by Daniel Johnson
February 22, 2024
Based on the initial comparison he made, Sandoval and his brain seem as though they are as far from each other as the Sun and Neptune.
During his New York Times interview, Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval made waves when he compared “Scandoval” to the media frenzies around O.J Simpson and the murder of George Floyd.
As Variety reported, Irina Aleksander, the author of the profile on Sandoval, tried to smooth over his comments.
“I think I knew what he meant,” wrote Aleksander. “He was trying to express the oddity of becoming the symbolic center of a nationwide discussion and a major news story; what he communicated instead was something more honest, which is just how much the experience had made him lose perspective.”
Sandoval gained notoriety after cheating on his girlfriend, Ariana Madix, with one of her best friends, Rachel Leviss.
When asked about it and the subsequent fallout, he said, “I’m not a pop-culture historian, really. But I witnessed the O.J. Simpson thing and George Floyd and all these big things, which is really weird to compare this to that, I think, but do you think in a weird way it’s a little bit the same?”
This episode should have come with one of those “This was filmed before Tom Sandoval compared his fuck shit drama to the cultural fall out of the murder of an unarmed man filmed with a cellphone crying out for his mother as he died” disclaimers 🤦🏽♀️#PumpRules #GeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/xvzQUVMSUa
— Drinking My Water,💧Minding My Biz (@_deidrejames) February 21, 2024
Guerdy calls out Tom Sandoval for comparing Scandoval to George Floyd: “This is not okay and villains I find these days are getting applauded and are getting a crown, a pedestal and so forth and this is not okay.” #RHOM #PumpRules pic.twitter.com/Xks5fFVxGq
— Bye Wig Hello Drama (@nosmokenomore) February 20, 2024
The reality television star also said that he feels like he has been treated worse than Danny Masterson, the former That 70’s Show star who is serving a 30-year prison sentence for raping multiple women.
“I feel like I got more hate than Danny Masterson, and he’s a convicted rapist.”
Aleksander also wrote that Bravo executives contacted them after the interview.
“A Bravo publicist rang me late on a Friday. Some of what Sandoval had said had gotten back to Bravo, and everyone was concerned. What was it that he said about O.J. Simpson and George Floyd exactly?”
Following the kerfuffle, Sandoval issued an apology, saying that he felt embarrassed.
“My intentions behind the comments I made in New York Times Magazine were to explain the level of national media attention my affair received. The comparison was inappropriate and ignorant. I’m incredibly sorry and embarrassed.”
