Tori Spelling and Carmen Electra Bugged Phones to Catch Cheating Boyfriends

On Thursday’s MisSPELLING podcast with guest Britani Bateman of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, Spelling went down memory lane to when she was just 19 years old after Britani’s listening device scandal from her show came up.

Spelling told Bateman that she and Electra were best friends at the time, and they were both dealing with some very “bad” boyfriends — who also happened to be best friends.

“They were always going off and gambling,” Spelling recalled, which she said gave her young mind an idea.

“I went to a spy store because I was like, I know my boyfriend is cheating on me,” she said. “We got a listening device, put it on the phone and recorded.”

The young friends definitely got the tea, just not the tea they were expecting, when they went back to check the device for the “moment of truth.” Spelling explained that “instead — I mean, my boyfriend was cheating on me — but [we] found out her boyfriend was cheating on her.”

Bateman then shared that she’d actually gone to the same lengths with an ex-husband of hers, who she declined to identify, bugging his phone, as well. She added that when she checked on hers, “it was clear,” suggesting he might have been caught cheating, as well.

The recollection of listening devices came up while talking about Meredith Marks accusing Bateman of bugging her hotel room during a RHOSLC cast trip, while Bateman insists she simply heard her costar through the wall.

“It’s so ridiculous that it’s almost not even insulting,” Bateman said of the accusation on Spelling’s podcast. And when she found out Marks was so sure that she apparently searched her room for the non-existent device, she added, “It’s just like, OK, that tells me much more about you than it does about me.”

That, of course, triggered Spelling to remember yet another infamous moment of recording from the show, where Bateman was recording on a sprinter van and got caught by the whole cast.

“It is infamous, you recording,” she said to Bateman.

“I’m not sure how much I can speak to it,” Bateman replied. “Something about that comes out this season. We may or may not be filming and things may or may not be coming out about the recording in the van.”

“So I can’t speak to that,” she added, “but I will.”

As for how that experience resonated with her as a cast newcomer, Bateman said, “It was extremely traumatizing, especially to little ol’ me who was just trying to, like, get her footing in this crazy group of women, and then to just be screamed at like that.”

She said she was “traumatized for a few months” over the incident, which she thought was just innocent fun, before hinting again that “things may or may not be coming out about it.”