Scheana Shay is looking back at her affair with Eddie Cibrian in her new memoir.
The Vanderpump Rules alum, 40, began an intimate relationship with the Sunset Beach actor, 52, in late 2006 while he was married to Brandi Glanville — an affair that later played out on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Vanderpump Rules.
In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir, My Good Side, published by Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, July 2, Scheana maintains that she wasn’t aware that Cibrian was married when they began seeing one another. (Cibrian also had an affair with singer LeAnn Rimes while married to Brandi, 52, with whom he shares sons Mason, 22, and Jake, 18.)
Scheana recalls meeting Cibrian after completing college and moving to Los Angeles at the age of 21. She writes that she had aspirations of “making a name for myself in the entertainment industry, whether that was as an actress, a TV host, or a news reporter,” and landed a job at a cigar lounge frequented by some of Hollywood’s biggest names.
A cheating scandal laid the foundation for Vanderpump Rules — and Brandi Glanville doesn’t want Bravo fans to forget it. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 50, took to Twitter to send a message to Scheana Shay — who had an affair with Glanville’s then-husband, Eddie Cibrian, more than a decade ago — as […]
It was there that she “first laid eyes on” the actor, she writes. “If you were to ask me when I was growing up what my exact type was, to a tee it was Eddie — tall, dark, and handsome, with dimples. The second we made eye contact, he smiled at me with those dimples, and I melted,” Scheana shares in her book. “How could I not? He’s undeniably a gorgeous human. Our relationship wasn’t romantic from the jump, though the writing was on the wall from day one.”
The “Scheananigans” podcast host says she and Cibrian began a “physical relationship” toward the end of 2006, however, they were not exclusively dating.
“Of course, I’ve been asked a zillion times how I didn’t realize he was married. Why would I have thought he was?” Scheana writes. “He never wore a wedding ring, so I assumed he was single. … This was pre–social media, so it wasn’t like he was posting pics of his family in matching pajamas in front of a Christmas tree.”
According to Scheana, at the time, she didn’t have an internet browser on her cellphone and didn’t own a laptop, so she would check her email at an internet café. “I wasn’t concerned with Googling this hot guy who said he was an actor in L.A.,” she notes.
Scheana says that while she thought about a future with Cibrian, she wasn’t ready to settle down at 21 and began dating Desperate Housewives actor Jesse Metcalfe. That romance, she writes, fizzled out by the summer of 2007, and she “fell right back into regularly hanging with Eddie,” though this time their relationship was more than just physical.
Scheana writes that “Eddie came to help me and met most of my friends and even my mother. His best friend also joined us with his son, who was a toddler at the time. We were literally intertwining our families and the people closest to us.”
However, she recalls that she never went to Cibrian’s house — he always stayed at hers. “Did I think it was weird that I never went to his house? No! He lived in Calabasas, supposedly. And I certainly wasn’t making the trek to Calabasas in 2007, when Ubers didn’t exist, and I had less than $1,000 to my name,” she writes. “It was so much easier and more fun to hang out in Beverly Hills or Hollywood, and my place was closer and more convenient.”
Clearing the air. Eddie Cibrian is weighing in after Brandi Glanville claimed he cheated on her with Piper Perabo during their marriage. “I’m sad I have to address this, I really believed that we had come a long way, but this was untrue 19 years ago and it’s untrue now,” the 49-year-old actor told Us […]
At the time, she says, “I didn’t see a single red flag, especially since we weren’t exclusive.”
Eventually, Scheana writes that a colleague at the cigar lounge informed her that Cibrian was married. “I didn’t believe it (or maybe I didn’t want to believe it) because I was wild about Eddie,” she writes.
Scheana says she confronted Cibrian and he allegedly responded, “No, that’s insane. Why would you ask me that?”
“It was gaslighting in its most basic form,” she writes, noting that “I trusted him, so we continued hanging out.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Cibrian’s representative for comment.
My Good Side is available from July 22.
