There are quite a few big question marks hanging over Selling Sunset ahead of its Season 5 premiere. Namely, fans are eager to know exactly how Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim’s now-defunct office romance will play out in real time, as well as how the touted villainess in Christine Quinn will manage to stay in the fold, especially given her dramatic walk-off at the end of the fourth season. But even more pressing is the soon-to-be-introduced newbie real estate agent Chelsea Lazkani, who has shared how she’d like to be a “role model” to other Black women with her upcoming turn on the Netflix reality series.
Chelsea Lazkani is a British expatriate and the mother of two children. After getting her real estate license back in 2017, per People, she most notably went on to work for the same agency that housed Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles’ Josh Flagg. Now, Lazkani is officially entering the lion’s den, so to speak, of co-worker/co-star drama that fundamentally makes up Selling Sunset – and she’s the second Black cast member (after Amanza Smith) to do so.
TMZ caught up with the newcomer, who revealed that her motivation behind joining the cast was two-fold. Not only was she intrigued by becoming part of one of the “most aspirational brokerages in the whole of Los Angeles,” she also saw it as an opportunity to combat feeling “underrepresented” in her field. She stated:
I want to be a role model. Obviously, I want to continue doing what I’m doing and focus on real estate and not lose focus of what I love doing. But I definitely want to encourage people to get into the industry. I definitely want to show people that you can be Black and be in an industry that you don’t see many people that look like you and be successful. Because it just takes one. It takes one, and then other people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do that, too!’ And suddenly, you look around and there is so many people of color in the room, and that’s a nice feeling.
The Season 5 star continued, saying that even though she didn’t necessarily “feel any type of way” about having mostly white co-stars for the moment, she still thinks that more people who look like her should be on the show. She added that Black women only make up 5 percent of real estate agents overall – a percentage that evidently goes down even further when you start talking about higher-end luxury real estate and who in fact gets to sell the “bigger homes in Los Angeles.”
The racial divide in casting is an issue being tackled across a variety of major networks and platforms in recent times. Following the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement from the summer of 2020 to now, many have endeavored to step up their initiatives toward more inclusivity and diversity. For example, CBS followed through on their prior pledge to include more contestants of color in their reality competition series like Big Brother and Survivor, with the former being able to crown its first Black winner as a result last year.
The Selling Sunset universe has been ever-expanding since its debut in 2019 and seemingly with a similar goal of inclusivity in mind. Selling Tampa debuted last year with a cast of all Black women, and there is an upcoming Orange County spinoff in the works as well. Hopefully, with Chelsea Lazkani leading the charge on the West Coast, the trend continues for her series that has reportedly already been renewed for two more seasons. Catch Season 5 of Selling Sunset when it premieres April 22 on Netflix’s 2022 TV schedule!
