Chrishell Stause stumbled into the real estate world after unexpectedly losing her soap opera role before her contract was up.
Chrishell Stause has been on television for more than a decade, but, Selling Sunset first aired in 2019 you may be thinking. Well, before her real estate endeavours she starred in soap operas like All My Children, The Young And The Restless and Days Of Our Lives.
Stause is now best known as a cast member of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, which follows a group of agents at the Los Angeles luxury real estate brokerage, The Oppenheim Group. Let’s take a look at how she rose to fame…
Stause went from living in a tent to selling million pound properties
Stause stumbled into her career in real estate after she lost her role on the soap opera All My Children and needed to find a plan B. However, it hasn’t been an easy journey to success for Chrishell, she certainly has worked her way to the top.
Stause was raised in Kentucky, with her four sisters, mother and adoptive father. She revealed in an interview with Style Caster that “Growing up, I lived a life I wanted to get away from”. Her family were often homeless and when she was in middle school her house burned down, so her family lived in a tent and moved around different campsites.
This caused her to miss a year of school, and by the time she was a teen they had moved to an abandoned schoolhouse with a collapsed roof. They then moved to the attic of a duplex apartment, which also felt unsafe as Chrishell recalls a drive-by shooting after their neighbour’s drug deal went wrong, which left a bullet in her bedroom wall.
Chrishell’s birth name is Terrina but she changed it to her middle name Chrishell in a bid to move away from her past. “I wanted to be someone else and to disassociate from the first half of my life that was just very hard” Stause explained. Her middle name was inspired by the Shell petrol station attendant, Chris, who helped her mom give birth to Chrishell.
Chrishell stumbled into real estate as her plan B
Stause moved to Los Angeles after finishing college and decide to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an actor. When she first moved to L.A. Stause worked three jobs to support herself, a hostess at Universal CityWalk, a hand model for a shopping network and a camp counsellor for celebrities’ children. Stause rented a sofa in someone’s house that she found on Craigslist she then moved into a small shared apartment.
Chrishell’s dreams started to come true when she was cast as villain Amanda Dillon in All My Children which led her to move to New York City. Even from here, it wasn’t smooth running; Stause had signed a contract with her manager which “basically had me sign away 20 years of my career on this paper. It took a lot of work to get out of it.”
Stause starred in All My Children for seven years before the show got cancelled and after spending more than a year going for auditions she landed her second role as Jordan Ridgeway on Days Of Our Lives. However, she soon found herself jobless again when Jordan Ridgeway was killed off before her contract ended.
Looking for a plan B Chrishell decided to turn to real estate, although she had no experience in the field she was hoping it would give a little income alongside her auditions. She sold her first house after nearly a year but was later contacted by Adam DiVello regarding Selling Sunset which follows The Oppenheim Group, co-founded by twin brothers Brett and Jason Oppenheim. The twins had met Stause at a party in L.A., and although Chrishell had been offered reality shows like Dirty Soap and Soap Divas in the past, she decided Selling Sunset was the one for her.
