Who knew the Oppenheim Group’s Newport Beach, California, office patio could double as a fight ring?
It nearly did on season 3 of Selling the OC, as Austin Victoria squared up with Sean Palmieri after a rumor circulated within the cast circle that Austin and his wife, Lisa, had made some sort of advance on Sean one night when he came over for dinner.
“Everything was fabricated, everything was a lie that was said,” Austin tells ET, sitting down with his castmates — Kayla Cardona, Ali Harper, Alexandra Rose, Jason Oppenheim and Brandi Marshall — to discuss the just-released episodes.
“What truly happened the night that he came over to my house, we were just texting back and forth, my wife and I, we’re gonna have dinner, she was gonna bake some cookies and I just got an Oculus — a VR, I’m a big gamer — so Sean and I are texting back and forth,” Austin recalls. “He asked if he could join us. I said, ‘Sure,’ so he joined us for dinner. My wife baked some cookies — she does a lot of baking, she’s, like, in her Martha Stewart era — and then Sean and I played Oculus.”
“It was a boring night,” he continues, “and then he went home. That was it. There was nothing more to it, and then a rumor started I would say, probably, six months later is the first time I heard it — and the first rumor I heard was just that Lisa and I we’re a very flirtatious couple, so getting vibes or whatever, and then it continued into this thing where we’re into three-ways and blah, blah, blah… so, it’s all a lie. I’m a family man. I have kids. I’m not into that; never was, never will be.”
That cookie detail is a key part of the story, as Kayla recalled Sean privately telling her they were laced with marijuana. When the group asked Sean to clarify that specific in the finale, he claimed he never said that and didn’t even like edibles.
“When Sean told me about him being at Lisa and Austin’s house, he told me that there were edibles,” she reflected in a confessional during the finale. “And now, he’s acting like he never heard about the edibles before? It just doesn’t add up. He was so convincing.”
Austin is adamant they were simple, everyday cookies; not edibles.
“He’s been so obsessed with, ‘You’re gonna have my back? You’re gonna have my back, right?'” Kayla also shared. “It’s like, why are you so worried? I don’t know, now I’m questioning everything.”
“I didn’t go around and ask people to have my back,” Austin points out. “Sean was going around asking people to back him up … in this feud, or whatever you wanna call it. I didn’t tell anybody that. I know my truth.”
Austin says he hasn’t had a conversation with Sean since their near-physical altercation at the office, but not by his choosing.
“I want to believe — and I choose to believe — that Sean wasn’t– he wouldn’t have done that, you know?” he offers. “The Sean I knew, the friend that I invited into my home, the person that I would allow to babysit my children, was a friend and someone that opened up to me, and I opened up to him.”
“We were friends that become family,” he continues. “So, I like to believe that the lie just kind of grew legs and turned into something that it wasn’t, and then Sean just felt like he had to stick with it and take it to the grave. But, you know, I don’t know if I’ll ever know the truth because we no longer speak.”
Austin’s not alone in, one, believing Sean invented the ordeal for screen time and, two, getting cut off by Sean. Kayla admits it “probably” was all made up, along with Sean’s claim that Tyler Stanaland made moves on him, as well. Sean provided screenshots of text messages and DMs as a way to back up his claims about Tyler, but in the finale, Kayla and Ali commented on how he would only let them see select excerpts. They weren’t allowed to scroll up or down in the conversations to see the full context.
“He showed me some stuff, but there was just a lot of moments where I was just unsure,” Kayla reveals. “When everything hit the fan, and … things didn’t align, and when you are accusing someone of something that big, details like that really matter and there were some things that just… changed and I was very disappointed, and I didn’t know how to navigate our friendship and I needed time.”
“I did text him [after filming wrapped],” she continues. “I was like, ‘Hey, forgive me. I need some time. I’m having to navigate all of this. I just need to process what just happened…’ We didn’t talk for quite some time, and then he just unfollowed me and I’m like, oh. OK… so we just haven’t really spoken since then.”
Sean sat out the press day for season 3; he also left the Oppenheim Group after filming. While the majority of the cast seems to align with Austin and Kayla’s line of thinking, Sean’s bestie, Alexandra Jarvis (who largely goes by her last name on the show), sticks up for him in a separate interview with the rest of the ensemble.
“I completely disagree with that,” she says. “I’m probably the closest one to Sean and have been for a while. He and I became closer friends during season 2, and I feel like he has been completely honest and straightforward. Obviously, everybody has different opinions. There’s a lot of chefs in the kitchen and I don’t know… I think that there’s definitely gonna be some confusion, I think for the audience, as to what’s going down. And no, Sean did not do any of this for screen time.”
Jarvis suggested the larger web was too complicated to explain, but chalked up any misunderstandings to a “game of telephone.”
“Sean had never told me those same details [Kayla mentioned], and he and I and Kayla had met several times and talked about this,” she explains. “So I think there’s just confusion.”
“Or, it’s hard to keep all your lies straight,” Alex Hall interjects.
“Most people are inebriated in our office half the time,” Jarvis claps back. “So you take what you will from that; it’s kind of difficult for the truth to come out.”
Jarvis joined Sean in exiting the brokerage; Tyler also parted ways with the O Group. As for whether they’ll be welcomed back, boss Jason says it’s something he would let the agents “opine on.”
“Oh, more drama!” Brandi quips, setting the stage for a potential season 4.
All episodes of Selling the OC are now streaming on Netflix.
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