Speaker 1: Welcome to when you know, you know, Unleashed, the show
where nothing's off limits because out here there's no FCC
breathing down on next the first guest actually lived through
something different. She didn't choose the spotlight. The spotlight found her,
and it nearly burned her alive. Her name became a
headline before anyone bothered to ask her what actually happened.
She's known for being part of one of the biggest
sports celebrity scandals of all time. I'm talking about Rachel,
you could tell. So Welcome to the podcast. Rachel. So
great to see you, my friend. It has been let's
just say, it's been more than a day. You have
an age, not one bit. I do want to ask
you something because you and I share something very very similar,
and that's being thrust into public light, and interestingly enough,
because nobody prepares you for waking up one morning finding
out that the whole world has an opinion about you
and your life. Take me back to that moment when
you realize that your name was about to become a headline.
You remember when that happened? Unfortunately to me, Yeah, what
was going through your head in those first twenty four
hours and what did you feel emotionally and even physically
at that time.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, Michael, I want to thank you
for having me on your show. Obviously, we've known each
other for a long time. We've been in and out
of each other's lives a little bit, and I'm so
happy to see you where you are now, and it's
an honor to be on your show to answer your question.
I remember that twenty four hours and I remember that
moment really vividly when essentially to put a caption on it,
it was when I knew that my life was about
to change and the person that I was up until
that point would sort of no longer exist.
Speaker 3: My name was.
Speaker 2: Going to precede me in any room, that people were
going to think that they knew me, and they wouldn't
know the whole story, and it was terrifying. So it
was around Thanksgiving of two thousand and and now when
all of a sudden, the news started to report that
Tiger Woods was in an accident, and I'll never forget
getting a phone call a couple hours later from a
reporter saying, I just want to let you know that
the paparazzi is descending upon your apartment right now. If
you want to say something, you should say it right now,
because otherwise we're going to say it for you. And
I hung up the phone. I was by myself, and
I remember panicking. I remember the feeling of my stomach
going in my throat of.
Speaker 3: Not knowing what to do but almost floating.
Speaker 2: As well as panicking because I was like, what does
this mean? You know, I didn't understand the gravity of it.
I didn't understand how big that story was going to be,
and I just knew that I was about to be
under attack, and I felt like this fight or flight mode,
and I mean, it's you know, we could talk for
many hours about that, twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: And we actually have. We actually have talked for many
hours about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have.
Speaker 2: But the biggest thing that I remember is just feeling
like I was completely alone, Like I was scared to
death of what this meant in terms of everything I
had created up until that point. And I was scared
about how to react to people I knew and who
are acquaintances, and then people that didn't know me, because,
as you probably know, everyone wanted to be part of
that story, right Everyone wants to say they know me
they have some story to tell, and I could would
read those things and I would say, how could they
say that?
Speaker 3: How did they get that information? That's not even true.
Speaker 2: Those people didn't even know me, And that was the
thing that I had to wrestle with for many years,
because part of the story is like you become a headline,
but you're no longer a person, And to grapple with
it with friends was different than obviously people that didn't
know me. Yeah, I even had to deal with that
with friends, because it was a moment where I realized that,
you know, I really had to look within and figure
out who I was as a person and what friends
I wanted to keep in my life.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this then, because looking back,
obviously you knew that you were going to be dating
a celebrity. You knew that, of course Tiger was married.
Were you ready to be publicly scrutinized if they found
that out, because it's not like he was an unknown
And let me ask you another part to that question,
what would you tell you yourself in that exact moment when
the two of you had met and decided to see
one another. If you can go back in time right now,
a lot of people ask me that question as it
relates to President Trump. Is there anything that you would
have done differently? You know, not to avoid the situation,
but more to survive it better.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a hard question because I will tell
you that I know I went back in time. Would
I do things differently? Know, because I didn't know any better.
A lot of the lessons you learn as you go
through life, as you have to go through things.
Speaker 1: But if you can go back in time now, knowing
what you know, would you do something differently? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. I mean I would do plenty of
things differently. But at the same time, I will say that,
you know, I haven't. There's a lot of things that
we all know now. There's a lot of stories that
have come out. I personally have spoken I did the
HBO documentary.
Speaker 3: I really only talked.
Speaker 2: About stuff that was A lot of it that I
spoke about was out in public. There's a lot of
parts of the story that I haven't talked about. But
what I will say is that, of course I regret
being the other woman in a marriage. I would never
do that now, I get I talked to listen. Cheating
on your spouse is like a common thing these days.
You kind of see it. People do it all the time.
It's not it seems like it's not that big of
a deal because everyone talks about it and there aren't
consequences like there were back in the day with such
a big story.
Speaker 3: I would never do that.
Speaker 2: I don't associate with those kind of people or scenarios.
I don't get involve. I don't condone it, but I
understand it. I understand.
Speaker 3: Listen.
Speaker 2: I met Tiger through Derek Jeter, and I met Tiger
when he was dating other people.
Speaker 3: So I was in a world and that I don't.
Speaker 2: Want to get myself in trouble here, But like I
was in a world of running nightclubs.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember that.
Speaker 2: So I ran tow in Las Vegas and then eighteen
other places were places where I was the director of
VIP operations. I only dealt with high rollers or celebrities,
and I was their gatekeeper and their wing woman.
Speaker 3: Would I do it again?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was an amazing job.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: You know, people ask me that. The reason I'm asking
this question is because people ask me all the time.
Knowing what you know and what happened to you meaning
the total destruction of my life. Would you do something
different as it, for example, related to the payment to
Stormy Daniels And I constantly say no, I would not.
I would not do anything different. I understand the consequences
I do, but I knew what I was doing in
terms of an NDA, something a nondisclosure agreement, something that
is done routinely. The only difference, the only one difference
which caused me to ultimately be charged federally under campaign
finance is the fact that Donald J. Trump became President
of the United States. So no, I would not have
done anything different to protect a friend, which sort of
brings me to a different question, because there is a
difference between being talked about and being misrepresented. You were misrepresented.
I believe I was misrepresented literally going from the Steele
dossier all the way to the end. How much of
what the world thought that it knew about you was
actually true?
Speaker 2: Well, I think I think the biggest misconception is that
they think they knew me because of a headline, and
that just wasn't true. Listen, Obviously I was involved in,
you know, in a relationship with somebody, and that was true.
Speaker 1: But who who was married you who was married and
you were not.
Speaker 2: Right who was married and I was not, But I don't.
I also want to be very clear, like I'm not
a victim in any situation.
Speaker 3: I did something that I do feel bad about, but.
Speaker 2: At the same time, I have reconciled, I've done the
work to know that the only person I needed to
apologize to was the wife, and that is who I
owed my apology to and who I've learned a lesson.
So to go back to your first question of if
I would ever do it again, I would not do
that again. I would not be another woman again. But
the other things that I did to survive that scenario
I had to learn and get through to live my
life and be who I am now. I'm very proud
of the person I am now. I'm very proud of
those situations. So like you, you know, I know the
situation you went through. I actually and I think we've
talked about this. You know, Stormy with somebody I knew
in Las Vegas, and she contacted me right after she
was with mister Truck, and you know, she wanted to
sell that story years before, and so I understood the
whole thing that was going on. You know, and you're right,
because you became president is how this.
Speaker 3: All got us into a situation.
Speaker 2: But this is things that we were all dealing with
and we all kind of surrounded ourselves with back in
the day, and it wasn't a big deal. So now
I'm forgetting the question you just asked me at the
end of there.
Speaker 1: Well, let me change it a little bit and ask you,
did you ever try to correct the record? Because there
was much information that was being said about you that
was inaccurate. Yeah, did you ever try to correct the record?
And more importantly, what do you want right now? Using
this massive platform that we have right here on WABC
with my when you know, you know, unleashed, what do
you want them to know about? Like the person who
I know, the Rachel you could tell that I know
who you really are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen. The thing is is it's very
complicated because I spent years trying to correct the record.
The problem was is I had a thirty five page NDA,
and part of that NDA was not even acknowledging that
I had anything to do with this person or the situation,
and the cuffing of that, the clamping of being able
to verbalize that saying listen, I'm not even allowed to
talk about that. That was breaking the NDA. So a
huge part of my story that a lot of people
don't realize is that this misconception that came with me,
all these terrible words of you know, homewrecker and mistress
and whore and whatever people wanted to name the woman
right was so not who I was. And not only
could I just not defend myself, I couldn't even correct
the truth of what happened. And that has been the
worst thing. And I you know, I get very heavily
involved in conversations that have to do with NDAs because
people really don't understand them. And I believe that they
serve a purpose and there is a good reason for some,
but I do think, for example, the one that I
signed as a young woman, that thought, oh, this payment
is going to be like, you know, a scarlet letter.
This is what is worth the scarlet letter that I'm
going to have to live with, became the problem that
I had.
Speaker 3: In general.
Speaker 2: It was worse than the situation because it prevented me
from being able to get my credibility back. And the credibility,
as you know, is a thing that is so damaging.
And when you turn your lights off a night and
you go to sleep and you put your head on
the pillow, Michael, you know that all those things are
going through your head and you want to explain yourself.
But when you have an NDA, you cannot, not even
to my mother, not to a friend, not to a husband,
I couldn't racion.
Speaker 1: You want to hear something really funny. You know the
NDA that I did would Stormy Daniels. You know that
I patterned it after the NTA that Tiger had given
to you, with the pseudonyms and so on. I thought
it was actually brilliant, right, and to have a side
letter whereby you can use it when I read about
the NDA, and so I just like, hey, this is
really a great idea in terms of how to do it,
because you don't want a document floating around out there
that maybe somebody gets their hand on. So there's only
that one paid pseudonym explanation. But I actually want to
finish by asking you because you very much like a
Monica Lewinsky story where her life was defined by a
single moment. A single moment. People don't know the real Rachel.
You could tell they didn't know all the accomplishments that
you had in your job, and all of the incredible
people that you had a chance to meet and to
help and to do things for. I want you to
finish by telling the audience what's one piece of advice
that you rachel you could tell would give to someone
who might be actually one bad headline away from something
that's going to go wrong and terribly wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, if they're one bad headline away, I would say,
think before you make your next step, and maybe think
about what you have and how that's going to feel
when you lose it, and how your credibility is going
to feel when you lose it. The other thing I
will say on another part of that question, though, is
if these headlines happen, whether it's in your own community
or in the public, I personally believe that silence is
not your friend. I think that owning your narrative, owning
your voice is the most important way you're going to
get out of it and hitting rock bottom. People don't
want to hit rock then they don't want to go
through the uncomfortable as you.
Speaker 3: I think know going through.
Speaker 2: That is the only way to understand life and to
on the only way to figure out wait a minute,
what are the mistakes that I made, what's worth it,
what's not, and how.
Speaker 3: I'm going to live going forward. So, just like you,
a lot of things.
Speaker 2: To go back to your other question, I don't regret
because I know how to get myself out of any situation. Now,
just like you, you can decide if you want to
be friends with somebody, if you want to reconcile, if
you want to move forward with things, because you have
the knowledge of what happened in the past, and you know.
For me, it's like I want to tell people that
are in situations like this, you got to own your narrative.
You can't be persuaded by people that want you to
say certain things. You can't say things just to get
out of a situation. You got to own what you
did wrong first, and then you got to be able
to move forward and be like, here's my story. But
my past doesn't define me. It just might make me
more interesting. But the past literally creates who I am
in the future and who I am now.
Speaker 1: Well so interesting, well, so interesting that Rachel Yucatel has
a number one podcast that's out there. You want to
give yourself a nice little plug here, sure, which I,
by the way, expect to be on very very soon.
Speaker 2: Yes, I am very excited to have you. And part
of the reason I created a show like this, it's
called Misunderstood with Rachel yu Cautel. It's about people who
have been reduced to a headline and their on a
mission to change their narrative about the complexities of the
human nature and the power of second chances. And so
we have everybody from politicians to athletes, to actors to
reality stars and sometimes ordinary people with extraordinary stories. We're
number one in entertainment news right now and I can't
wait to have.
Speaker 1: You on well and too Felon. So thank you so
much Rachel for joining me on when you know, you know, unleashed.
I appreciate it, and I would love to also one
of these days have you on my talk show here
on seventy seven WABC on Sundays at five pm. Can't wait, Rachel,
I really appreciate you sharing your story. You know, the
parts that make you look good, the parts that make
good television, the parts that clearly still cost you something
to talk about. And that's what the show is for
my friends. That's Rachel, you could tell. So if you
take one thing from this conversation, just one. Let it
be this, that the person behind the headline is never
the actual whole story, and we'll see you next time,
right here on when you know, you know, leashed