'Selling Sunset' skips Season 8 cast reunion due to uncertain future

SPOILER ALERT: Although this article is news, it also contains spoilers for season 8 of Selling Sunset.

The drama surrounding the cast of Selling Sunset continues to spill over into social media and the press, but unfortunately Netflix not filming a reunion for Season 8 of the show. Reunions for “Selling Sunset” aren't as ritualized as reunions for Bravo shows, but after the Netflix series produced its first for Season 5 in 2022, audiences have come to expect the cast to sit down with “Queer Eye” star Tan France for a special that drops within two weeks of the season. And after a chaotic eighth season of the popular real estate show, the castmates of “Selling Sunset” have a much in front of their fans – but will not do so. (Netflix representatives declined to comment.)

The melodrama is many-sided. Season 8 of “Selling Sunset” premiered on Sept. 6, but even before that, the show's stars had begun expressing their anger about what viewers would see in it. In the week leading up to the premiere, Chrishell Stause — who is “Selling Sunset's” closest thing to a point-of-view character, as she joined the Oppenheim Group in 2019 during Season 1 — posted on Instagram what would turn out to be numerous posts. She called out her co-star Nicole Young, writing, “I will NEVER work on a show with her again. I'd rather get sued.” In the same Instagram Story, she tagged the show's producers, Adam DiVello's Done and Done Productions, adding, “And you are disgusting for blindsiding her with this for the world to see instead of letting her AT LEAST defend herself with the TRUTH.”

The problem: Throughout the season, Young, who joined the cast in Season 6, repeatedly makes the unsubstantiated claim that Emma Hernan, one of Stause's closest friends on the show, is having an affair with a married man. Young brings up the subject on camera three times, even though most of her colleagues show little to no interest in getting involved. The first mention comes during a trip to the desert, when everyone pretends they don't know what Young is talking about until she stops. The second instance is more detailed. In the penultimate episode, after bringing it up again in front of fellow realtors Mary Bonnet and newbie Alanna Whittaker, Young says in a confessional, “I've heard on good authority that Emma was probably having an affair with a married man.” Then she adds elliptically, “There are certain people you shouldn't get involved with. Particularly when certain people wear, I don't know, certain jewelry on certain parts of their fingers.” In the finale, Young brings up the subject again — speaking to her colleague Bre Tiesi, she steers the conversation toward Hernan, saying, “I would be cautious in her position, because she's been dealing with people she shouldn't be dealing with.” Tiesi responds, “Married people?” Young says, “I wouldn't trust Emma with my husband,” and then tells Tiesi that her source confronted Hernan. (In this conversation, Young finally found a willing audience, and Tiesi told her, “I wish I'd known this earlier — that would have been valuable information.”)

That's one aspect of the cast's internal disputes that can't be resolved by a reunion episode. The other concerns Tiesi's feud with Chelsea Lazkani.

Tiesi and Lazkani have hated each other from the start. In Season 6, Lazkani welcomed new cast member Tiesi — who has a child with spendthrift dad Nick Cannon — by judging her arrangement with Cannon, in which she is one of several mothers to his children. On the show, Lazkani called their relationship “pretty repugnant,” saying, “The way I live my life is very different from her living it as a Christian.” Tiesi, no timid wallflower, naturally pushed back against Lazkani's judgment, and while they've occasionally called truces since then, they just don't get along.

Cut to Season 8, where Tiesi receives a call from her realtor friend Amanda Lynn, who she then meets for lunch. On camera, Lynn shows Tiesi text messages sent to her by a friend in which he says he witnessed Lazkani's husband cheating on her at the W's Residences in Hollywood. Tiesi seems to be in a dilemma: Should she tell her nemesis Lazkani about the infidelity? Of course she does: The two share a drink and have a seemingly heartfelt conversation in which tears are shed and a bond is formed. This dialogue, of course, doesn't last long, and in the finale, Tiesi and Lynn – whose previous racist tweets resurfaced after she became public – scout out the Oppenheim Group's office and appear to be in full villain mode. In the season's penultimate scene, Lynn sits purposefully at Lazkani's desk while Tiesi calls boss Jason Oppenheim and wants to introduce him to Lynn. And in the final moments of season eight, Lazkani takes off her wedding ring during a confession as she enters a house she has expressed interest in purchasing.

During press for Season 8, Tiesi has since blown that whole timeline out of proportion. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight's Brice Sander this week, she said she learned of Lazkani's husband's infidelity behind the scenes in December of last year and called Hernan to tell Lazkani, which Tiesi says Hernan did. From there, Tiesi says, “Chelsea called me directly. We had a detailed conversation. Very, very clear. She knows every detail, and we were on good terms.” She and Lynn then filmed the lunch scene for the show in March of this year, and Lynn showed her Lynn's friend's “receipts” of the infidelity — for the first time, Tiesi says. (In March, People also broke the news that Lazkani had filed for divorce.) For her part, Lazkani pretty much confirmed that timeline to X (though Tiesi was clearly up to no good), tweeting, “I hear what's going on during filming and am asking production to stage a scene with Bre. I did this so she could tell me directly so it doesn't get relayed to a trillion people before me. Hope this helps!” Lazkani also tweeted, “I made it clear and in writing: If racist Amanda is on the show as a cast member, I'm out.”

“Selling Sunset” is a work of art in many ways. Like DiVello’s previous shows “Laguna Beach” and “The Hills” for MTV, it shows Southern California as a beautiful tableau, highlighting the most picturesque aspects of Los Angeles to illustrate why the clients of “Selling Sunset” realtors are willing to spend millions, even tens of millions, of dollars to live here. The staging—the staging and reshooting of scenes, the fabrication of timelines—has always been evident, if never quite The obvious. Unlike in previous years, Netflix hasn't filmed two seasons back-to-back and hasn't announced a sequel to the series yet. And the cast's rebellion feels very real, if not exactly existential. For now at least, there's a haze hanging over the future of Selling Sunset, which DiVello could show in a scenic view of downtown Los Angeles.

Then again, “Selling Sunset” is currently No. 2 on Netflix’s top 10 in the U.S., No. 6 on the global top 10, and is being watched around the world, according to the streamer’s public data. So let’s assume that — as the brokers of “Selling Sunset” know as well as anyone — everything is negotiable.