Reza Farahan, 47, has some thoughts about his Shahs of Sunset co-star Mike Shouhed‘s text message drama! It all started when Mike began texting another woman and his current girlfriend Paulina Ben-Cohen found out — then sent Mike’s cast mates 19 screen shots as proof. “As soon as I looked at my phone, my hands started to quiver,” Reza told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY during an episode of TVTalk as we celebrated our 100th episode on Instagram Live on May 24. “My stomach started to sour. I started salivating and gulping like someone was slicing a lemon but they weren’t. I needed Pepto Bismol. That’s how I was feeling,” he added.
On the May 23 episode, Paulina sent Reza along with Destiny Rose, 37, and Golnessa “GG” Gharachedaghi, 39, proof that Mike had been texting with another woman. Mike tried to say they were fake and even blamed it on his iCloud. After he attempted to tell his friends he wasn’t on What’sApp, Nema Vand, 33, showed in his confessional that was not at all the case. Mike has since admitted the sexting did in fact occur, citing he and Paulina were not in the best of places.
When Paulina first came to Mike’s BFFs, Reza knew right away that his co-star was going to somehow turn it on the group rather than accept responsibility for his actions. “All I kept thinking was, you know somehow, ‘we’re all going to get blamed for this. It’s all going to be our fault,'” Reza said. “We watched you go through some stuff with Jessica. Golnessa coming through with the wisdom, trying to talk some sense, but Mike at this point I think was just trying to keep everything together and he wasn’t there. So, with all of that said, I just was very sad and alarmed and in disbelief but in my head I kept hearing that song, ‘Whoop There It Is’ and at the end it goes, ‘Whoop there it is and I thought she knew’ so I thought it was a song that we enjoyed a long time ago. By enjoy, I think I meant overheard, played too many times and it gets stuck again and this time, when it came back around again, it was like, ‘What club are we at?’ We need to get the eff out of here. With the What’s App it’s like the iCloud. I thought this is just my friend being very creative.”
For Reza, he can relate to Paulina so he felt he needed to jump in and help as much as he could. “This situation with Mike & Paulina triggers some deep things from my childhood,” the author of Memoirs of a Gay Shah said. “Paulina has kids…I was writing a book about [my own childhood] while this was playing out and for me, this came out like a puss ridden cyst and everything came and shot right out at Mike. This stuff affects me deeply because of my dad’s infidelity. My issues with Mike never involve the act, it’s the cover up. When someone isn’t honest with me or a dog ate my homework kind of thing, I always think to them, ‘Does my friend think I’m dumb?’ It almost insults my intelligence. Mike likes loyalty. It’s hard sometimes because you love the friend but you don’t love the actions.”
From the looks of things on social media, Mike and Paulina are back on track and Reza couldn’t be happier as we continue to see the relationship drama unfold during season 9. “She’s a snack piece and a dime piece!” Reza added of Paulina. “We love her! She was a breath of fresh air because we’ve done seen many, many ladies and some of them I use the term a little more loose. A lot of them are ladies, but we were very happy when Paulina joined Mike and then came into the circle. We were very happy. We love Paulina. We don’t want Paulina going anywhere.”
Shahs of Sunset airs Sunday nights at 8pm on Bravo.