Speaking her truth. Raquel Leviss opened up about her split from James Kennedy for the first time on Friday, January 7, sharing details about when it was truly over between them.
“My intentions with this podcast are not to bash James in any way,” the 27-year-old Bravo personality told Vanderpump Rules costar Scheana Shay on the Friday episode of her “Scheananigans” podcast. “I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”
The SUR employee, who announced her split from Kennedy, 29, in December 2021, noted that she’s currently in therapy and has been working on herself since the pair called it quits.
Leviss and Kennedy got engaged in May 2021 after five years of dating. While the pair didn’t officially break up until the night before they filmed the season 9 reunion special for Vanderpump Rules on December 3, she was having second thoughts about the relationship earlier in the year.
In fact, the model explained that after the British TV personality had a strange reaction to a comment her dad made over Thanksgiving in November 2021, she really started to pull away.
“The future of Thanksgivings and Christmases and holidays was looking like it was going to be either James or my family. Especially like if we had a baby, James would make my parents out as like the not good grandparents and kind of put that in their heads,” Leviss said on Friday. “Foreseeing this future and what it was all coming down to [I realized] I don’t want that.”
She added that the thought of separating herself from her mom, who she described as a true “mama bear,” amid her then-fiancé’s issues with her parents was too much. “It just kind of broke my heart,” the West Coast native explained on the podcast.
When it came to the breakup itself, Leviss said she was pleasantly surprised by Kennedy’s reaction.
“He was calm. He was listening to me. I was preparing for the worst, and it was the best possible outcome, I guess, that it could have been,” she recalled. “Because he really did listen to me and was understanding of where I was coming from. He respected my decision. He was like, ‘If your heart isn’t in it anymore then I understand. we need to go our separate ways.’”
Scroll down for more podcast revelations from Leviss following her and Kennedy’s split: