To be lured again from his hiatus from the truth TV universe after 10 seasons on Bravo’s Million Greenback Itemizing: New York, NYC-based superstar dealer Ryan Serhant knew he needed to do one thing totally different. “I didn’t wish to make Million Greenback Itemizing: New York 2.0, or a derivative of Promoting Sundown, which has its personal distinct fashion,” he says. “So, we’ve created an idea of elevated actuality.”
The brand new idea, Proudly owning Manhattan, launched Friday on Netflix. In some ways, it feels soothingly acquainted to the slew of different fashionable actual property actuality fare like Promoting Sundown and Shopping for Beverly Hills: luxurious itemizing porn, feuding peacocking brokers, high-stakes gross sales. However with its hovering orchestra rating, documentary-style filmmaking and Serhant’s outsized, time-tested character, it presents a cultured, insider’s look into Serhant’s new actual property company, named, in fact, SERHANT.
“Ryan offers good TV as a result of he’s good TV,” says World of Marvel’s Randy Barbato, who government produces the present. “It’s genuine. It’s not an act. Earlier than we began filming, he’s been constructing this empire, and he has determined that he needs to be the N. 1 brokerage agency on the planet. And to see somebody making an attempt to attain that’s superb. On high of that, he’s somebody who has coronary heart, and is humorous and is a good businessman — they’re the belongings you’d placed on a want checklist after which anticipate AI to generate. However Ryan truly delivers it. After which on high of it, he has good pores and skin.”
A lot of the motion takes place within the SERHANT headquarters in Soho, house of the previous Tommy Hilfiger landmark retailer, which turns into a type of character within the present. “It’s just like the Soho Home of actual property,” says government producer Fenton Bailey, of World of Marvel.
Barbato agrees. “It’s very stylish. It’s very taking place. It’s very buzzy.”
With Serhant getting into the function of courageous chief and mentor, the present focuses on a mixture of brokers each outdated and new, with made-for-TV attraction and flash for days. “It’s a Baskin-Robbins,” Barbato says. “There are various flavors of wonderful forged members on this forged.”
Standouts embody Tricia Lee, a classy, steely powerbroker in Brooklyn who’s seeking to make it simply as large in Manhattan; Jonathan Nørmølle, a tatted up, expressive Danish upstart; and Savannah Gowarty, a peach-pie recent beginner from North Carolina.
“I latterly have been equating the true property enterprise with the drag queen enterprise,” says Bailey, longtime producer of Drag Race together with Barbato. “To be an ideal agent is simply not that dissimilar to being an ideal drag queen.”
Nobody personifies this greater than the brash Chloe Tucker Caine, a former Broadway star in Mama Mia! earlier than changing into a top-selling agent.
“You must be a triple menace,” Bailey says. “You’ve acquired to know your stuff about property. You’ve acquired to know easy methods to promote it. You’ve acquired to know easy methods to gown nicely. You’ve acquired to know easy methods to stroll and discuss, and also you’ve acquired to know media. You’ve acquired to know easy methods to submit nice movies. what, drag queens and actual property brokers are the Marines of actuality!”
Though he’s an outdated hand at being a actuality star, Serhant admits that filming Proudly owning Manhattan was daunting. “Taking pictures this whole present was terrifying. It was not like something I’ve ever performed,” he says. “We shot all the present in actual time, and it’s the one actual property present the place there are stay firings. So, I don’t know if I’d name these scenes ‘enjoyable,’ however they have been probably the most actual I’ve seen on an docuseries, and I’m excited for the viewers to expertise them.”
Viewers will see a softer, mentor model of Serhant, encouraging brokers to “Take it to the Wall” (actually, a wall in the primary workplace the place brokers checklist their large gross sales). It additionally delves into his purpose of merging know-how and actual property, particularly by way of his Instagram, which has over 2 million followers.
“We’ve been making property exhibits for a gazillion years. I imply, the primary present we made was Sizzling Property for Channel 5 within the U.Okay., actually final century,” Bailey says. “And it’s humorous to see how promoting actual property and houses has advanced and actually fused with media and social media. it was {that a} itemizing could be only a few footage, and also you’d must make an appointment — you’d must go see it. And now, there’s 360-degree movies. There are drones flying by way of the home!”
A lot of the drama of the season revolves round Serhant’s try and promote the hovering penthouse at Central Park Tower, the very best residence on the planet with an elevation 17,545 sq. ft. At the moment listed for $195 million, the penthouse serves as a metaphor for the good heights Serhant and his crew aspire to.
“The query in the end was, what is going to make folks lookup from their telephones? What if the present opens in voiceover, has a first-person narrator and, as a result of all episodes launch on the similar time, the sequence seems like a documentary movie — what does that feel and look like?” Serhant says. “Then, layer in unbelievable actual property as in probably the most excessive properties on the planet, actual offers being performed for important quantities of cash, the backdrop of New York Metropolis, a various and distinctive forged of personalities and feelings — some who’re new to the enterprise and a few who’re fairly seasoned — numerous drama and humor, and we shock the viewers till the ultimate credit of the ultimate episode. What would that be like?”
Viewers are actually discovering out. In a media house crowded with actual property fare, Proudly owning Manhattan guarantees to be a breath of rarefied recent air, with one outdated hat within the heart of all of it. “Ryan is again the place he belongs,” Barbato says. “On everybody’s TV set all all over the world.”