More than a decade after his debut on Million Dollar Listing New York, Ryan Serhant is back for “reality TV 3.0” with his own brokerage and his own Netflix show, Owning Manhattan. Ahead of the Friday, June 28 premiere of the New York-based real estate series centered around Serhant’s eponymous company, the world-famous broker opened up to PopCulture.com about taking his business to the streaming screen.
“This is reality TV 3.0 for me,” Serhant explained of this new chapter of his television career, which also includes Sell It Like Serhant. “For me to do another show – the audiences have changed. The people watching reality TV in 2014 are not the same people watching it in 2024. … It’s a different world today. People’s attentions have changed. The world’s in a different place.”
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He continued, “I wanted to make sure that we made a show that definitely showed off New York City as one of the greatest cities in the world – because I do believe that – showed off the glamorous real estate in a way that we’ve never been able to show on Million Dollar Listing … [and] obviously [I] wanted to capture all the drama that comes into what it’s like to be young and hungry working in Manhattan for no money, for no salary until you sell something and what those stakes are like especially today.”
Owning Manhattan also features the elite roster of real estate agents at SERHANT. as they navigate the world of luxury real estate – from challenges and triumphs to setbacks and drama. Serhant teased that while the show starts with 12 agents, “it doesn’t end with 12” after he had to “fire people live” during filming, “which was tough.”
It all comes together to create a brand-new kind of show. “It’s not Million Dollar Listing – I mean, it has real estate. It’s in New York. It’s got me and it has deals, real deals that are fun to watch,” he explained. “It’s not Selling Sunset, but it has some of that style, it’s got some of that saturation that I think is actually really pretty to watch and our storylines play out over the course of the series.” Serhant continued, “But then it’s got a little Vanderpump [Rules] in terms of I am Lisa Vanderpump and I have the people that work for me underneath me and all their s-t that they go through. But then it’s also – we had an orchestra do the music. … so there’s this undercurrent of cello music and rap, which is just fun and gives it a bit of an HBO Succession meets Billions vibe.”
Owning Manhattan premieres Friday, June 28 on Netflix.
