Howie Mandel Trolls Tom Sandoval Ahead of Ariana Madix Interview

Offering his expertise! Howie Mandel poked fun at himself for his bombshell interview with Tom Sandoval ahead of Ariana Madix’s appearance on Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast.

“I just hope you’ve done your homework,” the America’s Got Talent judge, 76, wrote under Cooper’s latest Instagram post on Tuesday, May 23. The social media upload teased her upcoming Vanderpump Rules-themed interview with Madix, 37, which will drop on Tuesday evening.

Following Mandel’s joke, fans drove to the comments section to laugh at the Canada native’s good sense of humor and appreciate his self-awareness.

“@howiemandel bahaha great hindsight,” one user wrote. Another quipped: “@howiemandel HOWIE 😂😂😂 honey we forgive you, it’s okay 😂.”

The comedian received backlash after his conversation with Sandoval, 40, on his “Howie Mandel Does Stuff Podcast” in April. Mandel brought the Tom Sandoval and the Most Extras frontman on his show to tell his side of the story of his breakup with Madix. The Pump Rules stars called it quits in March after nearly a decade of dating after Madix learned of her ex-boyfriend’s affair with their costar Raquel Leviss.

While speaking with Mandel, Sandoval recalled how his affair with the former beauty queen, 28, began and claimed he attempted to call things off with Madix before the news broke of the cheating scandal. After the podcast aired, fans of the Bravo hit and even some of its stars slammed Mandel for how he handled the conversation.

“It’s not that I don’t dig Howie Mandel. Dope, cool, got it, whatever, but what a weird f–king first interview,” Lala Kent said via her Instagram Stories at the time. “That is so f–king random. Like, the game show host? The one who fist-bumps you because he’s scared of germs?”

Mandel, for his part, addressed Kent’s frustrations while defending his talk with Sandoval the following day.

“It’s funny because they say that I didn’t do homework? It’s very funny because I’m watching some of the people talk about what I did, and they have some very funny takes on me,” Mandel said during an April appearance on Extra. “Lala in her [Instagram] Story … she’s sitting in some hotel room in New York, in the dark, saying that the lighting was bad on my podcast. She’s in the dark! That was her criticism!”

The following month, the former Deal or No Deal host further opened up about his thought process behind the tell-all.

“[Bravo fans] wanted to hear me cross-examine. They wanted me to grill him,” he explained during a May episode of the “The Viall Files” podcast. “The tough thing was and I said to [my daughter and cohost Jackelyn Shultz], ‘If you hear something that you don’t agree with then you can’t challenge. There are no challenges on this particular moment. We are not challenging, that is not what this is about.’”