Is Netflix's Selling Sunset Real Or Scripted?

Selling Sunset on Netflix has become wildly popular. The hit show follows the personal lives of luxury real estate agents, as they sell beautiful homes in Los Angeles for the Oppenheim Group. It's like if The Hills cast was in their 30s and worked in real estate — a lot of glamour and a lot of drama. The newest season features Chrishell Stause's heartbreaking public divorce from This Is Us actor Justin Hartley, and Heather Rae Young's budding relationship with HGTV star Tarek El Moussa, according to People. However, there has been some speculation recently about the authenticity of the show. 

One of their famous fans, Chrissy Teigen, recently tweeted, "I will say, I look at LA real estate a lot and have never seen any of these people lol either have our agents, who I have obsessively asked." Oprah Magazine also spoke with Suzi Dailey, a luxury real estate agent at One Luxe in Orange County, California, who said she had never heard of them before the show. So we decided to do some more digging to see if the show is real or scripted.

For starters, The Oppenheim Group is a legitimate business and their site shows that there are five more agents who work at the group that aren't featured on the show — so that's a little misleading, since those agents are never mentioned on the series. Jason and Brett Oppenheim, who own the firm, are the fifth generation in their family to work in real estate, per Oppenheim Real Estate. And even though some may not have heard of the agents prior to the show, they have their accreditations. 

All 10 of the agents featured on the show are listed as licensed real estate agents, except for Amanza Smith, per Licensee. Young even responded to Teigen doubting their careers. "We all are very active real estate agents and we are very, very busy at the moment," she told Access Hollywood. Stause also retweeted Tiegen and offered to give her a tour of her new $2 million listing she has in Studio City.

Even though the cast denies the show is scripted the show's creator, Adam DiVello, admits they do reshoot some scenes. "If we have to do a walk-up or a walk-away, we'll do those a couple of times if something gets in the way or something happens," he told Variety. "We typically just get everything as it happens." However, a former client recently pointed out on TikTok that she didn't want to appear on the show, so they created a fake owner during the episode. In the episode, real estate agent Christine Quinn states her client is a male plastic surgeon who's in Europe. The TikTok user stated, "I wasn't in Europe. I never met [Christine]."

Stause also explained that sometimes production can push the cast towards more drama. "They can sometimes nudge us to address things but what we say is all us," she wrote on her Instagram Stories, per Oprah Magazine. "Beware anyone that says otherwise. Gotta own it." As with most reality television, it seems as though Selling Sunset is a blend of real drama, mixed with some fabricated moments. But fans seem to love it either way.