Every good reality television star has a catchphrase, and Scheana Shay’s is so iconic, she has it tattooed on her forearm.
“It’s all happening,” she declared, eyes shining, in the first episode of season three of Bravo’s reality series Vanderpump Rules, when discussing her upcoming wedding to then fiancé Michael Shay. She then hoisted her ink to the camera, underlining it with her finger in a way that became her signature.
“It’s all happening,” she declared again, in season six, episode 11. The relationship with Shay hadn’t worked out (they’d divorced after a tumultuous season five, during which Scheana discovered her husband had been hiding an addiction). But Scheana’s romantic life was back on the upswing—she’d reconnected with an old flame, Rob, who was handsome, successful, and could, she said, “hang a television on the wall in less than seven minutes.” And while that relationship also didn’t make it to the next season, it was a classic Scheana Shay moment, revealing an unrelenting optimism that her dream life was within her grasp.
It’s this type of extreme determination to craft her own fairy tale, despite sometimes less-than-ideal circumstances, that ultimately defined Scheana during her 11 seasons starring on the hit Bravo show, which followed a group of servers and staff at the West Hollywood restaurant Sur as they attempted to make it in the entertainment industry. First introduced to the audience as a “home-wrecking whore” (her words) on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, she spent her first season of Vanderpump Rules trying to avoid being ousted from the show by some of her castmates, who she says have admitted they lobbied production to fire her. She was cast in the role of the outcast, the one who couldn’t break into the popular group and endured snickers when she attempted a singing career, releasing a dance-pop single, “Good as Gold,” to the derision of her coworkers.
Yet Scheana, now 40, persisted. Over the next decade, she mentioned it all, refusing to allow her embarrassing moments, missteps, or admittedly bad decisions get her down. She got married on the show, got divorced on the show, was dumped on the show, bought another love interest a penguin, was then promptly rejected on the show, and was called every name in the book, from the aforementioned “home-wrecking whore” to a “bootleg Kardashian.”
Often, she says now, she felt misunderstood by both the viewers and producers, who, she felt, seemed more interested in portraying her as a hot mess than capturing her genuine moments. But in some ways, she got the last laugh. “Good as Gold” has become a defining Bravo anthem, and “It’s all happening” has become so linked with her that Almost Famous is shaking with irrelevance.
“People don’t even know it’s from that movie,” she tells me over coffee in New York. “They’re like, ‘What Scheana said,’ and I’m like, Oh, thank you. I wish I owned the copyright.”
So it’s no surprise that a small hiccup like Vanderpump Rules being recast hasn’t put a damper on Scheana’s ambition, nor her ability to run a news cycle. Earlier this month, Scheana shocked fans when she revealed to Glamour, in an exclusive excerpt from her memoir, My Good Side, that her husband, Brock Davies, had cheated on her while she was pregnant in 2021 with their daughter.
Brock revealed the infidelity to her in 2023 in the middle of “Scandoval,” the drama that upended the show when an affair between two of Scheana’s longtime castmates, Tom Sandoval—who was in a long-term relationship with fan favorite Ariana Madix—and Rachel “Raquel” Leviss, came out shortly after season 10 wrapped. (In a July 25 conversation on his wife’s podcast, Scheananigans, Brock called the affair purely “sexual,” and himself a “coward” for engaging in it.)
For more than a year, Scheana tells me, she told no one of Brock’s infidelity. Instead, she continued to film for season 11, though in hindsight it seems obvious that something was going on behind the scenes.
“I hated him,” she says of her husband. “I hated Tom. But all of my anger I took out on Tom, which was well deserved for what he did as well. Some of it was misplaced.”
She’d always planned on revealing the affair in season 12, which, she notes, would have been released around the same time as the book had the show kept to its normal schedule. But in some ways, this is better, because for the first time Scheana is in the driver’s seat. She’s sharing her story of pain and ultimately redemption on her own terms, without having to worry about how it will be sliced and diced through the reality TV machine.
“I’m stronger because of it,” she says of the infidelity. “Being capable of that level of forgiveness is not something that’s easy to do.… I chose forgiveness and I hope it’s forever, but I honestly don’t know.”
She pauses, then continues. “I think for now I’ve been able to forgive and trust again, but I still have insecurities.”
To hear Scheana tell it, her beginning as a reality-show mainstay wasn’t entirely her decision. Sure, she’d always wanted to be famous, though her mom, Erika, had lived in their hometown of Azusa, California, her entire life, and part of Scheana felt she was expected to do the same thing. But instead, she moved to Los Angeles after college graduation and began going on auditions.
“That was the path that I chose, which wasn’t completely the correct path,” she says. “But I feel like every experience I’ve had has led me to where I am today. I wouldn’t change a thing. I would change a lot of things on the show, but as far as the trajectory of my life, I’m happy.”
A series of restaurant jobs led her to working in a cigar lounge, where she met and began dating an actor named Eddie Cibrian. At the time, she says, she had no idea he was married to Brandi Glanville, a former model who would eventually star on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. But then Eddie left Brandi for the singer LeAnn Rimes, and Scheana’s name was soon splashed across the tabloids as another of Cibrian’s conquests.
Five years later, Scheana was working at Villa Blanca, a West Hollywood restaurant owned by Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Vanderpump. One night, she was invited to moonlight at another of Vanderpump’s restaurants, Sur, where they’d be filming the season-two finale of the Bravo show. Scheana clocked Brandi right away, and immediately wanted to sink into the floor, knowing cameras were everywhere.
“This is not anything I want to be a part of,” she recalls thinking. “I don’t want to put myself on national television. I’ve already been in magazines for this. I’m not trying to be on TV for this.”
But she says Lisa told her to go serve Brandi and her friends an appetizer, Sur’s now-infamous goat-cheese balls. Lisa has since claimed that she had no idea of the connection, but Scheana is skeptical.
“There are no coincidences with Lisa Vanderpump,” she says. “She makes moves, and she is the most incredible chess player. I have mad respect for her as a businesswoman and a mother, but it is unfortunate that I didn’t really have any agency in the process of joining a reality show as a home-wrecking whore. That wouldn’t have been my first option.”
When she was approached to join the first season of the new spin-off show that would feature Sur waitresses and bartenders, Scheana, then 27, was reticent, but ultimately was convinced that the show could help her acting career. Now, more than a decade later, Scheana says she doesn’t regret her decision to join, but wishes in many ways that things had gone differently.
“I’m so thankful for all of the opportunities that this show has brought and for the reach that it has and giving us this platform,” she says. “I just wish that a little more of the full story was shown.”
As she details in her memoir, being on VPR felt like a constant high-wire act. Anyone could be let go at any time, and there was little job security. In season eight, Scheana was suddenly demoted from full-time cast member to being paid a day rate with little explanation.
“I was still a main character. I was still in the opening credits. I was still in every episode,” she says. “But I made hundreds of thousands less.… It was like, ‘Well, this is your offer, take it or leave it.’ If I said, ‘I’m leaving it,’ they would’ve been like, ‘Okay,’ but I didn’t want to leave it. I had just bought a house, so I’m like, they know I’m not going to quit. They know they could get me for less money.”
Scheana was returned to full-time status in season nine. So when she realized that filming would begin just 10 days after her due date in May 2021, she felt she couldn’t push back, or ask for more time off.
“I couldn’t afford to lose out on the paycheck,” she says. “I was the breadwinner for my family at the time, and I needed to get back to work. I had bills to pay, a mortgage. My job started on this day, so that meant I was back to work.… It didn’t matter that I just had a baby. I had a job to do.”
After speaking with her doctor, Scheana agreed to be induced on her due date so she could be ensured a brief window to recover before starting to film. But during labor, the baby’s heart rate began to drop, and she began to wonder if she had somehow caused the complication.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m trying to push this baby out who’s not ready. I’m killing my baby because I have to film a freaking TV show,’” she remembers.
The birth soon turned dire. Though she had an uneventful pregnancy, Scheana had developed both HELLP syndrome and preeclampsia, two complications that are imminently life-threatening to both mother and child if not immediately addressed. Scheana’s daughter, Summer, was born blue and limp, she says, but soon began to cry and had no lasting complications. But Scheana was rushed to the ICU, where she spent five days recovering.
“I feel like people probably think, Oh, if the baby’s fine, then you’re fine,” she says. “But I was on medication for months.”
By the time Scheana was discharged, she had only a few days before filming began. Despite the fact that she was still in diapers, traumatized, and still constantly monitoring her blood pressure, she went back to work.
“I feared that if I miss the first week of filming, if I took some more time off, then I’m missing a huge paycheck because I’ll be cut out of an episode,” she says. “So it wasn’t really an option to me. I switched into work mode.”
One of her biggest disappointments from her time on VPR is that this part of her story was never shown to the audience.
“There was this whole conversation that Brock and I had at the kitchen island, and I’m sobbing and I’m just like, ‘That was so scary. I could have died last week.…’ Then you watch the show and it opens up with me sitting on the couch talking about my birthday dinner. Clearly, you can tell I was crying. I’m like, ‘So the hourlong conversation about me almost dying…that’s just not interesting for the show?’ Something that it’s like 95% women watch our show. It’s a story so many people could relate to, and could raise awareness for signs and symptoms of preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome.”
While Scheana may feel slighted by some of the ways she appeared on the show, she also can admit she made mistakes. Specifically, in season 11, when the cast dealt with the fallout from Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss engaging in an affair, blindsiding his longtime partner and Scheana’s good friend, Ariana Madix.
Ironically, going into the season the show had never been more well-known or popular. But ultimately, Scandoval was the death of Vanderpump Rules as it once was.
“I think our group was fractured beyond repair,” Scheana says. “There was nowhere to go as a group. It would’ve had to have been two shows in one. Sometimes we crossed paths, but there was really nowhere to go after season 11.”
Part of the problem was that many of the friends had differing philosophies on how to deal with the bitter breakup between Tom and Ariana. Scheana and her castmate, Lala Kent, were castigated by viewers for encouraging Ariana to continue to film with her ex and for slowly welcoming him back into their lives, a decision that Scheana now says she regrets.
“[Ariana] was being her most authentic self,” she says now. “I’ve been envious of her strong boundaries, because I struggle with that. Everything’s gray, lines get crossed and all of that.… I think it was very unfair of us to expect more from her when she was giving it her all. It was a fucking boss-ass move, walking away from the finale and not giving him that platform to speak.”
At the time, Scheana says she felt frustrated that Ariana refused to, in her mind, show up and do her job of filming with her ex for the show. The fact that she was privately dealing with Brock’s infidelity, she says, made her feel even more indignant.
“The way I looked at it back then was like, if we’re all putting in the work, you should too,” she says. “Not realizing that I hadn’t even started to process what I’m going through, I compartmentalized it. She’s currently processing what she’s going through, and she was living her truth.”
Now, she recognizes she was projecting her frustrations with her own marriage on to her friends’ breakup, and hadn’t adequately dealt with what was happening behind closed doors.
“Unfortunately, my actions weren’t the best that season,” she says. “We now have more context as to why I was all over the place and trying to forgive him. If I could forgive him, I can forgive my husband. If I hate this person who was an incredible friend to me for 15 years, then I would have to hate [Brock]. It was a very frustrating time for me. It was a frustrating time for Ariana, and I think she did exactly what she should have done, and that was stick to her boundaries and mad respect. I couldn’t have done it.”
She does, though, push back on fan criticism that she should have revealed Brock’s infidelity, saying she would have been torn apart for doing that at the time.
“If I go into the season and I start talking about what I’m going through, it’s, ‘Classic Scheana making it about herself. This is Ariana’s storyline. How dare you take from her?’” she says. “I just felt like it was a lose-lose situation. If I say something, I’m making it about me. No one’s going to have sympathy for me. Everyone’s going to hate my husband. What’s this going to mean for our daughter? And I was just like, you know what? I’m going to eat it this season. I’m just going to swallow it. I’m not going to talk about it at all.”
One of the hardest things for Scheana to swallow has been that she always believed that she would not stay with someone if they cheated on her. But when it actually happened, she realized the issue was more complex. They had built a life and a family together, one she ultimately decided, after months of therapy, to try to make work.
“An affair doesn’t have to end your relationship,” she says. “For some it does. And for some you can work towards a path of forgiveness. So why not show people that it is possible to stay? It’s not an easy decision, but it is possible.”
The desire to help people also led her to want to include the affair in her book, a decision some have questioned since its release. Ultimately, it came down to authenticity, and a desire to show others that reconciliation is possible.
“As I want to protect my family, I don’t ever want Summer to find out about this, I would be doing the readers and more so myself a disservice in putting out a memoir of my life up to this point and not talking about a literal chapter of my life,” she says. “One of the most devastating things I’ve ever been through personally, how I overcame it, how I’m stronger. And our relationship is better almost because of it.”
Scheana had just gotten off a plane at LAX when she got a phone call from Alex Baskin, the executive producer of Vanderpump Rules, out of the blue. Immediately, she knew why he was calling: her time on the show was over. She wasn’t surprised.
“He was like, ‘Don’t worry. You’re coming to The Valley so you’re good….’ I’m like, Yeah, if that’s what I want to do,” she says.
So, does Scheana want to star on The Valley, the VPR spin-off featuring a slew of her friends and former castmates? Despite rampant fan speculation that she’s dying for a spot (and even wrote about the affair in her memoir to secure it), Scheana says she’s undecided, noting that she has appeared on every season of the show already, just not as a main cast member.
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” she says. “If it makes sense, then that’ll be the path I choose. I want to stay on reality TV. I know no matter what, that’s something I do want to continue, but I do also want to continue to pursue acting and other things that I’m interested in.”
But what does staying on reality TV look like? Scheana swears that she and Brock do not want their own show (too much pressure), but she’s open to other opportunities. She’d love to get back into acting, and grow their family. While she has said she would not get pregnant again for health reasons and would be content with Summer being an only child, she tells me she and Brock recently decided to explore surrogacy.
“We have made the decision to fertilize the eggs that I froze seven years ago.… We would do a surrogate,” she says, noting that accepting the decision has been a process she’s still working through. “I’m not fully ready to relinquish control and have someone else’s energy and everything just pumping through that baby. I’m not fully there yet.”
In many ways, the VPR chapter of her life is already in the rearview mirror. While she will always have a deep love for Ariana, they no longer speak often, and neither does she with the majority of the cast, besides Lala and newer addition Ally Lewber. As for what’s next, Scheana demures, saying she doesn’t like to plan her life too far in advance. But there’s one thing she knows: She won’t let the end of the show be the end of her story.
“I hope that people see someone who has always put it out there, got the short end of the stick, but kept getting back up because I’ve been knocked so many times, but I’m still here,” she says. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
