Netflix Selling Sunset’s Amanza Smith, Chats with HOI

If you are new to ‘Selling Sunset’ on Netflix, where have you been? Two series (and many more to come.) With eight episodes and some of LA’s finest… REALTORS! The Oppenheim Group sells the most luxurious LA based properties to the richest people in the world, every house is a seven-figure sum or more. Not only does it give you the opportunity to look through the window of how the rich and famous live but it is also reality tv gold. It can guarantee you sass, sexiness, gossip, naughty behaviour, laughter, some of the most stylist realtors around with easy watching and fabulous entertainment.

We had the absolute joy of sitting down, over Zoom, with the beautiful Amanza Smith who joined the Oppenheim group, and Selling Sunset, for series 2; we talked ex-husbands, being a mum, real estate, interior design, how she handles the bitchy bullshit and our mutual love of Michael B Jordan.

This interview lasted over an hour and a half, so I have given you the best bits. We laughed a lot during this open, fun, honest and personable interview, so we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
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Rachel Rose:

Hey Amanza! Thank you so much for doing this interview, it’s really cool to chat with you and I’m a massive fan of the show! Sly side note… you are my favourite! Don’t tell the others. Congratulations on season three being announced for later this year, I am so excited to see what’s going to happen next! This first question, imagine someone hasn’t watched the show yet, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into interior design and then how you got into the show?

Amanza:

Ahh thank you so much. I went to school for interior design right after high school, I changed my major a gazillion times and it landed on interior design. By that point I’d already been in college for three years and a bunch of stuff happened and I dropped out. So, I moved to LA, I’d always had a passion for interior design, and that passion started from a really young age.
When I was little, we were really poor and we lived in a trailer and we couldn’t afford much. All my friends had really pretty bedrooms, with really pretty curtains and bedspreads and dressers, and we didn’t have that. We had stuff from a yard sale, or hand me down whatever. So, each year my parents would let me get a gallon or two of paint, and I would literally go in and paint everything, so I just became this DIY expert from the age of about six!

It was something I just loved, I always had this dream of being this cool mum, but life happened, and that didn’t then happen for a long time. I got married and had kids, and then after my divorce I decided to figure out how I could make that dream a reality, and after you get married and have kids it’s like a whole different world. It took a while, and I did everything in between, I walked dogs, I babysat, I was a personal assistant, I was a housekeeper, like, I was scrubbing people’s toilets at one point!

Finally, I was able to start getting a couple of interior design gigs here and there and slowly people would see it. It’s still building, this started six years ago, but now it’s what I do full time instead of doing eight other jobs to support the interior design work. It’s so surreal because I would also walk around fabric stores and lighting stores on my lunch break of my other jobs and get anxious because I’d have to rush back to work, and sometimes I still get it now! I have to be like wait, no, you’re working, this is what you’re supposed to be doing! I’ve known Jason and Brett and the Oppenheim group for twenty years so I started doing some of their home staging when they opened the brokerage. Jason’s tough, I’m like a little sister to him, but I had to prove myself. After he could see that I was really good, he gave me more opportunity, and I became their interior design specialist, and was like, “you should just get your license for real estate because you can do it all; you can stage the house, sell the house and decorate the house when the person buys it.” So, I did, and that’s how I ended up a real estate agent.

RR:

Amazing! I love that, I love your graft and I feel that’s what was different about you when you came into the show. You have such great energy about you. How did you find coming into an environment that was quite, shall we say, tough at times? (At this point we both laughed and gave each other a look, tough is code for bitchy).

A:

People always think I’m a lot younger than I am, I’m actually 43, I didn’t move to LA until I was 24. By the time I moved, I had already lived a pretty tough life; I came from humble means, had a pretty tough and troublesome childhood, I have learnt to adapt to any environment I find myself in as a survival mechanism, and so can handle any person that’s thrown at me. You know, Jason, Brett and Mary are very chill, Mary’s very down to earth, she’s from Indiana also, she’s from the same State that I’m from, but we didn’t mean until we got to California. I’ve dealt with much tougher situations than I’m put in on the show or with the people that I’m surrounded by on the show. Plus, I was a model for a long time, and you just see it all. I was the only black kid in my whole school. I dealt with a lot of bullying when I was really little because I had an afro, or everybody’s skin was lighter, or whatever, so I’ve just learnt a sense of humour or let it roll off your shoulders type of thing. At an older age, I’ve done a lot of work on myself spiritually, and that came after having kids, and after having a divorce I was like ok what the fuck can I do now? What book can I listen to, not going to say read because I like to listen to books. I went to trauma camp for spirituality, I’ve had a million therapists, I have psychics, I don’t know! I just really try to like, encompass myself in everything that I can to be a better person and I think it just gives you the ability to deal with… bullshit.

RR:

I was going to say bullshit and wondered if it would be professional of me to say bullshit. You handle the bullshit well. Which leads onto my next question quite well, obviously during season two there were a couple of moments that you got quite upset and overwhelmed; motherhood, the show, learning this new job being a real estate agent, and also the fact that you opened up about your ex-husband falling off the grid. How are you finding juggling everything? Have you had developments about your ex-husband? Are you ok?

A:

Well, now that you ask [fakes tears]. It was an interesting time during filming because when we started filming, my children’s father was very much present in their life, as he had been their entire lives; we’ve been divorced since they were 1 and 2. We’ve shared 50/50 custody legally, he is an amazing father, never missed a sporting event, a school programme, he was way better at doing their homework with them than me, he’s very structured, I would always say they get the best of both worlds.

My kids and him had moved in with his new girlfriend, I had never met her, but I always asked the kids like, does she treat you nice? Does she cook for you? What’s she like? And at first, they loved her. Then something happened over the summer, they would come home in like weird moods, or, I could just tell something was shifting. So, I started pushing for me to meet this girl, like having lunch with her, you know, we didn’t really communicate that much, unless it was to do with the kids. So, drop offs would be like “ok bye guys, be good for daddy, hi Ralph.” I could just tell something was off, they had been with him the first week of school, so I went to pick them up after school, you saw the pick up on the show, - but I didn’t say all of what had happened on the show.

They both came to me crying and they said daddy’s girlfriend had gotten upset and had kicked them out of the house because she said she didn’t want to deal with their drama anymore and they were both really upset and I was like well what did your dad say? I tried to call him and his phone was shut off, all of his social media accounts were shut down, he wouldn’t return an email and then none of his family would return an email and it was just this super bizarre thing. So, I’m like what’s gonna happen, the scene that you see with Mary, Chrishell I was like what am I gonna do next Monday, I’m gonna drop them off at school and he’s supposed to pick them up, I gotta figure this out because I can’t just let them go with him if, things aren’t ok. He literally sent me an email in September first and told me “I can no longer care for our children, it’s not safe for them to be with me, my financial situation has been bad for a while and you have to keep them until this changes.” and then radio silence. My children haven’t seen their dad since and we still have zero idea what happened. So, I was apprehensive at first to know what to share, so as the time went by, it was kind of like, I wanted to share more and more, because it wasn’t fair.

I’m managing it the best that I can, they seem happy, and I’m just trying to build an empire so they never have to stress out about anything ever again. I do the best that I can. You know, I’m not gonna pretend I look like this every day, there are some days where I am just really sad. I suffered from severe anxiety before any of this, and it’s gotten worse, so there are times they’ll see me sad, I try not to cry in front of them. It’s been really, really hard. For anyone out there that is going through anything, I know I have it better than a lot of people still, but I feel you, I get you, just keep trying, your babies need you.

RR:

I think that’s a real testament to you character, from everything you’ve been through, the fact you manage to keep your cool through some of the, as we said, “bullshit” on the show, I don’t even think I’ve heard you raise your voice?

A:

Wait until season 3! I think I get a little more vocal in season 3, I don’t really lose my cool, I can rip someone a new one without ever calling someone a name or even using a swear word. I’m really grateful for this platform, long before what happened with my children’s father, I always had a story, and I have always been an open book, I would never call myself a celebrity, but when I’ve seen celebrities share their stories, hearing their stories helped me, and I want to be that person. So, I’ve always thought if I had a platform, I’d want to use that platform to help people. I’ve had so many people reach out, single mums, young girls looking for mentorship, people who are stuck and wanting to change their careers later in life, obviously I can’t respond to everybody but I fish through and try to respond to as many as I can. One of the reasons I chose to divorce my husband is because I wanted my kids to see a happy mummy; I could have stuck around and had a nanny, and had a housekeeper, we had it pretty easy back then. But I have a daughter, and I wanted her especially to see that she doesn’t have to stay in a relationship just to have somebody take care of her, I wanted to show them I could work really hard and do it. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve had a couple of boyfriends afterwards help us tremendously but I’m still pushing and working and she still gets to see that. I’m not gonna be a gold digging hoochie. Write those exact words.

RR:

She is not a gold digging hoochie! That is gonna be the tagline for this article.

A:

We won’t mention any names…

RR:

No names being said, I am completely unbiased in this interview. Speaking of romance, have you been dating anyone, are you dating one? Now that you’re on the show, have you had any potentials popping up?

A:

I did have a very interesting fan write me a very lengthy rap song the other day, my daughter and I died laughing, no it wasn’t a good rap song, it didn’t even rhyme, it was hilarious, I mean he sent some crazy stuff, but it was pretty funny. You know Brad Pitt hasn’t popped up out of the woodwork, Michael B Jordan, nobody has yet.

RR:

If you could get with Michael B Jordan that would be great and then I could live vicariously through your love life.

A:

Right? Yeh I was dating someone the whole time we were filming, we’ve recently parted ways, we’re still friends, but we’ve broken up and I’m not really, like right now, I’m just focussed on trying to ride this wave and make the most of it, and get my furniture company going and everything else and then… maybe 2021 will be my year for romance. But I think this year has been about learning more about myself, taking care of my babies, you know, getting a fat pay cheque.

RR:

Right on! So, speaking of dating, Jason gets a lot of stick on the show for being a ladies man, is this a correct representation of him?

A:

Umm… Jason’s tamed. He’s gotten a lot more tame in the past couple years, but he definitely likes pretty women. I wanna say one thing about Jason and his relationships, this is what’s unique about him, he’s very honest. He doesn’t try and lie and say “Oh, I’m gonna marry you” like he’s very open from the jump, but he will find amazing girls, not all of them are amazing, and they’re able to stay friends afterwards. I mean look at him and Mary, they were best friends afterwards, he was at her wedding. So, you know, we can give him shit about being this ladies man or whatever, but he doesn’t do it in a sleazy way, he does it in the most honest way. I think if a lot more men would be honest like Jason. I think the world would be a much easier place. But that’s why him and Mary were able to stay close you know, we were like at least he was honest, you know? At least he wasn’t out cheating or whatever. But I have hope, I think he and Brett will probably end up marrying when they’re around 65, probably to a 25-year-old.

RR:

Probably still looking rugged and handsome! So, what’s it like to work with Brett and Jason and to change up the dynamic of your friendship a little bit?

A:

It was interesting because, in real life, if we’re all at a BBQ and Jason tries to say something, I’d be like what don’t talk to me that way, I don’t have to listen to you but then he’s your boss and it’s a professional place. It was difficult for me to go from what I was doing to a professional setting anyway, no less have one of your best guy friends be your boss who you’ve got to do well for and be punctual, and not talk back to. He’d pull me to the side to be like “Yo, you can’t be late for every team meeting” and I wanna be like, “fuck you Jason, I have two kids, what do you know?” It was a lot to swallow, but we never got into it, he would pull me to the side, and kind of, tell me and that was it. Mary and I are kind of like the teacher’s pets, so there’s a bit of a running joke that if someone has to tell Jason something, they’re like tell Amanza or Mary to do it, they’re the favourites. Mary gets shit but Jason doesn’t hand out listings he’s not like, “One for you and one for you”, I haven’t had a listing since we stopped filming, I know we’ve all been in lockdown for three months, I didn’t have a nanny, and couldn’t really work, but I wasn’t doing the extra, extra work. I was doing what I could from home, but Mary was the one out, busting her ass, putting on a mask, doing video tours of the homes so she could still show clients, this girl busts her ass. She showed her wedding venue, on her wedding day. That wasn’t fake, that was real. The client went to Jason that morning to ask if he could see the venue, he said I’m so sorry, there’s a big event going on, so the client phoned Mary, unaware that it was her wedding and she took the meeting! She works so hard, she deserves it, I can’t even say that about myself when it comes to real estate yet, I’m still learning! I’m a bit apprehensive, i’m like “Uhh Mary, there’s a client, he wants to come and see the house, can you come and like, hold my hand!”

RR:

I think that’s totally normal when you’re new to a role and you want to do a good job! Next question is just a fun one; if you could decorate anyone’s house in the world, a celebrity or a particular property, what or who would that be?

A:

Oh man, that’s a really good question, because I have my favourite interior designer and it would be really fun to decorate her house but she’d probably look at it after and be like “uhhh…who did this?!” because she’s such an amazing designer. Who’s house? You know what, I’m gonna be super cheesy. My own. I wanna be so successful that I have my own 12,000 square foot home and I get to decorate it without anyone telling me that “they’re not quite sure if that’s gonna work” or “that might be too loud” or “are you sure?” cos it’s my own house! And then aside from that, probably…umm…

RR:

Michael B Jordan because then you become friends with him and then he becomes your boyfriend!

A:

I think he’s like, 14 years younger than me. I don’t know, I’ll probably think of that answer in the middle of my sleep and be like, “I should have said that!” I’ll go and google who’s the richest, single bachelor in the world, I wanna work for them!