It's only taken one teaser for the new season of Selling Sunset to illustrate why fans are so obsessed with Chrishell Stause's character arc. She went from being the calmest and most agreeable agent at the Oppenheim Group to a confident and vocal defender of the LGBTQ+ community in the space of a few seasons.
In the clip, Chrishell Stause, who previously dated agency co-founder Jason Oppenheim, is seen having a heated argument with Jason's then-girlfriend Marie-Lou Nurk. While the pair are out for lunch, Marie-Lou accuses Chrishell of being unfriendly towards her and goes on to misgender Chrishell's non-binary wife, Georgia 'G Flip' Flipo, which Chrishell does not take kindly to.
Marie-Lou accuses Chrishell of calling her jealous and claims the estate agent never asks her any questions about herself. Marie-Lou then says 'but she was nice to me' in reference to G Flip and Chrishell corrects her and says, 'my partner's non binary, they use they/them pronouns. This is a simple thing.'
She adds, 'And this is the depth of our relationship, where the most important person in my life, you don't know their pronouns, which is totally fine. But my point is that you also don't know me. I'm not going to be your friend. I don't have anything in common with you.'
For fans of Selling Sunset, Chrishell confidently wearing her opinions and standing up for what she cares about is a side of her that we haven't really seen in previous seasons. When she first joined the show in 2019, she was in a seemingly happy marriage to This Is Us star Justin Hartley and was definitely one of the quieter agents. Even the fallout of their marriage, which came as a big surprise to both the cast and the audience, was dealt with without much drama.
Then in July 2021, Chrishell briefly dated her on-screen boss Jason, but the pair split later that year when Jason decided he didn't want to start a family. Following their break up, Chrishell got into a relationship with Australian rapper G Flip and they got married in May 2023.
And ever since G Flip and the Selling Sunset star met, she seems to have really come out of her (chri)shell. The person fans see now seems happier, more confident and more determined to vocalise her opinions on gender, identity and sexuality – both on and off the show. So the argument with Marie-Lou in season seven doesn't come as a total surprise, but it's definitely a shift from the Chrishell we met four years ago.
While some people have said she was a bit hard on Jason's ex-girlfriend, Chrishell has taken to Instagram to defend herself (another sign that she's having none of it). She said, 'if you say I'm mean to you, apparently you get a storyline on Selling Sunset. Three people did it this season and you guys be the judge. Funny that I never once had an issue with any of these people when cameras weren't around.'
In the same Instagram story, Chrishell explained that she thought she and Marie-Lou were friends and referenced a time when she posted a picture of her, Marie-Lou, G Flip and Jason out for lunch in Australia. She said, 'the next time I saw her was on this lunch. ON camera. If she said I was nice to her, do you think she would have gotten a storyline and invited to the reunion... no.'
What makes the argument – and Chrishell's attitude – so iconic is that Jason was on speakerphone the whole time. It's scenes like this that make Selling Sunset such a smash hit – they give us chaos, character development and good TV all at once. And with season seven dropping on Friday 3 November, fans don't have long to wait before they can watch all the drama unfold in full.