SPOILER ALERT: While this text is informative news, it also contains spoilers for Season 8 of “Promoting Sundown”.
The drama between the cast of “Promoting Sunset” continues to play out on social media and in the press, but unfortunately for viewers, Netflix will no to be filming a reunion for Season 8 of the present. Reunions for “Promoting Sundown” aren’t as ritualized as reunions for Bravo shows are, but after the Netflix series produced its first in 2022 for Season 5, the cast sitting down with “Queer Eye” star Tan France for a special that drops two weeks into the season is something audiences have come to anticipate. And after a confusing eighth season of the beloved real estate show, the “Promoting Sundown” castmates have a very to debate in front of their followers — but they won’t. (Netflix representatives declined to comment.)
The melodrama is manifold. Season 8 of “Promoting Sundown” premiered on September 6, but even before that, the show’s stars began expressing anger over what viewers might be seeing inside it. In particular, in the week leading up to the premiere, Chrishell Stause — the closest thing “Promoting Sundown” has to a point-of-view character, as her joining the Oppenheim Group in Season 1 in 2019 kicked off the run — took to Instagram for what would become several posts. She referenced fellow cast member Nicole Younger, writing, “I will NEVER work on a show with her again. I might get sued.” In the same Instagram story, she tagged the show’s producers, Adam DiVello’s Completed and Completed Productions, adding, “And you are disgusting for surprising her with this to see with the world instead of letting her AT LEAST stand up for herself with the TRUTH.”
On Challenge: Throughout this season, Younger, 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. Younger brings up the topic on camera three times, despite most of her castmates showing little to no real interest in participating. The first mention is during a visit to the desert, when everyone pretends not to know what Younger is talking about until she stops. The second occasion is more intense. In the penultimate episode, Younger says in a confessional interview, after having brought up the subject yet again in front of real estate agents Mary Bonnet and newcomer Alanna Whittaker, “I have heard from a reliable source that Emma has probably had relations with a married man.” She then provides elliptically, “There are specific people that you shouldn’t worry about. Significantly if certain people have, I don’t know, certain jewelry on certain parts of their fingers.” In the end, Younger brings up the topic again — when speaking to castmate Bre Tiesi, she then twists the conversation to Hernan, saying, “I would be careful in her shoes, because she got involved with people she shouldn’t have.” Tiesi responds, “Married people?” Younger says, “I wouldn’t trust Emma with my husband,” and then tells Tiesi that her source confronted Hernan. (In this exchange, Younger finally found a ready audience, with Tiesi telling her, “I wish I had realized this sooner — that could have been invaluable information.”)
This is one layer of the Solid’s internal struggle that won’t be resolved by a reunion episode. The other involves Tiesi’s rivalry with Chelsea Lazkani.
Tiesi and Lazkani have hated each other from the start. In Season 6, Lazkani greeted new cast member Tiesi — who has a baby with spendthrift father Nick Cannon — by judging her association with Cannon, where she is one of the mothers of his children. On the show, Lazkani referred to their relationship as “fairly unpleasant” and mentioned “the best way I live my life may be very different from hers as a Christian.” Tiesi, no shrinking violet, naturally fought Lazkani’s judgment, and while they have spoken of occasional truces since then, they simply don’t get along.
Demoted to Season 8, in which Tiesi receives a phone call from her real estate agent friend Amanda Lynn, whom she then meets for lunch. On camera, Lynn plays Tiesi’s text messages from a friend saying that they witnessed Lazkani’s husband cheating on her at the W’s Residences in Hollywood. Tiesi seems to have a dilemma: should she tell her sworn enemy Lazkani about the cheating? Eventually, she does: the two have a drink and what appears to be a heartfelt conversation, shedding tears and bonding. This communion doesn’t last, after all, and by the end, Tiesi and Lynn — whose past racist tweets resurfaced after she put herself in the public eye — are investigating the Oppenheim Group office, trying to be in full villain mode. In the second to last scene of the season, Lynn purposefully sits at Lazkani’s desk while Tiesi calls her boss Jason Oppenheim eager to introduce him to Lynn. And in the final moments of Season 8, Lazkani takes off her wedding ring during a confessional while walking into a house she’s expressed interest in buying.
During the press cycle for Season 8, however, Tiesi blew up that entire timeline. In an interview with “Leisure Tonight’s” Brice Sander this week, she mentioned that she found out off-camera — in December of last year — about Lazkani’s husband’s cheating, and called Hernan so she could tell Lazkani, which Tiesi says Hernan did. From there, according to Tiesi, “Chelsea calls me right away. Now we have a full dialogue. Very, very clear. She’s aware of every single element, and we’ve been 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” about the cheating — for the first time, Tiesi says. (March may be when Folks broke the news that Lazkani had filed for divorce.) For his part, Lazkani all but confirmed this timeline on X (though it’s clearly not Tiesi’s benevolent intentions), tweeting, “I heard what was going around during filming and asked production to set up a scene with Bre. I did this so she could let me know right away so it wouldn’t get passed on to a trillion people before me. Hope this helps!” Lazkani also tweeted, “I’ve made it clear and in writing, if racist Amanda is on the show as a cast member. I’m out.”
“Promoting Sundown” is, in a way, about artifice. Like DiVello’s previous shows, “Laguna Seaside” and “The Hills” for MTV, it presents Southern California as a stunning tableau, and essentially highlights the most picturesque aspects of Los Angeles, such as why the buyers of the “Promoting Sundown” real estate agents would have to spend tens of millions and even tens of millions of dollars to live here. Its staged characteristics — taking photos and reshoots — were always apparent, even when they were never that apparent. Compared to years past, Netflix hasn’t filmed two seasons in a row and has yet to come up with a sequel renewal. And the solid rebellion feels very real, if not quite existential. For now, at least, the future of “Promoting Sundown” has a haze over it that DiVello can show off in a panoramic view of downtown Los Angeles.
On the other hand, “Promoting Sundown” is currently #2 on Netflix’s US Top 10, #6 on the international Top 10, and, according to the streamer’s public knowledge, is being watched all over the world. So let’s assume that — because the brokers of “Promoting Sundown” know as much as anyone — everything is negotiable.