Tom Sandoval Apologizes After Comparing ‘Vanderpump Rules’ Scandal to George Floyd, O.J. Simpson

Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval is no stranger to controversy. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, the reality star discussed being labeled “the most hated man in America” for having an affair with then-costar Rachel “Raquel” Leviss, a close friend and co-star of his and his then-girlfriend, Ariana Madix. While addressing the impact the affair had in the reality tv world, he made a bogus analogy. 

“I’m not a pop-culture historian really,” Sandoval said. “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?” The interviewer, Irina Aleksander, tried to add context to what he meant. “I think I knew what he meant,” she wrote. “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.”

According to Aleksander, Bravo executives and Vanderpump Rules executive producer/showrunner Alex Baskin reached out to her after the interview. “Everyone was concerned,” Aleksander wrote. “What was it that he said about O.J. Simpson and George Floyd exactly? Maybe Sandoval wasn’t ready for this.”

Sandoval has since issued an apology after the swift backlash and outrage from social media users, as well as fellow Bravolebrities. “My intentions behind the comments I made in New York Times Magazine were to explain the level of national media attention my affair received,” he said, in a statement sent to PEOPLE Magazine. “The comparison was inappropriate and ignorant. I’m incredibly sorry and embarrassed.”