Bethenny Frankel Says She Understands ‘Vanderpump Rules’ Stars Get Paid Less Than Her Interns

Bethenny Frankel is continuing her crusade against inequities in the world of reality television — and she used one of the genre's most famous names to further prove her point.

Frankel welcomed Rachel Leviss (a.k.a. Raquel Leviss) to Wednesday's episode of her JustB podcast, where the Vanderpump Rules star at the center of Scandoval called out Bravo for allegedly taking advantage of her time in the spotlight.

"The network is laughing, running to the bank with this scandal," Leviss claimed to Frankel. "I haven't seen a single penny. It's not fair."

Frankel insinuated that the reality TV machine encourages behavior like Leviss' on Season 10 of VPR, on which it was revealed she had an affair with castmate Tom Sandoval, which ultimately led to the end of his nine-year relationship with fellow castmate Ariana Madix.

"If you do drugs or get drunk or have an affair, you get paid more," Frankel claimed. "You're celebrated."

Despite that, Frankel told Leviss that she was being short-changed even more than she thought, saying, "It's my understanding that you get paid in a year less than my interns get paid."

In response, a shocked Leviss could only muster, "Really?"

Still, Leviss acknowledged awareness of the show's allegedly incentivized pay structure.

"One of the things that producers told me is that you get paid based off of our performance from the season prior," said Leviss, who joined VPR as a guest in Season 5. "So, that already set me up to want to perform well going into Season 10. "

As viewers know, she really took that motivation to heart. (TMZ reported, via sources, that Leviss made around $380,000 for Season 10 of the show, which comes to approximately $20,000 for each of the 19 episodes.)

The Messenger has reached out to Bravo for comment.

"I was like, 'OK, this could be my season. I could really stand out,'" Leviss continued. "I'm single for the first time. I want to embrace that. And I took direction well."

Frankel, a reality TV veteran, sympathized with the perils of turning over your life to the television powers that be.

"You don't ever know how you're doing in the game," she told Leviss. "The producer is telling both people — the person killing and being killed — that they're doing a great job. You never know until it comes out of the oven."