'You're not going to be able to please everyone, so why try?’ is Chrishell Stause’s new mantra. The 42-year-old, who experienced homelessness growing up but is now best known for selling luxury homes on Netflix’s reality show Selling Sunset, has learned to grow a thick skin. From fallings out with cast members like Amanza Smith and Mary Fitzgerald, to finding out her husband, This Is Us star Justin Hartley, was divorcing her by text just 45 minutes before the news exploded online, her new laissez- faire attitude is what comes from being one of the most talked about women on TV.
On the last season of Selling Sunset, we saw her navigate the tricky dynamic of staying friends with an ex (and their new, much younger partner) who also happens to be your boss. In this case, 46-year-old Jason Oppenheim, president of the real estate company Selling Sunset is based around. But unlike the nervous Southern belle we saw when Selling Sunset first aired, this time around Chrishell’s had a new voice – confident, self-assured, but still kind as ever.
‘In the beginning, I was really led by fear,’ Chrishell says. ‘I was scared of what I should say and how people would take it... now I just see things differently. I’m living my life for myself... If I mess up, I will have to own up to that and try and do better but I’m confident in my own choices.’
That new-found sense of self was thanks to letting go of people’s opinions after she came out as queer in 2022, and is now married to Australian musician G-Flip, who identifies as non-binary – news that sent the tabloids into a frenzy. ‘Right when the world started to feel like they were going to write me off as this crazy person having a midlife crisis, now we’ve come full circle and people can see that I’m living my authentic life and they’re drawn to that,’ Chrishell says.
But we almost never got to witness those moments. Chrishell says she considered walking away from Selling Sunset back in 2020 when filming season three. ‘It was during Covid and I had just lost my dad, I was going through a divorce and shortly after it aired, I lost my mom,’ Chrishell says. ‘I obviously didn’t want to film a reality show at that point, I didn’t even know what my life was going to be, so I certainly didn’t feel like sharing it with anyone. That being said, it gave me a reason to get out of bed and sometimes, in those moments in life, you need a reason to get out of bed... It was the craziest year to go through and then [do it] all publicly and have everyone’s opinions.’
She also had reservations about returning to the show in the last few seasons, where her feuds became her biggest storylines. ‘It starts to feel like, “What am I doing this for?”’ she admits. ‘[But] it’s just finding that balance of what I get from it versus what I’m putting into it, that’s a mental health balance I try to re-evaluate each season. We just finished filming season eight, so we’ll do another re-evaluation!’
And while she can’t reveal the details of the new season, with friendships still to mend and her long-distance marriage to G-Flip of keen interest to viewers, it promises to be juicy. In the meantime, Chrishell is letting fans in on her life with a new medium: a one-night-only live show at the London Palladium. Hosted by Jack Remmington and Ash Holm, Chrishell Stause: Up Close And Personal will chart her journey from homelessness to fame.
Tickets are available at lwtheatres.co.uk