Max Boyens wouldn’t call his tricky relationships with Scheana Shay, 34, and Dayna Kathan, 29, a “love triangle,” despite what played out on the Season 8 premiere of Vanderpump Rules on Jan. 7. That’s what TomTom’s general manager EXCLUSIVELY told HollywoodLife, saying that it was instead “more of a jealousy triangle that [Scheana] was trying to create out of nowhere.” You see, the season opened with Dayna, then a hostess at TomTom, dropping a big bombshell on her co-workers: she slept with Max, the GM of their restaurant! Meanwhile, Scheana admitted in the episode to “briefly dat[ing]” Max, but she seemed bitter over how their dalliance ended. After all, he apparently “ghosted” her.
Max clarified to HollywoodLife that his fling with Scheana “ended a long time ago,” prior to him hiring Dayna. “So we [Max and Scheana] were seeing each other and no, it was prior to anything of knowing who Dayna was,” he explained. But that didn’t seem so clear when Dayna overheard something very interesting at Tom Sandoval and Katie Maloney’s housewarming party in the season premiere: Max and Scheana were taking a trip to Palm Springs together, according to Scheana herself! This rubbed Dayna the wrong way, understandably, which she explained further in our interview.
Answering why the Palm Springs trip seemed “weird,” Dayna told HollywoodLife, “Because [Max and Scheana] have had a history and Scheana was very mean to me right up front, and it was clearly because of Max.” Dayna went so far as to add that Scheana was “threatened” and “jealous” of her! So, when Dayna learned about the desert getaway, she was left scratching her head. “Obviously if you were about to start hanging out with someone [Max] and like each other and [are] sleeping with each other and then you find out they are going on something that sounds like a couples trip, with someone they used to sleep with, then it is like, ‘What is this about?'” However, in the premiere, Max insisted that he wouldn’t be alone on the mini vacation with Scheana.
Love triangle, jealousy triangle, or whatever it is, Dayna could see the “red flags,” which she admitted on the show. But the aspiring stand-up comic couldn’t resist Max’s charm. “I mean, he is very charming, he is as cute as a button and he ignored me a lot initially and that really caught my attention,” Dayna told HollywoodLife, answering why she fell for Max. The general manager also made it very clear that he wasn’t interested in giving his romance with Scheana a second go, despite their Palm Springs plans. He called her “very boy crazy” at Tom and Katie’s party, but not to her face — regardless, the hurtful comment still led to a tearful confrontation after Scheana caught wind of Max’s jab!