Selling Sunset's Mary Fitzgerald Reveals What We'll See Next Season - Exclusive Interview
If you're anything like us, then you've probably been counting down the hours until the next season of "Selling Sunset." This Netflix original series has been such a massive hit, it wasn't renewed for just a fourth season, but a fifth season too. For those unfamiliar, the show follows real estate agents at The Oppenheim Group, a team of glamorous, brilliant, and successful home sellers. But they don't sell just any homes — they're selling LA's most expensive, most impressive houses and making a pretty penny in commissions. While we don't have a confirmed premiere date just yet, sources speculate that the new season might be dropping in fall of this year (via Cheat Sheet).
The List sat down with Mary Fitzgerald, one of the show's popular real estate agents, for an exclusive interview. She generously shared a few teasers about what we can expect from the upcoming season, as well as some more personal information about her relationships.
The cast of Selling Sunset is heading to Europe
How are you doing, Mary? What have you been up to recently?
Well, just working and we pretty much just finished filming Season 4 and getting ready to go on Sunday to Europe.
That's exciting.
Yeah. A big group of us from the show are going. I think it's like me, Chrishell, Emma, Amanza, then Jason, Brett, Romain. And then Brett's girlfriend, Tina. So there's going to be a good group of us and we're going to Italy and then to Greece. And so it'll be a lot of fun. We get a couple of weeks.
That's so nice.
Yeah. We get a couple of weeks off between Season 4 and 5.
Nice. So no cameras here? This is just for fun?
Well, they are actually coming out for a couple of days in Greece because it's Chrishell's and my birthday and we're having a big party there. So Adam was like, we are coming. They just made it a smaller crew that's going to come. And we're only letting them do it for a couple of days, for half the day on two days, but because it's going to be such an amazing location and it's something that he just really wants to capture because it's true to us. So it'll be fun. We're going to allow him to do that, but it is our vacation. So we're not going to let him stay.
Right. Well, I'm glad that you get some of it to yourself, but selfishly, I'm glad we get to see a little bit of it. Is this going to be your first time going to Europe since the pandemic? Or have you done any more traveling?
Well, it's the first time I've actually vacationed in Europe since the pandemic, but Romain and I have gone to France quite a few times to see his family.
Mary Fitzgerald's work in real estate keeps her busy
So when the cameras aren't rolling, what are you typically busy with? What do you spend your time doing?
Working.
Well, when you're not working.
I deal with clients, I'm working with clients, and I guess working, doing all the other stuff, trying to keep up with Instagram and all the posting and collaborations. And then when time permits, hanging out, trying to see my husband because we're both working so much. We don't get a ton of time together, but we try to do something special as much as possible and coordinate dinner or something like that. And then yeah, tonight I've got a girls' night, just people are coming over to my house and having some wine.
Nice. So you do give yourself downtime and you give yourself weekends?
We don't really have normal schedules. So a lot of times we work on the weekends. Open houses have been allowed again. So last weekend, I did an open house on Sunday. And then depending, for example, this Saturday, I've got a photo shoot, so there's not a lot of downtime.
Right. You got to get it when you have it. Can you talk a little bit about how the pandemic has affected your job and then if we're going to see any of that in Season 4?
Yeah. Well, it definitely has impacted my job, but luckily real estate agents are essential workers. So is construction, so Romain and I have continued to work throughout the pandemic. The market's actually just been on fire. So we've been busier than ever, both of us. And so we're blessed as far as that goes, but we've had to change the way we do things, having masks, having every buyer and seller sign off on waivers every single time we show a property. It's just caused some differences, some challenges, and then no brokers opens, no open houses.
So that makes things a little bit more difficult. Where we would normally get a lot of agents in there to be able to talk to their clients about the property. And then also doing open houses. You get a lot of new clients that way. So it has its own challenges, but we've continued to move forward and just stayed super, super busy throughout the whole pandemic.
The pandemic affected the Selling Sunset star's work in real estate
I know that the market right now is crazy. It's in a place that it's really never been in before. And even on a smaller scale — for example, my parents just sold their house and it sold in two days, which they weren't expecting. And they were so surprised by that. So I couldn't help but wonder how that must ... you must be busy as is when the market isn't as it is now. I wonder how it's affected your day to day and how it's affected your work.
Yeah. Well, it depends on the price point and the higher price points, it depends. Things aren't moving as quickly and I would say $3 million and under that you can't keep them on the market for more than, like you said, a couple of days going way over asking, multiple offers. I've got clients that we've probably put in 20 different offers on different homes and they're going up against 20 to 30 offers at the same time, and they're all cash. They're going over asking, and it is so difficult to go up against. There's just so many buyers. Everyone's trying to take advantage of the interest rates. And then people have made a lot of money in the stock market and just in whatever businesses in general.
And so there's a lot of buyers out there and not enough supply. So that has been interesting. It's definitely a seller's market in the $3 million under range. So it makes me a lot busier because normally you show your client around and they find a house they like. You'd go in hard and get them the house. And so you're kind of done. This time you're just continuously showing properties, writing offers, show more properties, writing offers. So it's very tedious, but I've got two assistants right now. I've got my normal assistant and an intern for the summer to try to help keep everything moving and organized during filming and with all these additional items that we have to do because of the market. So everything's still working and moving forward, but I've had to put things in place to be able to keep up with it.
I bet. And then switching gears a little bit, what do you think makes the real estate scene in LA unique to anywhere else in the world?
Oh, well, I mean, ... I think just the lavish kind of lifestyles. The homes are just beautiful with amazing views. All the Hollywood Hills homes, you always get these incredible views. And of course, we sell a lot of homes that don't make it on the show. They're great homes, but they go through and see everything that we're selling and showing. And they pick the ones that are the best, that have the most wow factor. So I've probably sold, I don't know, 10 or 15 other homes since we started filming that just don't make it on. But if it's a celebrity home or just something spectacular then we use those instead.
A lot happens off camera that audiences don't see on Selling Sunset
Is there anything else that happens behind the scenes that we don't get to see that happen off camera?
Yeah. Well yeah, there's a lot. I don't know what's actually going to air because we filmed so much and it's edited down to just either what they think is the most important or follows the storyline. And we never really know what's going to happen because one of us can have something happen in our lives, and then everything switches gears and focuses towards that. Where we, at the beginning of the season, we're like, okay, this is what's happening in all of our lives. So they come up with a game plan of what they want to show and when and where the cameras are going to be. And then life happens, things change. And so everything else changes too. And so they edit things out. Like last season, Heather and I both went through a lot of the testing and stuff for our fertility. Heather did the whole egg retrieval, everything like that.
And all of it was cut out because Chrishell ended up getting divorced. And so there was a lot of stuff that happened in our personal lives that no one ever got to see. So again, next season, I never went through. I've been too busy this season, but I do need to. I'm going to freeze my embryos or our embryos and stuff. So I'm willing to do it on camera. I don't know if they'll want to film it. And even if they do film it, if it'll get aired. It depends on what happens with everybody. So, yeah, there's a lot that goes on with a lot of us.
I'm just excited to hear that for you.
Yeah. Well, we're not trying to get pregnant anytime soon. It would be a couple years, but ... I'm getting ready to turn 41 and I need to prioritize it no matter how busy I am. We're going to not even have the chance whenever we are ready, so I have to prioritize it. So, yeah.
And you want to make an option for your future self if that's what you decide.
Exactly.
Does Mary Fitzgerald watch episodes of Selling Sunset?
Do you ever watch the show? Do you sit down and just watch it on a weekend?
Not really. I will watch our wedding.
That's sweet.
I've watched it quite a few times, especially around our anniversary. I've done it if we get in an argument and I'm in a funk and then I'm like, you know what? I know this always makes me get out of it, so I'll watch it. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. All right.
Oh my God.
I'm over it. I love him.
Even the other way around you can be like, "Hey, watch this back. This is what you said, this is what you sound like."
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it does. I do do that. And then we get a chance to watch the show before it airs, just so that we are prepared, I guess. We start doing interviews and it comes out because a lot of times we don't know what happens when in scenes that we're not there. So we have to, they give us a chance to prepare ourselves because someone like Christian could say or do something, we have no idea. And then we're blindsided when people start asking, if we don't get a chance to see it. So yeah, so we do watch it then. And then normally we'll have a season launch party where we've all had a chance to see it, but we typically have it playing on some projector and we just throw a big party and all hang out together and celebrate the new season.
Yeah. We've done it in different ways, but it'll be on again. We let our friends and family see it all together.
That's fun.
Yeah.
This is how Selling Sunset began
How has your experience been working with Netflix? And can you tell me a little bit about when you were initially approached by Netflix and found out that your job was going to be turned into a show essentially?
Well, it took a while. It was in the works for a while before we actually started filming, because Adam DiVello is the one that actually approached us. Jason had been approached by a couple of different people before with ideas of a show. He turned everybody down, just didn't think it was going to be the right kind of fit. And he was just nervous. It would tarnish our reputation, a luxury brand that he's worked really hard to create. And then Adam saw a photo of us in some, I think it was Variety magazine or something like that, where Jason had just advertised the real estate brokerage and he saw a picture and he was like, oh my God, they can't be real. So he asked for a meeting. He'd always kind of been interested in real estate, wanted to do a show. And we knew his reputation from "Laguna Beach" and "The Hills." And we knew that he is just [a] mastermind with reality. And so we sat down, heard him out and his idea of women in real estate and focusing on that, badasses if you will, and women empowerment, we were like, okay, well, this is a different idea, a different spin. Season 4, I think you'll see more women empowerment.
But even with that drama, that doesn't take away at all from the message of you all being, as you said, badass women in real estate. It doesn't matter if you're bickering.
Yeah. So we went ahead and we liked his idea and he wanted to see if we all had personalities that could carry a show and he decided that, yeah, he decided that we did. So we did a sizzle reel and he pitched it around. It took about, I don't know, six months after we did this the sizzle reel to pitch it around to different networks. Ultimately Netflix decided to pick it up and that's who we all had hoped for anyway. It was our dream to be on a Netflix show once we had this idea in our head, and yeah, that's how it got started.
Mary Fitzgerald dishes about ex-boyfriend Jason Oppenheim
That's awesome. And then on the topic of Jason. Some people struggle to be cordial with their exes, be friends with their exes, let alone work with them in a professional setting. So did it take you time to get used to that and or is that just so in the past it's not even something you think of anymore?
No, honestly. It's so in the past, I don't think of Jason at all like as my ex-boyfriend. He's one of my absolute best friends. We co-parent our dogs together. He's like a brother to Romain. We're just like a family and I don't even think of him like that, but he is extremely close to us. And I understand in the beginning how people want to understand being able to work together. I think we have always been able to work together like that because we just have like the utmost respect for each other. Even right when we broke up, we've always respected each other above everything else.
I think part of it, we never did anything wrong. He just wasn't able to commit. He always respected me. Because he wasn't able to commit and couldn't be in a relationship doesn't mean that I should hate him. We loved each other. So why not have the person in your life?
Right. You're both so fond of each other and that comes through, and this modern concept of rather than it being an ugly breakup, it's a conscious uncoupling. You're just choosing to not be together anymore. And that doesn't mean that anybody did anything wrong. There's not anything ugly.
We just weren't right for each other in a romantic relationship, but we are definitely right for each other in a friendship and in each other's lives.
And I think we both knew that we are meant to be in each other's lives in some aspect. And maybe dating, we didn't, we got it wrong by dating. We were just supposed to be friends, but you have to live and learn. So, it did take about six months to be able, when we first broke up, to be able to transition into seeing him with other girls and being able to be out and be his wing girl and stuff like that. I didn't jump into it. I wouldn't be that mature, but I understood. But it takes a little transition period, but I would say after six months, we were fine. And once you wrap your head around the new dynamic of the relationship, it's been better than ever. I never wanted to go back to that because we have the exact same relationship just basically without sex and jealousy, so ...
Right.
I mean, but now.
No, that totally makes sense.
We're closer now than we were when we dated.
What makes Selling Sunset such a hit?
That's a really refreshing response. Thanks for answering that. So I can speak from personal experience that "Selling Sunset" has been personally, like one of my all-time favorite shows and it helped me get through the pandemic. What do you think it is about the show that people just love? The fact that it was renewed for a fourth season and a fifth season, people love it. What do you think it is about it?
I think that it touches on there's something for everybody. I think it's real estate p**n and women, just fashion, and relationships, and then just like LA lifestyle. I think the way that the cinematography that they do that we just have a team that just makes everything look so beautiful. And it's just a fun show to watch. And it truly just has something for everybody. I see young girls that aspire to be successful and it's motivating to some people. And then I've got people in their 70s, that reach out. They're like, oh my gosh, I watched this with my daughter and granddaughter. And I don't know, I think it just has something for everybody.
Yeah, I think you're totally right. And is there anything that you can tell me about what we can expect from the season and is it going to be different to any of the seasons we've seen before?
Yeah, I do, honestly, I think this is going to be the best season so far. Because normally living through it, we're just living our lives, so I forget everything that happens once I watch it. I'm like, oh my god, I forgot all about that. This season I feel like I've just been blindsided like every step of the way. There's so much going on, but I think you're going to see a lot more celebrity clients, a lot more amazing homes, different relationship dynamics. We've got two new agents that joined and then we also see just a shift in previous relationships and growth of people, I think, in certain ways.
I think you're going to see a lot more of us being just strong women, taking a stance on things dealing with the pandemic. Yeah, it's going to be fun.
Is there a celebrity that you would love to work with? If they emailed you and asked you to sell them a house, who would you want?
Oh, wow. I would say, well, Prince Harry is over here now. He's in the Montecito area. So I would love to sell them a house.
Oh my god. Can you imagine? That would be so fun.
I know, I know. I'm a huge, huge fan of them. So that would be incredible.
Mary Fitzgerald tells us all about her relationships with the other agents
Can you tell me at all about some of your relationships with some of the other agents on the show?
Yeah. Well, I've got a great relationship with everybody really, but, Christina and I haven't really got back on track. Yeah. I think you'll see me really trying and confused about some things that have happened, but the two new agents, I absolutely adore both of them and you'll see me getting them integrated into the office, helping them feel comfortable. Some drama with some of it too, not related to me. And then, yeah, obviously Amanza has been one of my best friends for 20 years. Chrishell and Heather and I are all very close. Emma is one of the new agents and I've known her for about five years. She's one of my really good friends. She's a total sweetheart. I think everyone's going to absolutely love her. Yeah. I think there's a lot of people that I would say I get along with pretty much everybody.
I think that's definitely clear from the show. Can you remind me how you met Amanza? Because I know that you have been friends for so long, but I can't remember hearing how you guys met.
Oh God. Well, it was when we first moved to LA. She's actually from Indiana and she used to date one of my old friends and we didn't know each other in Indiana, but he used to show me pictures of her. So when we met just at a party here in LA 20 years ago, I was like, you look so familiar and finally we figured it out and then we started talking and we've been friends ever since. We've been roommates over the years.
And yeah, she's like my soulmate in a girl form, but we've just loved each other and been through just about everything together over the last 20 years. And she's the one that actually introduced me to Brett and Jason.
Oh, cool.
But 15 years ago, yeah. We all met at a barbecue on her rooftop.
Oh my gosh.
And I met them for the first time then.
Wow, what a small world to meet her that way. That is so serendipitous.
Oh yeah. It happened a couple of different times. Funny enough. Because then years later when we were living together, we saw photos of when we both went back, it was right before I moved to LA and she went back to Indiana. It was like the 500. And we were all standing, my sister and I had a photo with Amanza and JC who she was dating at the time in the background. And we remember, we were like, oh my gosh. We were standing here talking to each other the whole time.
Oh my God.
And it was before I'd even moved out. So we'd had multiple run-ins together and we didn't even realize it.
That is blowing my mind.
Yeah. I know. We were meant to be in each other's lives.
You really were. Yeah, life kept putting you in the same space and you guys finally made the connection.
Yes.
"Selling Sunset" is available to stream on Netflix.