Selling Sunset star calls out Netflix's No. 1 show for 'fake storylines'

It appears drama never sleeps as Selling Sunset star, Christine Quinn, has called out the show’s “fake storylines”, following the Selling Sunset season 5 (the #1 show or movie on Netflix in the U.S. at the time of publishing) which follows the lives of a group of real estate agents in Los Angeles.

34-minutes before the launch of season 5, Quinn tweeted, “30 minutes till the launch of #SellingSunset, enjoy the new season and all of its 5,000 fake storylines!”. While it’s not clear which storylines Quinn was referring to, Page Six has speculated that the tweet pertains to the “$5000 dollar bribe” Emma Hernan alleges Quinn offered her to poach one of her clients.  

“An associate of Christine contacted my client and offered $5,000 on her behalf to not work with me and to work with her instead,” Emma Hernan tells Mary Fitzgerald in episode 8 of the show. Mary takes this information to Jason Oppenheim, president of The Oppenheim Group, voicing an opinion that Quinn should be fired. In the Season 5 finale, Mary and Jason call Quinn into a meeting to discuss the claims. When Quinn doesn’t show up, the series is left on a cliffhanger, with viewers left wondering whether or not the "How to be a boss bitch" author still has a job at the brokerage.

But is the addictive drama of the show fake? In a word, kinda. Scripted Sunset is described by Netflix as a “docusoap”, or in other words, a reality show (because how else would the cameras be there to capture every one of those open house fights?) Yet Heather Rae El Moussa, one of the other stars on the show, disputed Quinn's claims, telling Page Six, “They don’t push us to be anything. We are who we are, and it comes across on camera”.

Which storylines on Selling Sunset are fake?

Of course, while we can’t claim to know the ins and outs of Chrishell’s relationship with Jason, or whether or not Quinn really did offer bribes, another storyline that has been called out is Emma Hernan’s claims that she matched with Ben Affleck on dating app Raya. While Hernan never met up with Affleck on Raya, an invite-only dating app for celebrities and influencers, in episode five of season five, she tells Chrishell Stause, she matched with Affleck on the app “right before” he rekindled his relationship with Jennifer Lopez, and that he asked her out for a coffee. Stause responds, “You could’ve foiled Bennifer!”

Yet a representative for Affleck has since told TODAY that the star hasn’t been on the app for years, saying, “Raya has confirmed that he has not been an active member for several years” (although whether he’d communicated with Hernan in the past remains to be seen). 

Another moment making headlines for being fake is when a camera pans in on Jason Oppenheim pretending to take a phone call, with his phone on camera mode. The hilarious blunder has become a meme on social media, with viewers tweeting, “my vibe today is Jason talking to his camera pretending to call a client”.  

False storylines, dates, and phone calls or not, part of the draw of reality TV is to escape reality, and Selling Sunset gives us the opportunity to do just that in bucketloads. Would the show be number one on Netflix if the drama was anything like the reality of buying a house? Almost definitely not. Bring on season six. 

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