The cast of Vanderpump Rules was still dealing with the fallout of Scandoval when Brock Davies secretly confessed that he had cheated on Scheana Shay two years prior. While fans might think Shay going through her own affair drama would bring her closer to onetime best friend Ariana Madix, it ultimately played a role in the distance between them.
Shay, 40, reveals Davies’ affair in her new book, My Good Side, out Tuesday, July 22. In her Us Weekly cover story about the wide-ranging memoir, Shay says that she almost told Madix, 40, around two months after Davies’ confession in 2023.
“It was on the tip of my tongue,” Shay tells Us. “I didn’t want to trauma dump on her when she had her own trauma.” As VPR fans know, Madix discovered during season 10 that her longtime partner, Tom Sandoval, cheated on her with their costar and friend Rachel “Raquel” Leviss for several months.
“[People like] to say I always make everything about myself,” Shay says. “This is a prime example of how I actually don’t do that, because I cared more about her well-being and her mental health than my own, as much as I wanted her to be able to be there for me.”
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Shay also wasn’t sure what the future held for her and Davies, with whom she shares daughter Summer, now 4.
“I felt like if I told friends or [even] my mom, that they may persuade me to leave because ‘once a cheater, always a cheater.’ I didn’t want to do what others would tell me to do. I wanted to really figure that out for myself and for Summer,” Shay explains.
That’s also why Shay didn’t bring up the affair on season 11 of VPR. “I wasn’t ready to tell that story. I don’t think our marriage would’ve survived if I did,” she tells Us. “I wasn’t even protecting Brock in those moments. I was protecting Summer.”
In the book, however, Shay admits that she was upset Madix didn’t pick up on anything being wrong. “She didn’t ask, ‘Is there something bothering you? Is everything OK?’ … Of course, I wish she would’ve noticed, but I also think I was extremely good at hiding it,” she explains to Us. “And that is not her fault.”
Shay tells Us that while she thinks she did a good job of being there for Madix immediately after Sandoval’s affair, she has regrets about season 11.
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“Going into the season, I thought, ‘Protect our jobs. We need to get another season.’ And if that means I have to go to Tahoe and film with Tom Sandoval, then I have to do my job,” Shay recalls. “I don’t think I gave Ariana as much grace as I should have in those moments. Just because I was willing to forgive Brock — and essentially forgive Sandoval — she wasn’t ready for any of that. It was unfair of me to expect that from her.”
At the time, Shay and Lala Kent were criticized for saying Madix was betraying the cast by not filming with Sandoval. “She was absolutely giving her all, she gave a hundred percent,” Shay says now. “She showed up and she did her job and she lived her truth.”
When asked about post-Scandoval regrets (Bravo opted to recast VPR entirely for season 12), Shay first acknowledges the restraining order Leviss had requested against her after an alleged physical altercation.
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“That night with Raquel in New York, I, obviously, reacted out of anger and I own that, but I was also never given the chance to make it right. We never got to have a conversation — it just went from zero to a hundred, restraining orders and all of that,” Shay tells Us. “I do wish that I was able, back then, to have had a conversation with her. ”
Shay gets emotional when she talks about Madix again.
“I wish I supported Ariana more in the way that she needed. Sometimes there shouldn’t be a gray area, and this was an instance where I really needed to show what a girl’s girl I was for her,” she says. “I feel like I was put in a position where I had a job to do. I was going through my own personal heartbreak, and I wasn’t the friend that she needed throughout season 11. I genuinely regret that because she deserved more from me.”
Shay hopes that the conversation she never had with Madix on VPR will happen off camera.
“I hope that one day, privately, we can sit on my couch and have that conversation I wanted to have with her two years ago. I miss her; she was my best friend, and I am just over the moon seeing how incredible she’s doing,” she says.
When asked whether they could ever be the best friends they once were, Shay admits, “I don’t think it’ll ever be the same. So much life has happened for both of us. We are on such different paths. But at the end of the day, there is always love between the two of us. She says that, I say that, that’ll never go away.”
My Good Side is available now.
