‘Family Karma’s Monica Vaswani ‘Wasn’t Blind’ to Rish Karam Cheating Rumors (Exclusive)

Monica Vaswani wasn’t as naive to rumors that boyfriend Rish Karam was cheating on her as people might think. The Family Karma star opened up to PopCulture.com about what was really going on inside her head while she outwardly stood by Karam during this season of the Bravo show amid speculation that he had been unfaithful to her. 

“It’s hard when people are judging the situation and being like, ‘Oh, she just wants to see what she wants to see. And she’s being naive. And she sees the red flags or she sees this and she’s choosing not to. And she is stupid or she’s dumb,” Vaswani explained. “And it’s tough to hear that back because I know on the backend that I was feeling all of these things. …I wasn’t blind to it.” 

With a camera crew and her loved ones watching her every move, Vaswani admitted she felt unable to say exactly the way she was feeling “raw, real, without any consideration” to others’ feelings. “I think that that is a skill that as a South Asian woman, I feel like I’ve mastered,” she shared. “I could be crying in the room, but I can come out with a smile on my face and nobody would have a clue. And that’s just a skill that I feel like you learn because you don’t want people to see your dirty laundry. You don’t want people to see that raw, vulnerable side. …I think I was just too scared to give a raw reaction.”

Watching the drama play out on her screen has been difficult for other reasons as well – like seeing how many of her friends knew about the rumors before she did. “I feel like to some extent, I’m seeing a lot of these conversations take place for the first time, and I wasn’t in the room for a lot of them, so I am sitting back watching it just like a viewer, which is sparking up emotion in me, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes just fed up,” Vaswani told PopCulture, adding that she wished her feelings had been “more prioritized” by those close to her. 

“I think that when it came to this rumor that was going on, I really didn’t get people saying, ‘You know what? We got to tell Monica first. We need to be with her one-on-one,” she continued. “We need to think about what she might be going through or how this might make her feel.” By the time she knew the extent of what was going on, things were “too messy” and there was “too much going on” with people’s stories of who knew what and when.

“The game of telephone can definitely change the narrative, and I was very careful to make sure that I didn’t just react off of one version of the story. I really wanted to consider all pieces,” the Bravo star explained. Now that she’s getting the full picture of what happened, Vaswani isn’t afraid to call her friends out and hold them “accountable” – and longtime friend Brian Benni is on that list.  

“He definitely got a lot of heat from me recently. And so he’s handling it the right way, which is, ‘I am wrong,’” Vaswani shared. “I think that that’s all that you want to hear to just deescalate the situation. I think that for me, just hearing those words of, ‘I handled it wrong. I’m sorry,’ it helps me not go so much on the defense to have to get my point across.”

Today, Vaswani is “much stronger” and in a “much happier place,” although she can’t reveal her relationship status just yet. “I feel like I am feeling a little bit more like myself, a little bit more like myself,” she would say. “It’s been tough. It’s been a difficult journey. [It] hasn’t been easy by any means this entire year, but there has been a healing process in just having the time to watch this stuff back.” Family Karma airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.