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Tom Schwartz has just revealed how his ex-wife, Katie Maloney, reacted to his Winter House romance with Below Deck Mediterranean star Katie Flood.
As Malia White, 33, suspected the Vanderpump Rules cast member, 40, is “still in love” with his former spouse, 36, and Flood, 31, looked back on his reservations about their relationship, Schwartz shared Maloney’s surprising thoughts on the matter and confirmed where he and Flood stand with one another today.
“She was very supportive,” Schwartz told E! News of Maloney on November 21. “Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought she was going to be annoyed or just disappointed that I’d had a romance on camera. Even though at that point we had been separated for a year.”
While Schwartz insisted that he and Maloney had a “very healthy, amicable separation,” he admitted there were “a few bumps along the way,” seemingly signaling to his behavior with Rachel “Raquel” Leviss, 29, on Pump Rules season 10.
“But for the most part, it’s all love with me and Katie and I’m always rooting for her. And she’s crushing life right now. It makes me happy to see her just thriving,” he added.
As for Flood, he had just as kind words.
“She’s obviously beautiful, on the surface,” Schwartz noted. “But she has a great sensibility. She’s self-deprecating, she’s really funny. And she’s got a lot of humility, too. We kind of got a little spark going and we had some chemistry.”
Regarding where their relationship stands today, Schwartz said he believes they are “really good friends.”
“We haven’t like friend-zoned each other, we stay in touch,” he stated.
Also during the interview, Schwartz addressed the fact that both he and his business partner Tom Sandoval, 40, are currently single, saying that he isn’t allowing his castmate to set him up on any blind dates.
“Tom knows I don’t like being set up,” Schwartz said. “I have some sort of innate opposition to it.”
Schwartz then said that if he could set Sandoval up on a blind date, he’d be searching for “somebody who just gets Tom Sandoval. Because he’s not for everybody.”
Meanwhile, during a separate interview, Malia and Flood commented on Schwartz’s hesitation to embark on a full-blown relationship with Flood amid the third season of Winter House.
“I do think he is still in love with his ex-wife,” Malia told Us Weekly on November 21.
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But Flood disagreed.
“I don’t think it’s that,” she replied. “I think he’s done a lot of things in that relationship [with Katie] that he knows put her through a lot, and I think in his mind he was like, ‘OK, this is going to be on TV. She is going to see it.’”
“They’d obviously filmed [Pump Rules] a couple of months prior and we obviously saw what happened last season. So I think that was in his head,” Flood continued. “He was trying not to disrespect [his ex-wife] or do something to her.”
According to Flood, her flirty relationship with Schwartz seemed to begin after a “cute little grocery trip together” that included an in-depth discussion.
“One thing that really stuck out to me, he was very honest about where he was at, what he had done,” she said. “He spoke about his marriage. He spoke about things that maybe weren’t the best things that happened in his marriage. So he was really open from the get-go, and he also never threw Katie under the bus to me.”
“He’s cute and he has this really likable energy. It was just like a little crush,” Flood added, stating that Schwartz’s honesty was “really attractive.”
As viewers of Winter House may have noticed, Schwartz was put off by the fact that Flood had the same name as Maloney throughout the season.
“Honestly, at the start, I didn’t really mind it. We were all very aware of what he was going through. There was a lot going on in every single area of his life, so I was trying to really hold space for that and be mindful to him and have courtesy towards that,” Flood shared. “But it definitely gets [to] a [breaking] point, and it just sucked a little bit.”
Schwartz was “always talking about trying to respect his ex-wife,” she added. “I do have feelings, and it was getting a bit exhausting to keep going through this circle, and I felt a bit disrespected.”
After Malia then said that she was “definitely rooting” for Schwartz and Flood, she acknowledged the fact that his “harping on about his ex-wife” became frustrating.
“[He] can move on respectfully,” she explained. “There’s a way to do that. But I think it was just the name thing for everyone just was really annoying.”
Despite Schwartz’s sometimes annoying antics, and the “roller coaster” they went through on season three, Flood said “everything’s fine” between them now.
“I think a lot of people think it’s this big thing. Vibes are good,” she shared. “We’ve hung out a few times. We chat randomly. There’s no bad blood, nothing there. We had a fun moment and had a fun experience.”
Winter House season three airs on Tuesdays at 9/8c on Bravo.
