It’s starting again tonight! The new season of Million Dollar Listing: New York! All the drama! All the hunks! All the real estate porn! To get you in the mood: Here’s my faaaaabulous 2013 interview with the adorable Ryan Serhant! Check it out after the jump.
JAMES: Hey, Beauty, how are you?
RYAN: Did you – did you say that to me?
Yeah. That’s you!
Gotcha. I’m good. How are you?
I’m really good, thanks. So let’s start with the shower scenes, of course. That’s number one on my list of things we need to discuss.
Absolutely.
You know that you set Tumblr on fire with those. Do you have plans to do any more?
I don’t know. If we get picked up for a third season, then maybe, you know. Whatever brings in good ratings. I’m all about the viewers.
Was it your idea to do it? I mean, you’ve got a fantastic ass. Are you just a tease? Is that what it is?
Well, I am a tease. I’ve been told I’m a tease. But, no, they were filming me in the morning, as I was going about my day. And I honestly didn’t really think about it until it was kind of happening because I typically don’t take showers with my clothes on. I try to take showers naked and that’s how it rolled out. And then I protested a little bit and now my parents have seen it and so has my grandmother and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Well I think it was a wise decision, and I think you should continue. I heard that in an upcoming episode you are maybe sexually harassed a little bit by a client? Is that something that happens to you frequently?
Do I get sexually harassed?
Yeah.
Interesting question. Yes. Sometimes. I do have a – well, I wouldn’t say she sexually harasses me – but I do have a client that I kind of, you know, had to deal with… who came onto me very, very strong in the house hunting process. But it was all good in the end, no real problem.
Is that something that happens with real estate agents? Do you become father confessor and best friend and object of affection…?
Well, you have to build up a relationship with your client if you’re going to get them trust you enough to allow yourself to advise them on a purchase, right? And a lot of these clients are making big purchases so you have to become very friendly. You have to become their confidantes and sometimes you gotta jump in bed.
Right. OK. Moving on. Now, you were on As the World Turns playing Dr Evan Walsh. I didn’t watch it religiously, I just sort of dipped in and out. I was in love with Jesse Soffer, of course. And I watched the Luke “coming out” storyline online. So I didn’t really get to see when you were on there. But I see on Wikipedia that you put Bob in a coma, that you kidnapped Lilly, and you killed Dusty.
I did kill Dusty. But Dusty came back. That’s all I’m gonna tell you.
Well, nobody ever stays dead for long on soaps. But you were a MAJOR PLAYER in Oakdale for a while there. Did you have fun doing it?
I did. I had a lot of fun doing it when I was a good guy. I was a doctor and I was trying to cure the world of something. I had no idea what it was.
And then you had a psychotic break and went completely bananas.
Yeah. Well, that happened when the writers’ strike hit. Remember that in 2007?
Oh yeah.
And all of a sudden, they were cutting budgets and they were like okay, well, Ryan, you’re gonna kill everyone. And then they killed me.
Hmmm. You still have a killer look in your eye sometimes on the show. I think that maybe you weren’t meant to be a good guy. [RYAN SNEERS AT SKYPE CAMERA] Exactly. That’s it. Did you enjoy soap acting?
I came to this city to be an actor. And I got very lucky and I got in a soap very quickly. I hadn’t even been in the city for six months and that kind of happened very quickly. And I liked it. It was good, but it was a lot of work. And it was nothing like the theatre training that I had had. There’s just so much to do. You’re making an hourlong show everyday, you know. It’s just memorize lines, go to that spot there, make it work.
Right. And you have hundred pages of dialog to memorize a day…
I didn’t have it as bad as everybody else. I wasn’t like some of the people that had been there for years and years and years with really in-depth story lines, you know, sleeping with their parents’ grandchildren, killing their boyfriends’ dogs, stuff like that. I was pretty simple. I was curing the world of disease… and then killing everybody.
So when did you get your real estate license? Was that before, after, during? How did you segue into your current life?
After the soap ended, I did a short stint as a hand model. And then I needed money. I couldn’t pay rent. And I had a friend who told me to get my real estate license and I could make my own hours and kind of do what I wanted, while taking clients out. That was at the end of 2008. And I’ve been doing real estate ever since.
Random question: Do you ever find that you’re showing an apartment and you think, “I want this for myself?” I imagine that it’s hard being in so many gorgeous apartments all the time. Now that you’re making money, do you ever just want to buy them instead of selling them?
Always. I think all the successful real estate agents in the city hit a point where then they start investing. So I’m always looking at new buildings, new product, things that come on, diamonds in the rough, because that’s all I do everyday. You’re kind of like a stock broker who, if it’s your job, 24 hours a day to watch investments, you’re gonna jump on the good ones.
Exactly. So where do you live? Wouldn’t it be funny if you lived, like, in a little tenement slum somewhere?
I live in West Chelsea now.
And how do you decorate? Do we get a peek inside your apartment ever?
Yeah, there’s actually a really cool website. It’s called BravoTV.com. And there’s a house tour that I do of my apartment. I think the three of us, they had us do house tours. So if you go to the Million Dollar Listing page on Bravo.com, you can see me giving a tour of my apartment. I have a lot of interesting art and photographs. And I have really big ceilings and lots of windows and I sit on the corner with nice views. I like it. It’s basically a two bed, two bath, but I use the second bed space as my office.
So will there ever be a time when you go back to acting again? Or have you found your calling?
I found my calling, man. I’m acting everyday. I’m acting right now. I actually am a native Spanish speaker and I gotta turn on the English for you.
Speaking of which… What do you think about Luis? I’m totally in love with him, of course. THOSE EYELASHES! Like a fucking camel! And he’s so entertaining to watch. What do you think of him… or is he even on your radar? Are you just dismissive of him?
Well, it’s hard for me to see him because he’s so short. I typically look over him.
And you are, like, ten feet tall. I forgot.
That’s true. There’s a lot of man in me. Anyway, yeah, he has really long eyelashes. But he has really tiny hands. It’s like shaking the hand of Pinocchio every time. It’s really, really weird.
Oh my god, I love it! You’re a bitch.
No, I’m not. I just state facts.
Can you tease us about some upcoming conflicts with Fredrik, and talk about your relationship with him?
Sure. Let’s see. So Luis is trying to sell this building on Lispenard, but then Fredrik comes in and sells for him. And I know they have a massive blow-up. And then later on in the season Fredrik lists another building on Bowery – 250 Bowery – that I had buyers for, and it’s the first time you ever see Fredrik and I try to do a deal together and it ends up exactly the way you think it would.
Somebody knocked over a vase or something, in the preview for next week, and you were sort of freaking out a little bit. Is that something that happens a lot during house showings? Do you have any horror stories about people destroying homes you’re trying to sell? What do you do? What happens then?
You cut and run. You cry and you call the police. You do as much as you can just to fix it. You know, in the last couple of episodes, I was trying to sell this beautiful penthouse…
I saw. And you had a party in it!
Well, I didn’t have a party. I made a music video to try to sell it. That’s two totally different things. I had people there.
But when the owner saw that, he freaked out.
He did freak out. He did freak out. I got a little bit busted. But it worked out because the goal was that this video would go viral, and everyone in the world would see it. So the fact that I didn’t send it to him, that somebody out there who knew his place sent it around to all of his friends and so that he got it outside of my circle was exactly what I wanted. So even though he was pissed off, it worked.
But how pissed off was he really, though? I mean, was some of that staged? Was he told to be a little madder than he ought to be? And were you REALLY worried that it wasn’t going to work out?
No, I had no idea. And they actually kept telling him to maybe be a little less mad because as we were going through the process of selling this apartment, he was pretty angry most of the time. And it looked weird with Ryan just dealing with the angriest client in the world. But I’m pretty sure it’ll work out.
So that wasn’t acting. You were flummoxed. You really didn’t know how to handle the situation.
Not at all. And during the music video, I was having 10 heart attacks a minute just trying to keep calm and make sure the noise wasn’t that bad because there are very famous people that live in the building, you know. On the floor right below is Deepak Chopra. You got P Diddy. You got Chris Maloney, Robert De Niro was moving in. So you have a lot of security in that building. And there I am, the broker, bringing, like, thirty people upstairs with flutes and tambourines and cameras. It was awful.
That’s funny. I heard that the show doubled in viewers on Wednesday night and that it’s a runaway hit. It’s really exciting isn’t it?
Yeah, and we’re only four episodes in. So I’m hoping with these kind of numbers, by the time we hit the season finale we should hit about ten million viewers.
Wow. That’s really exciting. So will you say your catch phrase?
“Expansion, always in all ways.”
No, no, your OTHER catch phrase. “I’m in the pool, bitch. I’m in the pool bitch.”
Oh. Is that my new catch phrase? Gotcha. “Surprise, bitch. I’m in the pool”
That’s it! There you go! Everyone says that around the office all day long here.
“Surprise, bitch. I’m in the pool!”
Love it! Thank you so much for chatting with me today. Good luck with the show!
Thank you!
Byeeeeee
The post My Awesome Interview with Ryan Serhant of Million Dollar Listing New York appeared first on World of Wonder.
