of their conversation, and an analysis of how far (or not) Rachel has come in the months since Scandoval. He also breaks down Spencer and Heidi’s response to being included in Bethenny’s strike talk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Betches Media presents. Ha ha, laugh, funny. Mention It All. A Bravo by Betches podcast. We don't say that, but now we said it. With me, Dylan Hafer. We're going to check me, though. Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to the Mention at All podcast. I'm Dylan Hafer, and oh boy, today we have something fresh and hot on the docket because look who went on Ms. Bethany Frankel's podcast. It is Rachel, aka Raquel, formerly known as the artist. known as a Bambi-eyed bitch is on Bethany's podcast and they're they're chit-chatting and oh boy I listen to the whole thing so you don't have to and I'm going to get into it in just a minute I to be honest I don't even know what I was planning for the show today because the second I woke up at the the ass crack of 715 I pull up my phone I go to Instagram and the

first the absolute first thing I am confronted by is this photo of Bethany and Rachel sitting together. And the way my eyes flew open, you know, when you wake up and you have the kind of like half open, like crusty eyes and for the first five minutes, you're like, I'm trying to read these tweets or these like ex posts, whatever we're calling tweets now. And you're like, okay, like yeah, got to get into it. Like, okay, figure out what's going on for the day. I saw that photo of Bethany and Rachel. and I have never felt more awake. I lunged,

lunged out of bed for my AirPods. I was like, I will be listening. I put this recording on the calendar, and I was like, let's fucking go. Because as much as I claim to not like talking about Bethany, clearly I am not putting my money where my mouth is because the second I saw this had happened and that Rachel was sharing her truth,

it's like, yes, and I will be sharing my my truth about the truth because I just knew. I knew there was going to be lots to get into. And oh, oh, there is. But first of all, before I sat down to record, there was another interesting little tidbit that is related to Bethany and her quote unquote reality reckoning that she has also, you know, she's tying the whole Rachel thing into this also.

But there was a TikTok posted by one Spencer Pratt of him and his lovely wife Heidi. So Spencer and Heidi are two of the people who Bethany has been sort of including in her reality reckoning unionization, strike, whatever, however we're framing it narrative. She's tagged them in some posts. I think, you know, she sent that legal letter and there were all these people that were, you know, allegedly on board with this idea. And definitely Spencer and Heidi were being bandied about in that conversation. Well, Spencer and Heidi are on TikTok now, claiming that they are not involved with any, quote, reality television striking characters and that they are available to be hired and happy to work for any network, for any show that's going to treat them as however they want and pay them whatever they want. Heidi says she'll work for champagne. This was really surprising to me, not because I think that.

you know, Spencer and Bethany are totally on the same wavelength because I don't know what all is going on there. But this is, at least from what I've seen, one of the first or the biggest example of somebody who Bethany has kind of, at least implied is on board with her cause, really distancing themselves from what's going on. And yeah, they're doing it in a tongue-in-cheek way on TikTok and, you know, talking about how they're happy to be exploited by whatever reality network. I think they're maybe being a little bit dismissive of the actual concerns at hand here. But there are cracks in the foundation of Bethany's reality reckoning. And I think that's worth paying attention to.

As we get further into whatever she's actually trying to accomplish versus just, you know, posting some initial TikToks, if she wants to get people on board, people have to be on board. For a union to exist, people have to vote and, you know, choose that. It's not just going to be Bethany saying, like, I now declare, I declare union. But anyway, let's talk Rachel and Bethany. So this podcast episode, first of all, it is part one of their conversation. It's around 49 minutes long, I want to say, part one. So I guess next week there's another part.

TBD on whether I'll talk about that. I guess it will depend on the content because I do feel like, I do feel like we got a lot. out of this one, but I don't know how much more real ground there is to cover there. But I made a lot of notes and then I tried to distill some key takeaways because I don't want to be here for, you know, three hours or even really 49 minutes. But basically, so this interview is one of the first times, definitely the biggest time that Rachel, I'm going to call her Rachel because she wants to be called Rachel, has spoken out, has done an interview, has sat down and really talked through this whole Scandival situation. So she kind of lays out the timeline a little bit

of what happened. And I don't mean what happened with the affair, but what happened kind of post Scandival. So she says that after the reunion taping, a few days later, she had her final interview for the show, which of course we saw on part three of the reunion. And this was when she kind of confirmed some of the things that we had suspected about her and Tom and going to St. Louis. and this stuff that she had agreed with Tom that she wasn't going to divulge. So after this, this was really hard for her because she already felt like she had hurt everyone else in her life. In this moment, she decided to also betray Tom Sandoval's trust.

And she says, this was hard for her because, quote, honesty is one of my core values. I guess that is starting now. I don't, you know, there's a lot of the, she's, there's a lot of absolutes being spoken in here. feel like some of those feel a little bit wishy-washy. But honesty is one of her core values. So after that, she flew back to Arizona. She had a one-way ticket to Phoenix. And she went to this treatment center for 90 days.

She says she was there. And while she was there, she was really getting to the bottom of her behavior and understanding her actions and also just taking time away because it was loud and chaotic. And there was a lot of vitriol online. She wanted to examine why she was choosing unavailable man and choosing unhealthy relationships. Bethany refers to this as her core reason being the place of wounding, which is nice. But so she feels like she got to the bottom that she had a love addiction. So she says that she was not able to discern between intensity and intimacy.

And that, you know, when somebody was giving her a lot of attention, she felt like it was real. So she felt like she was in love with Tom Sandoval. But now she doesn't think she actually was. And she also doesn't think that Tom was in love with her. But that it was this kind of like, you know, intense situation that felt a lot like love. So good. So good. Everything you want for summer is at Nordstrom rack stores now. And up to 60% off.

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It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. The thing with Rachel at this point is that I've seen a little bit more of the sentiment bubbling up online that it's like, oh, like, Rachel deserves peace. She deserves whatever. her, like, let her live, you know, she, you know, do the crime, do the time, then, like, move on. And I don't disagree with that. I don't think that we should be, you know, harassing and dragging and hounding her for the rest of her life for this seven-month affair that happened in this friend

group. Like, I am not somebody who feels like she needs to be, you know, trotted out in the town square every 10 minutes so we can call her names. But I think that there's a difference between that basic understanding and saying, like, what she did wasn't that wrong or everybody was overreacting. And this is where Bethany comes into the picture because Bethany really seems to feel like this whole situation was blown out of proportion. And like the negativity that Rachel has faced is not appropriate for this. for the crime. So Bethany is open about the fact that she never paid attention to Vanderpump Rules until essentially this season's reunion. She was seeing clips and stuff and was appalled and, you know, thought that it was horrible. But she didn't even watch the reunion until after it aired.

But then she thought the whole thing was being blown out of proportion because in her mind it's this show about this bar and there's all this drinking and it's all these affairs and isn't that. you know, art affairs just normalized in this group and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I feel like Bethany is a little bit in Howie Mandel territory here, where it's like, first of all, all of this stuff is fine to be open to debate. But if you're coming into the conversation and the first thing you're saying is, well, I never watched this show and I don't know who all these people are to each other, but don't you think that this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

it's like, why are you the voice that needs to add to this conversation then? There are thousands, millions, literally of people who watch Vanderpump rules, who can actually speak to all of the dynamics in this group and all of the things that we've watched over the years. And so for Bethany to kind of take up this role of like, no, no, no, no, no, I know how reality TV works. I know that you're in these situations where, you know, they're going to the producer and they're saying, oh, you're doing such a good job. And they're saying, you know, go back for more and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're drinking. And, you know, it always seems like a good idea when you're in the situation. But then you, you know, blah, blah. And it's like, right, nobody in this scenario is denying that Bethany has the relevant reality TV experience to have some of these conversations.

but when it comes to the actual specifics of the friend group, it's like, you haven't even watched the show, let alone know these people in any way. But anyway, so she mentioned Raquel in some of her reality reckoning posts, basically using her as an example of how people are being exploited by the reality TV industry. And after that, Rachel's team reached out to Bethany and essentially coordinated getting her on this podcast. So, in terms of the exploitation piece, because this is theoretically what Bethany cares about. So Rachel says that, you know, obviously the show was super successful this season because of all this drama that was happening and that she has not seen a penny from this. You know, her parents had to pay for her 90 days of treatment, which 90 days of inpatient treatment is going to be very expensive.

Our insurance, our health care systems suck in this country. So, like, you know, that would be a lot of money for anyone. But the thing for this is that I, while I have said that I feel like reality stars need more protections and, you know, fair compensation and all of this, the idea that Raquel says she hasn't seen a single penny from the Scand of all stuff. But in reality, if she's talking about, like, residuals from the show or, like, bonuses from Bravo, none of them have seen a penny from the Scandival stuff as far as we know. I mean, Ariana has made,

I'm sure, great money in the last six months doing brand deals and appearances and, you know, all of this extra stuff. But she's not getting like a Vanderpump Rules extra check. She's making more on Van der Pumpt Rules because she's been on it for eight or nine seasons, but not because Scandercule. of all like boosted the ratings and so i think that's bethany is trying to frame this you know exploitation

question as like a specific thing for rachel that it's like she's being painted as the biggest reality tv villain of all time and isn't this so wild that all of you know it takes three to tango and scandivall as bethany says but but she's not getting uh one red cent and it's like right because the contracts are messed up, not because Raquel is being demonized and therefore they don't want to pay her. They don't want to pay anybody. Nobody wants to pay anybody. That's the problem. Like, when we're talking about like the writer's strike, it's not like, oh, they want to pay this one writer and they don't want to pay this other one because they don't like him.

It's like, no, they don't want to pay any of them. That's the problem. That's why you have a union. So, I mean, the union question, honestly to me, seems kind of unrelated to the idea of Raquel being in this fragile space and being treated poorly by whether it's production or whether it's people on social media or her castmates. I think these are sort of two separate conversations. And I think that Bethany kind of weakens her unionization side of the argument by holding up Rachel as this like, you know,

damsel done wrong by the system because it just feels like she wants the attention, the clickbait, the downloads. I mean, the two times in my life that I have ever listened to Bethany Frankl's podcast are this morning and when she had Jill on. Like, it's not a coincidence that she, she has a strategy going on here. And it's working. It's working for her. But like this interview isn't doing anything for Rachel. Unless Bethany has a radical sort of podcast, you know, revenue system where she's, you know, giving money to her guests when their episodes get a lot of downloads. It's like, I don't think recalcine assent from this either. You're letting her speak her truth and she says that she's, you know, excited to speak her truth and that, you know,

she's happy to share kind of her side of things. But I don't think that this is really doing anything. Because Raquel, so we know that she's not filming for season 11 of Vanderpump Rules. This is her first real appearance into the world for a while. So it's like, I don't know. I don't quite know what she wants. I know what Bethany wants, and I think Bethany's doing a good job for herself of procuring it. But with Rachel, it's like, okay, so she's going to do these two parts of the podcast. And then what?

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Speaking of the podcast guest thing, so we come back later to this idea of whether or not these women in the Vanderpump Rules cast were actually Rachel's friends. And because there's this idea that Ariana and Rachel were best friends and she betrayed her in XYZ. And this is where I think maybe some liberties are being taken with fact and reality. because Rachel says that she and Ariana were not only were they never best friends, but they were acquaintances who became friends on the show, but that they, and that Ariana was always super sweet and, you know, friend nice to her, but that they were not that close and that they never hung out one-on-one when they weren't filming.

And that she only started hanging out with Ariana socially outside of filming because Sandoval was inviting her to come out with them and like a group of people. And so then when she was there, she was really more hanging out with Sandoval than Ariana. And it's like, okay, whatever. Your level of friendship with Ariana is sort of neither here nor there. But it says a lot more about you that you were invited by this man who is in a relationship to come hang out with him and his girlfriend. And you saw that as like the prime opportunity to spend more time.

with this man who's not single. Like, okay, so you weren't that close with Ariana, but you were still fucking her man. Like, it, I think the, the idea of like, well, we weren't best friends. It's like, right. So I guess it's like slightly less bad to hook up with your good acquaintances, boyfriend of nine years. Like, go off, sis. Yeah, like moral high road, I guess.

All of a sudden. But she also says that she wouldn't have. engaged in this affair if she thought that Tom and Ariana had longevity in their relationship. So she still is on this, she still is on this message of, well, I knew that their relationship was shitty because Tom told me it was. And they were just staying together for this, you know, the brand and whatever. So like, basically, you know, it was barely like they were even together. So then when I came in, it wasn't that big of a deal. And it's like, Okay, you need to either decide whether you are extremely sorry for the pain that you have caused in this group or whether there wasn't that much pain because they weren't really together.

Like, she can't come to the understanding that saying both of those things one after the other kind of negates both of them. That she's saying she stands by her apology that she made on Instagram, but that, you know, now she has all this more understanding. And it's like, but you still are, you still are making this excuse that like, well, they weren't even sleeping in the same bed. Like, okay. So you clearly don't feel like this was a good situation for you in any way. So why are you still making excuses? She clearly, she says basically that Tom recorded this, the face time that, you know, initially Ariana saw and then it was, you know, this, how this. information got out. She says that Tom recorded that without her consent and then Ariana saw it and then

it was sent to other people and she sent a seize and desist as she says. God, people on Bravo have the most trouble with cease and desist. We've gotten cyst and decease. We've gotten seize and desist. It is cease and desist. So like if you're saying that Tom basically filmed this, you know, inappropriate video of you without your consent and then that's how other people ended up seeing it. Like, get mad at him. Why are you not more mad at him? If you're not still together and you feel like he was forcing you to say all these lies and he, you know, get mad at him. I just think that the line of, oh, well, Ariana wasn't really, didn't even like Tom that much.

so it wasn't that big of a deal. It's like, that is never going to be a winning argument for you. Because people are always going to feel like even if that was the case, you still did a really shitty thing by going behind her back for months. Let's not forget it was four months. But the podcasting that I was mentioning earlier, she feels like Sheena, you know, also was telling lies and blowing their relationship out of proportion. And, you know, when Rachel was staying at her apartment. she says she was paying rent and then she was also she was like I was taking care of her cat that was being pumped full of mercury because sheena couldn't be around the cat when she was breastfeeding okay and then sheena told she told rachel that the podcast episode that she went on after she broke up with james was like her biggest episode ever and she's like i didn't see a scent of that and it's like right because that's not how being a guest on your friend's podcast works so like again if bethany has If Bethany has a different revenue sharing strategy, let me know. And I'll go on, I'll go on rewives next week. But I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's just, it's tough. It's tough because I think, I think Rachel deserves peace, like I said before. And I think that honestly, most of us have sort of kind of moved on. I don't, you know, I'm not talking about Scandival every day. I don't think most of us. are, I think people are really curious to see kind of what next season of Vanderpump Rules is going to feel like naturally because they're filming it. But I mean, I'm not sifting through Rachel's Instagram comments, but I don't think, you know, she hasn't been posting anything.

So it's like, I don't really know what the goal of this is other than for Bethany to get attention and for Rachel to feel like I. I don't know, she's, like, pressing the reset button, but, like, resetting to what? If she wants to be just, like, a fun girlie in Arizona, just like, go be a fun girlie in Arizona. Doing a two-part interview on Bethany's podcast is only going to stir up people's strong feelings that they had sort of forgotten about. Whereas if you just went and lived your life in Arizona and, you know, I don't. know, be a nail tech or something. Figure out how to do eyebrows. Do you still want to do like occupational therapy? Go go to school. Learn a trade. Just like get off of, get off of this platform.

Like she should do whatever she wants, but if she's saying that she doesn't want this, then then don't, don't grasp for it. So I really, I mean, that is my biggest question coming out of this. And maybe there will be some address of this in part two of the interview, but it's like, what does Rachel want? Because if it's a residual check from Bravo, that's not going to happen because that's not happening for anybody. It's not about her. If she wants, I don't know, an apology from whoever, from the production company, that's not going to happen.

Does she want to get on another TV show? Because, like, I mean, they're casting these, you know, mash-up reality shows left and right. I mean, we just got like some villains show that I'll talk about tomorrow that Jacks is going to be on, you know, Schwartz, Sandoval. They've all done these other shows. Does she want that? Because that, I think, is like a realistic path for her. But if she's on a podcast talking about how reality TV is exploitative, it doesn't seem like that's what she wants. So it's like, I...

It gets to a point where it's like, I want you to be happy and fulfilled and whatever, but it's like, I need you to, I need you to figure out what that looks like for you. Because I don't think Bethany's podcast, I mean, nothing good comes from Bethany's podcast. Let's be real. One thing that really tickled me was that Bethany still finds a way to get in some strays at some of her former Roney castmates. She's talking about how reality TV kind of pushes you into these alliance friendships that you wouldn't have in real life. Because she's talking about Rachel and Ariana. And she says, I mean, in real life people, Carol Radzbo would be friends with Tinsley.

Jill Zarin would be friends with Kelly Benson. I don't think so. It's like, Bethany. This isn't about you. Also, it's not as much of a flex as you think it is to be like, completely. complaining about your former best friends new friendships after you left the picture. Like, yeah. Life goes on.

People make friendships that you're not involved with because you sort of ruin everything. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She also made... One of the comments that Rachel makes about, like, money, basically, I don't know. We don't know how much Rachel made. She said, Bethany goes... It's my understanding that you get paid less in a year than my interns make.

And it's so, that is so out of pocket because nobody's saying numbers. I don't know how much the interns make. Good for them if, you know, I don't know how much Rachel's making. But her response to that is just kind of like, oh, oh, oh, wow. Like, is that true? Rachel's been on, she's been vinterpump rules for like multiple years. I mean, it's not like she's getting paid like $10 an hour. I don't know.

I mean, again, I don't need to speak in defense of like people's compensation structures because I think probably they're not super adequate in a lot of cases. But like, Bethany, leave the interns out of it. They're just trying to make enough to go to happy hour and pay their rent and whatever. And Rachel has a whole difference out of problems. Well, I don't know. I mean, let me know. Sound off in DMs or in a five-star Apple review,

what you think about Rachel's appearance on Bethany's podcast. And if you're interested in hearing about part two next week, because, you know, if nobody cares, then I don't need to. But if you want to know, I'm more than happy to take the hit for all of us. But in the meantime, thank you so much everyone for listening. Don't forget to rate review and follow the show so you never miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram app, out Bravo by Betts. You can follow me at Dylan Hafer.

And until next time, be cool. Don't be all like Uncool. Mention It All is produced by Dylan Hafer, Sean Kilby, Jorge Morales Pico, and Rebecca Sousmakat. Editing by Horacee by Jolla, social media by Dylan Hafer, guest booking by Dylan Hafer and Alley. Be sure to follow at Bravo by Betches on Instagram and Twitter. All pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat

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