Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval have responded to Rachel Leviss‘ lawsuit claiming revenge porn, eavesdropping, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress in the wake of the “Scandoval” that played out last year on Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules.
Madix on Friday filed a declaration citing California’s anti-SLAPP law which protects against frivolous lawsuits. In response to Leviss’ lawsuit that was filed in February (which you can read here), Madix recounted how she first learned of the affair between her then-boyfriend Sandoval and Leviss; she found video of Leviss masturbating on Sandoval’s phone.
Madix says she made a copy of the video but never shared it others, least of all production, according to the declaration. When she confronted Sandoval about the discovery, he deleted the copy.
“I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else,” Madix said in the declaration. “To be clear, I only saw the video of plaintiff masturbating in places secluded from others.”
The declaration also includes a picture of the text she immediately sent to Leviss, which says “you’re dead to me.” Madix’s declaration can be read here.
For his part, Sandoval filed a motion last week to strike portions of Leviss’ lawsuit that addressed the way the explicit video was obtained.
“These videos were created by Leviss and published by Leviss to Sandoval via a consensual exchange on Facetime, i.e., ‘their video calls,’” the declaration said, which you can read here. “Based on Leviss’ own allegations, Sandoval merely saved private copies of the videos that Leviss had filmed and shared with him.”
“Leviss’ lawsuit is a thinly veiled attempt to extend her fame and to rebrand herself as the victim instead of the other woman while denigrating her former friend Madix as a ‘scorned woman’ and her former paramour Sandoval as ‘predatory,’” Sandoval’s motion continued.
In her lawsuit filed in February, Leviss claimed that Scandoval “caused mayhem in Leviss’s life, culminating in months-long in-patient treatment at a mental health facility and her departure from the show. Fomented by Bravo and Evolution in conjunction with the cast, Leviss was subjected to a public skewering with little precedent and became, without exaggeration, one of the most hated women in America.”
“It is clear that Bravo deliberately sacrificed Leviss for the sake of its commercial interests from its refusal to allow her the opportunity to tell her side of the story and defend herself, which she repeatedly begged for permission to do,” Leviss’ filing continued.
The post Ariana Madix & Tom Sandoval Respond To Raquel Leviss Revenge Porn Lawsuit: “A Thinly Veiled Attempt To Extend Her Fame” appeared first on Deadline.
