Work-Life Boundaries Are The New Hero Of Selling Sunset

In the history of reality television, “I’m an independent contractor” hardly seems like the juiciest mic drop. Chrishell Stause blurted out these words toward the end of Selling Sunset’s seventh and latest season, after getting heat from some cast members for skipping a team dinner that, had she shown up, would likely have ended in a shouting match with one of the season’s villains. In defending herself and clarifying her professional obligations, however, Chrishell has shaken up a franchise that already asks viewers to suspend disbelief about what’s real and what’s just for cameras. Can the stars of a reality show about inter-co-worker drama have healthy work-life boundaries and still make compelling TV?

If you’ve ever tried to be a part of the American workforce, chances are you have heard a company describe itself not merely as a workplace, but as a family. And if you’ve watched Netflix’s Selling Sunset, you have heard it frequently applied to the Oppenheim Group, a real estate brokerage run by two short bald kings with an army of glamazon agents whose work attire makes Lady Gaga’s meat dress look tastefully modest.

In the real world, that “we’re a family here” mentality, perpetuated most often by American small businesses and startups, is now often recognized as a potential red flag. It is true that, like a family, you don’t get to choose your co-workers, and over time, you do get to know them quite intimately, maybe more intimately than you’d like. But companies can use that “family” image to guilt or pressure employees into working longer hours, going far outside their job description, or putting up with dysfunction without appropriate compensation or recourse.

Those boundaries have never really applied to reality stars, whose very success depends on mixing the personal and professional. Long hours, lots of tequila, catty fights — for many, that’s just another Tuesday, and worth it for both the paycheck and the platform it brings.

And they’ve never really applied to the Oppenheim Group, either, partly because it is a literal family business, with multi-generational roots, built by identical twins Jason and Brett. (Brett has his own brokerage now but still appears on the show.) The brothers wax nostalgic this season about how their original vision for their Sunset Boulevard office included hiring their friends so they could all hang out at work; early employees Mary Fitzgerald, Amanza Smith, and Nicole Young (who joined the main cast in Season 6) have all either dated or hooked up with Jason. The porous boundary between their work and non-work lives is probably what made the Oppenheim Group ripe for reality TV in the first place.

But as the Oppenheim empire and the show itself have grown — there are new office expansions, as well as a spinoff, Selling The O.C., which premiered last year — some of its cast members are wondering how to embrace the spotlight without the messiness that drives it.

Chief among them is Chrishell, who is in many ways the backbone of the show — she starts working at the brokerage in the series’ first episode — and also went on to date Jason for five months in 2021. Following their breakup, her Oppenheim Group devotion cooled. She fell in love with her now-spouse, the musician G Flip, and remembered that having a happy, fulfilling life outside of the office is pretty great, actually. She also clashed fiercely with new cast member Nicole, which only reinforced that epiphany. At the end of Season 6, Mary — who at this point has had her own struggles with the pressures of her job — chides Chrishell for not doing more to help out with a company project. “How is that being a total team player?” she asks. “It’s not,” Chrishell answers.

‘This is what you signed up for’ is a common refrain for reality stars who complain about the tolls of the job. But now more than ever, those stars are reevaluating the trade-offs.

Things only got more tense this season, when Jason’s new girlfriend, Marie-Lou Nurk, claimed Chrishell was cold to her and asked Chrishell to try for a cordial relationship, if not a friendship, for Jason’s sake. A surprised Chrishell disputed her recollections, but a lunch to hash things out only descended into cringe-inducing chaos. Chrishell threw her hands up: If her presence at office social gatherings was just going to cause awkwardness with her ex/boss and his new partner, she’d pull back. (Marie-Lou and Jason have since broken up.)

So on a cast trip to Cabo, Chrishell booked separate accommodations from her co-workers, who stayed together in a rented mega-villa. She also opted out of a dinner where cast members were expected to show for the usual vague reason: Team-building? Office morale? Something to film? In return, colleagues like Amanza demanded explanations and called her out for not making an effort.

Chrishell isn’t alone in this fight. Her blunt-talking colleague Bre Tiesi also questioned how much her professional life should absorb her personal life. Since Bre joined the show in its sixth season, her nontraditional family structure with Nick Cannon, with whom she has a son, has been the subject of gossipy commentary from co-star Chelsea Lazkani. This season, Chelsea tries to bring an agent at another company, Cassandra Dawn, into the group and seems to delight in pushing Cassandra on a disinterested Bre. (Cassandra says she and Bre know each other from previous jobs and feels put-off; Bre thinks she’s being overly familiar and keeps her distance.) It all results in Bre’s explosive walk-off during the finale, and a confrontation with Jason about her future with the O Group. She challenges him about the commission split between agents and the company and threatens to leave, but it’s not just that she could get a bigger cut of deals elsewhere; it’s that the pay structure isn’t worth “that sh*t,” as she puts it — having to repeatedly defend her family to co-workers, and being forced to interact outside of the office with people she has no interest in getting to know.

The reactions have been mixed. Chrishell is easy to root for, and her arguments are sound, but some fans wonder what will happen to the show if one of its main stars refuses to engage in the drama we tune in for. (What, you thought this show was actually about houses?) And you’d probably be thinking about a new job, too, if your coworkers insisted on inserting themselves into your business, but Bre must have known that her personal life and romantic history — she was previously married to NFL star Johnny Manziel before she had a family with Cannon — was probably a reason she was cast in the first place. “This is what you signed up for” is a common refrain for reality stars who complain about the tolls of the job or withhold an element of their lives from the cameras. But now more than ever, those stars are reevaluating the trade-offs: Inspired by the dual Hollywood strikes this year, former Real Housewives of New York City star Bethenny Frankel in July called for reality stars to unionize, arguing that they aren’t getting a fair deal for turning their lives into such lucrative content.

Bre, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the season’s reunion, said her future with the O Group is still up in the air. At the finale party celebrating the new O Group office, Chrishell seemed to outline a future with her co-stars in which she’d come to the big important stuff, but not every dinner or cast event. Presumably, she’ll still take time away from the office to travel with G-Flip on tour or to the musician’s native Australia, like she did between seasons; as she clarified this season, she can do a lot of work remotely.

Contributing to the action without getting dragged down by it is a dance every reality star does to some degree. But Chrishell has drawn her line so clearly this season, it’s hard to tell where she goes from here, or how much she even wants to be on the show. In this way, Selling Sunset could be getting much more real about the workplace than we realized: Perhaps we’re watching a docuseries about one woman’s journey to quiet quitting.