Scheana Shay opens up about Eddie Cibrian affair in memoir excerpt

Schaena Shay is tired of keeping secrets.

The actress, musician, Bravolebrity, lash entrepreneur, OCD awareness advocate, and mom will soon be adding a new title to her resume: author. My Good Side, the Vanderpump Rules star’s memoir from Grand Central Publishing, arrives July 22, and Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive excerpt for all the Bravoholics and Scheaniacs out there who just can’t wait.

Born in West Covina, Calif., in 1985, Shay, originally Scheana Jancan (and later Scheana Marie) rose to fame when she joined the cast of the inaugural season of Vanderpump Rules. Though it was far from the first Real Housewives spinoff, the reality series centered on the almost unbelievably dramatic lives of various staff members at restaurants owned by Lisa Vanderpump, a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum.

Vanderpump Rules hit the ground running, becoming an immediate hit, with Shay as a classic love-her-or-hate-her mainstay. Perhaps the most consequential storyline from the series’ early seasons that established it as a serious contender in the TV landscape centered on Shay.

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In 2007, Shay embarked on a romantic relationship with the actor Eddie Cibrian, and has maintained since that it was only later she discovered Cibrian was married to Vanderpump’s fellow RHOBH star Brandi Glanville — and having an affair with LeAnn Rimes. The cross-franchise flame war between Shay and Glanville, anchored by the Hollywood handsome Cibrian, provided grade-A tabloid fodder for years. But as Shay discusses in the excerpt, the behind-the-scenes experience, with all the emotional context that was invisible to the public eye, was something altogether different.

Read an excerpt from Shay’s memoir:

On May 6, 2006, I graduated from Azusa Pacific University, becoming the only person in my family to earn a college degree, which almost didn’t happen. I’d only applied to schools that my parents could afford or that I could get a scholarship to, which I did to APU. I was so over going to school that I considered dropping out. I knew I wanted a career in entertainment, and I wanted to start as young as possible. Thankfully, I didn’t. Puna, my maternal grandmother, wanted me to finish school and, when she died after my freshman year, my will to both honor her memory and prove myself prevailed.

Sadly, it wasn’t only Puna’s passing that impacted me. Papa, my maternal grandfather, had died in April of my senior year in high school from lung cancer. We lost Oma, my paternal grandma, three days before my high school graduation. And, then on July 4 of that same year, Opa, my paternal grandpa, died from an aortic rupture. I was so close with all of them, and they were gone within fifteen months of one another, all in their mid-sixties. Far too young.

A few years later, my childhood best friend Gina—who was my only ally in junior high passed away too, which compounded the grief I was already experiencing. 

Around this time, I also lost my uncle Marty, my mom’s older brother, who was living with us and I was extremely close to. He was murdered on New Year’s Day morning walking home from the 7-Eleven around the corner from my parents’ house; to this day, his case is still cold. It was a deeply depressing period in my life that I’ve now learned through therapy contributed to my OCD—which I still suffer from to this day. It’s linked to a fear of losing people close to me, a fear that my mother also perpetuated, unintentionally.

There was this song my mom would sing to me every night when I was a kid. It was called “You and Me Against the World,” by Helen Reddy, and there were lyrics that really stuck with me:

And when one of us is gone

And one of us is left to carry on

Then remembering will have to do

I recall thinking, What do you mean when one of us is gone?! I know my mom didn’t mean to plant that concern in my head, but I was an emotionally mature child and it stuck with me, especially because the two of us were so close.

So, then, when all of my grandparents, my best friend, and my uncle died in quick succession, those memories flooded my mind, and my undiagnosed OCD got even worse, though I didn’t know that what I was experiencing at the time were intrusive thoughts. I just knew that from then on, I had an overwhelming fear of losing loved ones. During this time, I was briefly prescribed Lexapro and struggled with anorexia, which gave me a warped sense of control when I otherwise felt powerless.

Yet, I refused to let my struggles hinder me from pursuing my dreams. Even if my grandparents were gone, they were still with me in spirit and rooting for me to succeed. They would want me not only to finish school, but to excel in life as best as I could.

In light of this, on my twenty-first birthday, which also happened to be the day after I graduated, I was ready to relocate to LA and make a name for myself in the entertainment industry, whether that was as an actress, a TV host, or a news reporter.

Conveniently, one of my college friends, Farrah, who was my first roommate in LA, had a friend who worked at a private member’s cigar lounge and restaurant. Every A-list celebrity, director, writer, and actor hung out there, and it was the hottest place to work in Beverly Hills. I felt really lucky to get the job. I figured I might meet the right people there, which would lead to being discovered. So, I moved to Hollywood, never anticipating just how drastically this decision would change my life forever.

I first laid eyes on Eddie Cibrian a few months later, when he stepped off the elevator at the cigar lounge, where he played poker on Tuesday nights. 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. 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.

Eddie was the sweetest, funniest, most charismatic, consummate gentleman I’d ever met. He always made me feel like I was the only girl in the room when I was working. Whereas most of the other patrons at the cigar lounge just wanted me to serve them their drinks and leave them to play poker, Eddie made a concerted effort to make eye contact with me.

Of course, I’ve been asked a zillion times how I didn’t realize he was married. Why would I have thought he was? He never wore a wedding ring, so I assumed he was single. At some point, I did look at his IMDB, as my roommate was also dating an actor, and I wanted to see what movies he’d been in. The only one I’d seen was Say It Isn’t So starring Heather Graham, and I vaguely remembered thinking Eddie’s character was hot, even though I had no idea who he was at that time. 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.

I had a Palm Treo (only the hottest phone of 2006), but it didn’t have an internet browser on it, and I didn’t even own a laptop. I would go to the internet cafe on Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue to use their computer when I needed to check my email for auditions. I wasn’t concerned with googling this hot guy who said he was an actor in LA. Do you know how many hot guys in LA were and still are actors? A lot! I was just happy to be the girl working the poker game he played in. Sure, my hair reeked of cigar smoke every night, but the money was good.

To be clear, Eddie wasn’t my boyfriend (at least not exclusively). But we did start a physical relationship at the end of 2006, which was a weekly booty call. After his Tuesday night poker games, and when my shift ended, we would go out together with our friends to get drinks, and then he would come back to my house, where we would hook up. Eddie would then go home, and I’d go back to my life for the rest of the week. In hindsight, it was pretty brazen of him to be fully out in public with a bunch of single women while his wife and child were at home.

I even remember one night when the paparazzi photographed us leaving Les Deux, a nightclub in Hollywood, and it was no big deal. It wasn’t like Eddie was freaking out that he’d been caught on camera with me. 

The frightening thing is that I totally thought I could end up with Eddie; he looked how I’d always imagined my future husband would, and he treated me well. But I wasn’t trying to settle down at the age of twenty-one, and I was keeping my options open and dating other people.

That was when I started seeing Jesse Metcalfe, the sexy gardener from Desperate Housewives. In college, I’d watched the movie John Tucker Must Die, which Jesse starred in, and I recall thinking what a dream it would be to date him (not his character) —which I did, beginning in early 2007. Jesse was an awesome guy, but our relationship didn’t happen right away. Soon after we first met, he went to rehab, so we started hanging out often only after he finished. The first date he took me on post rehab was the Cloverfield red carpet movie premiere. I then spent my twenty-second birthday at dinner with him, and I vividly remember sticking to water and Red Bull all night as a way of supporting his sobriety.

After dinner, we went to a karaoke bar and ended up heading out early, since everyone was drinking alcohol, and I could tell it was a little overwhelming for him. The fact that a group of my friends decided to sing Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” didn’t help, either. But I was totally cool with leaving and told him that I just wanted to spend my birthday with him. He also took me shopping at Neiman Marcus and told me to get whatever I wanted as a gift. I chose a pair of Marc Jacobs sunglasses that I have to this day. I could have asked for something much more expensive, like a Louis Vuitton bag, but I wanted to be respectful.

Overall, Jesse and I had a great time together. We would order in dinner with his parents at his house, and—when we were alone—he would play the guitar and serenade me with songs like “Hey There Delilah.” It felt like I was living a real-life fantasy with this guy I’d watched on TV and in movies for years.

But eventually we grew apart, and when things faded out later that summer, I fell right back into regularly hanging with Eddie—at which point it became more serious than our weekly poker-night hookup. So much so that when I was moving apartments, 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.

During this period, Eddie would take me out on his boat, and we’d cruise around Castaic Lake taking photos together. It really felt like we were building something. 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. It was so much easier and more fun to hang out in Beverly Hills or Hollywood, and my place was closer and more convenient. I didn’t see a single red flag, especially since we weren’t exclusive.

The first crack in Eddie’s perfectly constructed façade appeared one night at the cigar lounge, when one of the members approached me. He said, “Listen, Eddie is coming in tonight. And I just want to let you know—before you do something you might regret—that I heard he’s married.” He must have seen that we were getting more serious and didn’t want me to get in too deep.

I didn’t believe it (or maybe I didn’t want to believe it) because I was wild about Eddie. And, again, we were out together all the time in public, so I didn’t feel like some secret mistress! Still, I was freaking out and had a massive pit in my stomach. As predicted, Eddie showed up and, immediately, he could tell that my energy was off. He asked me what was going on, and I told him to check his phone. I’d sent him a message saying, “I have to ask, before we hang out tonight, does something belong on your ring finger?” I didn’t want to come across as aggressive or have him think I was acting crazy, since I didn’t know if it was true, and also because my inherent people-pleasing tendencies were in full force. So I decided to choose pleasant and palatable, even a little playful, over direct and confrontational. I was young, and I felt like I was falling in love with him. I didn’t want to rock the boat for no reason. Writing, “Are you married?” felt too accusatory, even though I now know that it would have been completely appropriate given the circumstances.

Eddie acted like he didn’t understand exactly what I was getting at, so I posed the question straightforwardly. And his answer was “No, that’s insane. Why would you ask me that?” It was gaslighting in its most basic form. Yet, I trusted him, so we continued hanging out. 

Excerpted from My Good Side by Scheana Shay. Copyright © 2025 by Scheana Shay. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.