Bravo Scheana Shay.
Scheana Shay opened up about how she really felt when her “Vanderpump Rules” co-star Ariana Madix was asked to compete on “Dancing With the Stars” for season 32
Following the March 2023 Scandoval cheating scandal, Madix was invited to join the ABC celebrity ballroom competition that fall. She made it to the finals, landing in third place with pro dancer Pasha Pashkov.
On the “Vanderpump Rules” season 11 episode “Saw it on the Graham,” Shay admitted she had mixed feelings about Madix’s DWTS offer. “Her getting ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ she knew how bad I wanted that,” Shay told co-star Lala Kent. “And I told her, ‘I am so genuinely happy for you. I told her I will be every [expletive] Monday you want me there.’”
Still, Shay added that she was also “hurting” from the Scandoval fallout due to the loss of her friendship with Tom Sandoval. “Why can I never have one moment where it can be about me?” she said. “I am hurt. …But I am not allowed to feel anything because it is only about Ariana.”
In a subsequent “Vanderpump Rules” scene, Shay opened up further about “Dancing With the Stars,” but fans were not sympathetic.
Scheana Shay Opened Up to Lisa Vanderpump
BravoScheana Shay and Ariana Madix in 2012.
In a sneak peek scene for the “Vanderpump Rules” episode “Written in the Stars,” Shay talked to Lisa Vanderpump about the “whirlwind of attention” Madix received following her ex-boyfriend Tom Sandoval’s cheating scandal. Shay then shared that it was always her dream to be on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“When I did ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ you said to me ‘That’s what I want more than anything,’” Vanderpump recalled of her own stint on the show in 2013.
“This year I started taking dance class, I was preparing in case, you know, I did get it. It was kind of a punch to the gut for sure,” Shay said. In a confessional, she said she was happy for Madix but noted, “I can be happy for her and be sad for me at the same time.”
“And good for her,” Shay added. “She has come such a long way from being my backup dancer.”
A clip from a “Vanderpump Rules” season 1 episode, titled “I’m Not a Ghetto B****,” then popped onscreen. The scene features Shay performing a song at The Roxy and Madix dancing behind her in 2012.
Fans had a lot to say about Shay’s comments.
“So Scheana is upset because she started taking dance classes unprovoked in preparation for dancing with the stars that she was never even invited to be on?” one commenter wrote on Instagram.
“Scheana acts like Arianna intentionally took away DWTS from her… girl bye it has never been offered to you!!” another agreed.
“Why does she think she’s entitled to get on DWTS? …Did she expect Ariana to say no because my friend Scheana will be mad. Unbelievable,” another chimed in.
“The backup dancer overshadowed everything else she said and once again proved who she really is. …Every time I think Scheana is finally a girls girl I realize she’s not,” another commenter wrote.
Scheana Shay Previously Told DWTS to Hit Her Up
Shay previously told E! News she planned to support Madix in the ballroom. “She’s going to the finals for sure,” Shay said of her friend in late 2023, per Reality Tea. The “Good as Gold” singer added, “I’ve wanted to be on that show since it came out. I go almost every season. It’s like always in the audience, never on the dance floor.”
In 2022, Shay admitted she has never been asked to compete on “Dancing With the Stars,” and she wondered if she may have been blacklisted from the show due to an incident that took place when she went to a taping.
On the December 9, 2022 episode of her “Scheananagins” podcast, Shay said when she attended a 2018 DWTS taping she was stopped at the check-in for carrying a “weed pen.”
“Apparently, once you cross the gates at the CBS lot it’s like private federal property, and I brought drugs onto that property,” she said. “At the time, I had my medical card. They didn’t care. They took my ID, they said ‘Don’t ever come back.’”
Shay later found out the rules changed and previously banned items were allowed in the studio. She offered another pitch to the DWTS powers-that-be to consider her as a contestant.
“Dancing With the Stars,’ hit me up. I am ready,” Shay said in 2022.
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