Ryan Serhant Reveals Whether He’d Ever Work With Jonathan Nørmølle Again After Firing Him In ‘Owning Manhattan’: “You Never Know”

Ryan Serhant has had his hands full with a billion-dollar real estate company, so the last thing he wanted to do was fire one of his high-earning agents. But, low and behold, he was forced to hand Jonathan Nørmølle his walking papers in the season finale of Netflix ‘s Owning Manhattan after he caused one too many problems for the business.

The show, which became an instant hit, follows Serhant and his employees as they navigate the New York City real estate market, big egos and drama in their personal lives.

Nørmølle — who was a catalyst for much of the show’s drama until he was ultimately fired — has since come out and claimed that he orchestrated his firing to get out of his contract with the broker, to which Serhant said, “I think it’s totally OK for people to work on controlling their own narrative, it is what it is. I would just say check the tape. The show was filmed in real time, and went down in real time.”

With fans calling for a second season, we can’t help but wonder if Nørmølle will come crawling back to Serhant — and whether the actor-turned-real estate mogul would be willing to work with him again.

“I think I do give a handful of second chances to people. I don’t burn bridges,” Serhant told DECIDER. “I think everybody has the opportunity to change, and you never know. You never know. I was on a soap opera for a while and they told me I could come back from the dead too.”

Savannah Gowarty and Maggie Wu also leave Serhant’s firm in the first season of Owning Manhattan — but, unlike Nørmølle, they quit on their own accord. Serhant confirmed that he has run into all three of his former employees while doing business in the Big Apple, telling us, “It is a small city for those that do business, and you do come into play with a lot of them all the time. So it’s okay. It’s fine. I’m used to it now.”

Serhant recently stopped by DECIDER’s offices to talk all things Owning Manhattan, from what it was like making the jump from Bravo to Netflix, to which storyline he was most invested in. Check out the full interview below.

DECIDER: I could not stop binging Owning Manhattan. How are you feeling about making the jump from Bravo to Netflix?

RYAN SERHANT: I wouldn’t be here without Bravo. Bravo plucked me from obscurity in 2010. I was doing rentals in Koreatown and I randomly went to an open casting call in Times Square with 3,000 real estate agents and they picked three of us. So I wouldn’t be here without Bravo.

I will say that I’m assuming making cable television with advertisers and commercial breaks, it’s a different beast than Netflix, which says, “Hey, go have fun, make something no one’s ever seen. That’s what our subscribers expect of us.” [The subscribers are] the ones paying the bills, not Bounty paper towels who were like, “Well, maybe that’s too risqué.” So Owning Manhattan ended up being all the things that I always wanted to do on Million Dollar Listing — the way we talk, the language, and the stuff that you just couldn’t do or that would get cut [on cable television]. So this is like the unscripted HBO version.

But they gave us a lot of freedom and a lot of room to play, and it was a different experience. Netflix is the evolution of the Bravos of the world and it was just a lot of fun, and I’m super lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to work with both.

There were rumblings on the internet that Andy Cohen stole your thunder by announcing your show on Watch What Happens Live. What’s your response to that? Did that happen?

Ryan Serhant Surprises Andy Cohen With A Listing Agreement To Sell His NYC Apartment On ‘WWHL’: “Are You Jacking Up Your Commission For Me?”

Andy Cohen, gets you every time! If you watch that clip, I am authentically surprised. Because I told him like, “Hey, do you mind if I say that we’re coming back to TV and doing a show on Netflix?” [He was] like, “Yeah, no problem.” And the next thing I know he’s like, “You have a show…” He says it out loud and I’m like, “I guess this is how we’re doing this. And it’s live. Great. Watch what happens to me now.”

I love Andy, I talked to him today, actually. He’s great. It’s his show. He’s Andy Cohen, he can do whatever he wants. He created the thunder. So if he stole it from me, he basically just borrowed it for a second and gave it right back because he built it in the first place.

On Million Dollar Listing, we see more of your family on the show. Was it a conscious choice to focus Owning Manhattan more on the Serhant staff than yourself?

There’s only so much time. We shot a lot with my family too, but to follow the company, me and then 12 agents over just eight episodes, and to also build up the world and story, it would be so hard to be emotionally involved anywhere else.

At the end of the day, there’s so much that we shot that didn’t make it into the show, because it would have broken momentum from what ended up being kind of Ryan versus Jonathan and Jade [Shenker] versus Chloe [Tucker Caine] and then some kind of ancillary storylines and all the real estate and everything.

We’ll see what happens, if we continue to make the show going forward. But I don’t know, my family has also been on TV for a long time, and I think this one I really wanted to be focused on the work and on the business and bring reality back to the work.

You’re not only Owning Manhattan star with Bravo experience. Did you know Nile Lundgren did a stint on the one-season wonder Camp Getaway? Did you watch him?

No, of course not. Who watched that? Did you watch that show? I didn’t even know that was a thing. So yeah, good for him though. Good for him. Listen, I did a one season show with Bravo called Sell It Like Serhant that was based on my book that was sales training. That was just a really, really hard show to make, which is why it only lasted one season. Netflix does a lot of one season shows. But yeah, I’m glad he had a little experience.

Nile is such a unique guy. What a unique boy, character. He also looks like he’s gonna be the meanest guy. Just don’t judge a book by its cover. You see Nile and you’re like, “Really?” And then two minutes later, you’re like, “Please hug me, you are just like the softest normal teddy bear ever.” And then you meet people who look super cute and lovable and then you’re like, “Why are you cutting me with a knife? I don’t understand.” Don’t judge a book by its cover ever, especially in New York City.

You said in one scene that you once had a buyer threaten to murder you if you couldn’t get them out of their contract. Do you have any other wild stories like that that you can share?

How much time do you have? That was a unique one, because the stakes were incredibly real. And it was $22 million on the line. And oftentimes, it’s the broker. I’m not the developer, I didn’t build it. I didn’t force you to sign a contract. But people have to take their anger and frustration out on someone, and so you take it out on the person who’s in the middle of the deal.

I once had a guy who had signed a contract on a place for $8.3 million and just vanished off the face of the Earth. A foreign person, I won’t say what country, but potentially a scary one. And just vanished. [He] signed it, $830,000 in a deposit, gone. And then one night, he calls me and says, “I’m in New York City. I’m here to close.” I’m like, “I thought you were dead. Like what? This is insane.” He’s like, “Meet me at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on 59th Street.” And I’m like, “OK.” [I] called everyone [and said], “He’s here. He’s alive.”

Ryan Serhant Stuns Andy Cohen With Snarky Response To His Questions About ‘Owning Manhattan’: “Wow”

I race up there. He comes down with a fleet of people, like an espresso assistant. This streak of blacked out Escalades that are bulletproof pull right up in front at the right time. He says, “Get in.” We get in. I’m like, “Do you want to go to the walkthrough? Where do we go?” He’s like, “No.” We go to JFK.

And I also thought I was going to die in that moment. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if I was going to be sold off into pieces or into sex slavery. I really have no idea and so I’m texting my mom. I’m like, “Goodbye, my life has been OK. I love you very much.”

We go [to JFK], he buys an airplane. Then we go into the city. He buys the apartment and takes a selfie with me. And I’m like, “I don’t know what just happened. Also, why did you just randomly show up?” He’s like, “Yeah, sorry. I’ve been a little bit busy. Also, I just felt bad for you. So figured I’d just buy it.”

And that was the moment I realized that my superpower is wild persistence. I will follow up with you until you just show up and buy it just to get rid of me.

You have a lot of big personalities over there at Serhant. Whose journey were you most invested in watching on the show?

Everything that I wasn’t a part of was new to me. I watched the show just like every other viewer. I had no idea. And I really try to stay like CEO, HR. I don’t know how other people run their companies but I’m not your friend, I’m your boss and we’re here to build business together.

So watching Jade go through getting that DM from some girl that slept with her husband I think in her own bed or something crazy, and then had to go through that separation and do it while trying to sell real estate and do it while also filming a show and do it while losing her best friend. And then the best friend goes and gets pregnant during all that at the same time and then comes back and then they kiss and make up or something. But I think they’re fighting now, I have no idea. I was very invested in that storyline and I don’t usually care about stuff like that.

There was definitely a lot of drama with Jonathan in the show. He recently did an interview where he claimed he orchestrated his firing to get out of his contract with Serhant. What is your response to that?

God bless you. I think it’s totally OK for people to work on controlling their own narrative, it is what it is. I would just say check the tape. The show was filmed in real time, and went down in real time. I don’t know. That’s all I’ll say.

Do you think you’d ever work with him again if he came crawling back to Serhant?

I think I do give a handful of second chances to people. I don’t burn bridges. I think I even said it to him when we were having that conversation, like, I don’t want to have this conversation right now. I want to be up here popping bottles with you and you just closed an amazing deal and you’re buying your first apartment and your life is expanding. I don’t want to be up here reprimanding you on behavior. Like dude, I have stuff to do. And so I think everybody has the opportunity to change and you never know. You never know. I was on a soap opera for a while and they told me I could come back from the dead too.

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The NY real estate industry is incredibly cutthroat but also incredibly small. Have you interacted with Jonathan, Savannah or Maggie since they left?

We just sold a townhouse for $35.5 million two days ago and Savannah — I had no idea because she left Serhant and she went and joined a team at another firm where that team lead was representing the seller of that townhouse. At the walkthrough, Savannah shows up and we’re like, “Hey.” She’s like, “Oh, I’m on this team now.” Like, nice, awesome, congrats, amazing.

Jonathan, we were just at another award show and he was there and he won an award and gave a super unique speech. Maggie, [I’ve seen] a little bit.

I mean, listen, there’s 80,000 real estate agents in this city. It is a small city for those that do business, and you do come into play with a lot of them all the time. So it’s okay. It’s fine. I’m used to it now.

One scene I loved was when you were suit shopping with Jordan and you paid for both of your purchases. You also bought Cartier watches for Nile, Tricia and Jordan. Was that the most expensive gift you’ve ever bought for an employee and if not, what was it?

I feel like I’m the most expensive gift for every employee that works here, like, you are welcome. Gift-wise for agents, yeah, I’d have to really think. I think so, in terms of pure gift. We’ve had some bonus structures in the past and different things but my gift is business, my love language is lead flow. If you come to work at Serhant, you will double your income. It happens to every single person that works with us. Their lives just get better and I don’t feel like I need to increase your entire life and then also give you a gift. I feel like they should give me gifts.

Case in point, this watch I’m wearing, which I’ve never actually worn before except for today because I saw it — I gave an agent in our Florida office a $15 million house. He sold it. He flew up to New York and he gave me a Rolex. He’s like, “It’s the Batman Rolex because of Serhant blue.” I’m like, “Alright. Thank you.” And I’ve never worn it and for some reason today, I just randomly put it on. I think people should give me gifts. I am a gift receiver. Okay? That is how I look at myself.

There’s been a lot of speculation about this secret A-list couple who went way over budget to have that almost $22 million space without even seeing it first. What do you think about the theories that it was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle?

I think that those theories are incorrect. I think that, to be fair, it’s not that they went way over budget, it’s that they just didn’t really have a budget to start with. We tell everybody when they want to come and buy a place in New York City, “You’re about to spend more money than you’ve ever thought, forever on a home.” New York City is very, very expensive, but it’s expensive now, it’s always the most expensive right now. And I just don’t think they knew.

$5 million is a significant amount of money. You should be good. Unfortunately, New York does not make that so, and so they were educated up to a price point where they said, “Okay, well we want bad enough.” We sold a townhouse on 68th Street for $57 million over FaceTime in South Africa. We sold another townhouse on 61st Street for $16.3 million over FaceTime in Croatia. So we have a big following and huge reach which is why people also want to list their properties with us, because we can do stuff like that.

Are there any updates you can share about a second season of Owning Manhattan ? What do you hope for the future of the show?

My heart is just very, very full with the engagement and the fan outreach that it’s created. Because it is overwhelming. I’ve done a lot of TV shows now on Bravo and there was always excitement there, but nothing like what I’ve experienced. There’s people outside our office right now. There’s people outside my car right now because it’s Smurf blue and you can find it everywhere.

I would love to do further seasons. I think there’s so much more story to be told. And I think the first season — all we really did was just build the world. This is the world of what it means to own Manhattan and see if people want to see more of it. And if they do, maybe we’ll give it to them.

Owning Manhattan is currently streaming on Netflix.

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