Heather Rae El Moussa (née Young)says it was “a blessing” when she wasn’t asked back to Selling Sunset after appearing on the “very toxic” show for nearly seven seasons.
“In the beginning was it just all fun, not crazy drama. We were all friends. Any drama was just simple,” Heather, 35, said during her “The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast” podcast appearance on Monday, April 1. “Then it just got worse and worse and worse. They started adding in more girls. It just became out of control.”
Heather went on to claim she would come home “crying from the stress” after filming the show, which had no set schedule.
“With Selling Sunset, I never knew when I was going to be filming. It was last minute, it took over my life, it was hard to do my real job — real estate,” she said. “It was hard to do anything else.”
Heather’s “crazy” filming schedule spanned from 12 to 14 hours some days.
“It was pretty brutal. They just want more and more and more and you saw me on the show,” she continued. “I pretty much was level-headed almost the whole time. I was kind of friends with everyone, and I kept things pretty chill in my life.”
Heather added: “Yeah, it’s very toxic. You’re around a bunch of women that everyone wants to be stars on the show, No. 1. And they’ll kind of do anything.”
Heather was one of the original Selling Sunset stars when the show first dropped via Netflix in March 2019. Her major life milestone and real estate ventures with the Oppenheim Group were chronicled on the show.
While appearing on Selling Sunset, Heather also worked on the HGTV show The Flipping El Moussas with husband Tarek El Moussa. The couple got married in November 2021 and welcomed their son, Tristan, in January 2023. (Tarek also shares two kids, Taylor, 13, and Brayden, 8, with ex-wife Christina Hall.)
When Heather left Selling Sunset to go on maternity leave, the reality star claimed she wasn’t asked back to the Netflix series, which currently stars Mary Fitzgerald, Chrishell Stause, Amanza Smith, Emma Hernan, Chelsea Lazkani, Nicole Young and Bre Tiesi.
“It was a blessing that I wasn’t asked to come back because I’m so much happier filming my show with Tarek,” she explained. “We’re co-producers on our show so we pick the hours.”
Ahead of the Selling Sunset season 7 premiere in November 2023, Heather confirmed her exit from the show.
“It’s bittersweet to not be a part of SS anymore,” she captioned an Instagram post at the time. “But I do know that good or bad I wouldn’t change the experiences I had.”
Heather made one final appearance in the Selling Sunset season 7 premiere, where she showed TikTok star Josh Richards a house before turning him over to fellow Oppenheim Group employee Bre and going on maternity leave.
Despite the abrupt exit, Heather said during Monday’s podcast that there was one major thing she took away from her time on the show.
“Some of these girls are still my really close friends,” she said, referring to her fellow Selling Sunset stars. “That was a really positive [thing] that I took away from it.”
