🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

“I thought this was going to be a really friendly, easy season for me,” Chrishell Stause says days before the launch of Selling Sunset Season 6. “I was looking forward to a more peaceful dynamic. We did not get that.”

Surely, if anyone deserves a breather, it’s Stause, whose personal life and professional conflicts have powered a large majority of the office drama, season after season. She managed to navigate the HR Olympics of both dating and breaking up with her boss, Jason Oppenheim, and even outlast her long-standing nemesis, Christine Quinn — all before eventually finding lasting love with singer G Flip. Time to ride off into the sunset, right? But when glamorous reality TV real estate agents make plans, God (or in this case, more likely producer Adam DiVello) laughs, and thus a new and very dramatic season was born, despite Stause’s best intentions. And while the mess might feel familiar, the woman at its center isn’t playing by the same rules. 

Who is she now? Well, let her explain. “I’m tired. I don’t ever want to cause drama or have any drama in my life, but if you keep bringing it to my table, then, yes, now we’re going to eat,” Stause tells Tudum. “How do I act when I’ve kind of hit the end of my rope? Well, there you go.”

The person who walked into The Oppenheim Group nearly five years ago isn’t the same person stepping into Season 6. This Chrishell is a bit bolder, more self-assured and less willing to let things slide. She’s also a newly married woman in love, as her relationship with the nonbinary Australian musician gets its own spotlight this season. Coming into herself and her own queerness gave Stause what she calls an “extra piece of backbone.”

“Anytime you discover more about yourself, it really does solidify who you are and what you stand for,” she adds. “That makes you more willing to take things head on. There’s an element about me that cares less what people think now. Regardless of people’s opinions, I really do know who I am.”

Perhaps that’s why Stause bites back when new cast member Nicole Young, who has a long history with the brokerage, questions her integrity and business acumen. Stause says she felt “blindsided” by Young’s claims that she took undue credit for a past real estate listing, which fuels a season-long (and, let’s be honest, seriously juicy) clash between the two. “She’s come to my Friendsgiving, she’s come to my home for parties. I think that we’re friends,” Stause explains, adding that she even offered Young advice when her casting was first announced. “When you’re joining a show and all of a sudden I’m seeing someone now with a camera crew kind of coming at me, it definitely threw me for a loop.”

“There’s not been one other girl in this office that’s given [Young] business,” Stause adds. “Does that count for anything? Could you have picked somebody else?”

The feud reaches its peak during a girl’s trip gone oh, so very wrong. In the heat of the moment, Stause questions whether Young is “on drugs,” resulting in what could arguably become one of the most memorable moments in Selling Sunset history. Stause admits that the allegation was a “low blow,” but says she feels Young pushed her to the brink and beyond. “If I could do it all over again, I don’t know if I would’ve done it differently. We’re all human, and I really had it with her,” she says. “Can I today say that I’m not proud of that? I wouldn’t.”

The comment will surely splinter group chats into oblivion and dominate Stause’s DMs for the foreseeable future. But she, perhaps better than anyone, understands that attention — both positive and negative — comes with the territory. “I know when I go home, this stress isn’t going to follow me,” she says.

Six seasons in, she’s learned to see Selling Sunset less as an exact mirror image of herself and more as a tool for self-improvement. Because just like the impossibly glamorous homes featured each season, there’s always room for a renovation. “The show really solidifies who you are, the good, bad and ugly, to be honest,” Stause says. “You really can watch and it’s helpful to see, ‘These are the things that trigger [me], and these are the things I need to work on.’ If you’re able to watch it through that lens, it’s a really great way to grow because I’m certainly never above any criticism.”

So who knows what her next evolution might hold, but there’s one thing Stause can count on to never change: “I have grown in a lot of ways and the goal is to keep doing that.”

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