Credit: JOHN NACION/startraksphoto
Stassi Schroeder claims she will likely return to television “at some point.”
Nearly three years after she was fired from Vanderpump Rules due to past racial behavior, Stassi, who is pregnant with her second child, explained why staying away from Pump Rules is the “most healthy” option for her as she reacted to Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss‘ behavior post-affair and admitted to being “triggered” by the two of them.
“I tried to stay away from it for a really long time,” Stassi said on the March 30 episode of the Scrubbing In podcast, via Us Weekly. “That was what was most healthy for me.”
“Even now, it’s been kind of hard — not gonna lie — to see all of this Vanderpump Rules stuff come up and it’s everywhere,” she continued. “I’m DM’d about it all day long, like, ‘I’m gonna need you to weigh in, I’m gonna need you to weigh in.’ At first, I was like, ‘Oh, this is interesting and crazy that this is happening.’ And then it kind of was like, ‘I’m having a little triggered moment.’”
As Stassi explained, the drama surrounding Sandoval and Raquel resurfaced old feelings.
“I’m like, ‘I used to live in this world for so long,’” she said, noting that it feels “unfair” that she’s “living” the drama but “not even being paid.”
Looking back at the moment the news of “Scandoval” first broke, Stassi said she’ll “never forget where” she was.
“We were literally at my house, and I’ve been cleaning out my closet because I’m turning my extra room into a nursery,” she recalled. “We were literally photographing my clothes … and I was like, ‘Holy sh-t, holy sh-t, holy sh-t.’ … I’ll tell my grandchildren [about it].”
Also this week, Stassi addressed Sandoval and Raquel’s lack of remorse about their betrayal on a podcast.
“I mean it’s kind of terrifying,” Stassi acknowledged on the April 12 episode of the #NoFilter With Zack Peter podcast. “It’s a little triggering. And I know we overuse the word triggering nowadays, it kind of drives me nuts, but I can’t think of a better word to describe than triggering for right now because I only had like a — when that happened to me with [Kristen Doute] and [Jax Taylor], that was NOTHING compared to what’s happening to Ariana.”
According to Stassi, despite Sandoval and Raquel’s affair being way worse, learning of their sordid romance has taken her back to the time when Jax cheated on her with her best friend.
“I know what it did to me and it made me not trust people. It made me crazy,” she recalled. “It made me not a good girlfriend. Not a good partner. It made me [a] dark passenger because I didn’t trust that, you know, after the party, if my significant other wanted to hang out with my friends, that that was a safe space. And, like, that’s not a healthy way to think.”
Also on the podcast, Stassi shared if she’d ever return to reality television.
“I think I have to at some point,” she admitted. “It’s just like, in my soul. I don’t know what that would look like just yet, but like, I mean, I can’t see the rest of my life happening and just like never going back on reality TV in some way.”
That said, Stassi’s glad she’s not on Pump Rules at the moment, explaining that she wouldn’t want to be involved in the fallout of “Scandoval.”
“To think like, nothing like that happens anymore. We’ve all grown out of that! That was like, because we were young and immature and didn’t know any better … And to realize that not all of us are and that some of us are capable of making even more painful and more horrible decisions, it’s like, I’m questioning everything,” she shared. “I don’t want to get back to that place where I used to not trust people. I’d like to stay in my lane of trusting people.”
Vanderpump Rules season 10 airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.