VANDERPUMP Rules is set to return for another season, but it’s likely to be the last as filming has been postponed yet again, The U.S. Sun can exclusively reveal.
Season 12 of the show was said to be halted to give the cast time to breathe and move on from ‘Scandoval’ – when Tom Sandoval infamously cheated on longtime partner Ariana Madix and blew up the social structure.
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The Vanderpump Rules season 10 reunion featured Lala Kent, James Kennedy, Katie Maloney, Ariana Madix, Andy Cohen, Lisa Vanderpump, Tom Sandoval, Tom Schwartz, and Scheana ShayCredit: Getty
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Author Thea de Sousa showed her new book to Tom Sandoval and his girlfriend, Victoria Lee RobinsonCredit: Thea de Sousa
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Raquel Leviss, Tom Sandoval, Ariana Madix hung out before Scandoval caused chaos with the friend groupCredit: Getty
But it has now been claimed the real reason the show still hasn’t been greenlit is because the cast has been locked in contract negotiations for months.
Hollywood insider Thea de Sousa, the author of a new Vanderpump Rules book, spoke exclusively with The U.S. Sun about the future of the reality TV show.
“Bravo’s still saying that they for sure plan on doing another season, which will most likely be the last one,” she said.
“And the reason why is because this show has gotten very expensive for Bravo.
“Every cast member gets a mandatory salary bump each season.
“So now we’re up to Season 12, so you can imagine how completely just underwater that Bravo is in terms of paying this cast and that’s been the issue since spring.
“That’s been the reason why they didn’t film over the summer was they couldn’t handle the same contracts.
“So they had to start negotiating [with] people and trying to move people down from maybe main cast member to ‘friend of,’ which they had tried to do a couple seasons before.”
The fact that a lot of the cast is not close anymore also factors into the decision, and the show is in dire need of new faces.
Thea claimed around Season 10 they were looking to do a spin-off at Tom Sandoval and Tom Schwartz’s bar, Schwartz and Sandy’s, but then the plans were thrown into chaos.
“It wasn’t going to be Vanderpump anymore, but then Scandoval happened, so they did another season of Vanderpump off of Scandoval,” she said.
“They were supposed to be cameras up already and they’re still having [a] problem, not because of the show but because of just the landscape of reality TV and the payoff isn’t as big as it used to be for Bravo.
“Best case scenario would be November, December worst case scenario, beginning of next year.
“And then the least attractive scenario is they can’t literally ever afford to do it again, but they are still promising that they are supposed to do a final season. They’ve just postponed it.
“It was supposed to be cameras up mid-October and that’s already been postponed. So that’s happened about three times now where they’ve said, ‘Okay, we’re almost ready’, but they have not greenlit.
“This is coming from good sources that work on the show because they are all told when there’s a green light.”
The U.S. Sun has reached out to Bravo and a spokesperson said, “There is absolutely no truth to this reporting.”
Thea also claimed despite fallouts between cast members and rumors, they all want to see another season.
“No one has refused to film with anyone else because they all want the show to keep going,” she said.
“I mean they all want the paychecks, right? And maybe they love the show.
“So the desires are from the cast, the problem again is Bravo paying them, that’s it.
“I mean, there’s definitely going to be tension. There’s definitely cast members who don’t like each other.
“But the rumor that has been going around that the cast is the problem, and it’s definitely not.
Many of the cast members have been with the show since day one and bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars per season.
“So now that they’ve got that high pay to come back for season 11, contractually, Bravo has to pay that plus a bump.
“The only way they can get out with some cast members is by demoting them. And they will, like Scheana [Shay] might get demoted, and then they can pay them less.
“So this is all the contract stuff they were dealing with all summer. Who do we get to agree to go down?
“And now no one will ever know about this stuff because when you do sponsorships and when you do things that are off the show, you really don’t want to talk about, ‘Well, I got bumped down this season.’
“You’re just on the cast. That’s all that matters.”
UNCERTAIN FUTURE
Scheana Shay claimed executive producer Alex Baskin warned the cast that the show would be canceled during Season 11 during an episode of her Scheananigans podcast.
“I know Alex Baskin has said that midseason, the show was not in a good place,” she said.
“It was, you know, ‘X, Y and Z needs to happen. Or we’re going to have a short season and the show’s going to be canceled and that’s it. Go live your lives.'”
Scheana alleged it put a lot of pressure on her and Lala to create good content for viewers as they want to continue filming.
“Well, we don’t want the show to get canceled,'” she explained. “Not just for ourselves and our families, but there’s a crew of 80 to 100 people who work on this show.
“And I said this at the reunion — which you didn’t see — but I was like, ‘I feel like we’re doing our jobs also for all of these people. We want to keep this going.'”
Thea added that Scheana is one of the main cast members eager to continue filming the show.
“I think Scheana would absolutely love it,” she said.
“So Sheana and Lala I would say both are the ones that are pushing the hardest and the most interested to see when that green light’s gonna come, if it comes, hopefully.”
Thea’s book, The Unofficial Vanderpump Rules Ultimate Trivia Book, is out now.
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Some of the Vanderpump cast have moved on to the show’s spin-off, The ValleyCredit: Getty
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Ariana Madix and Tom Sandoval are on a break from filming with other cast members
