In season three of "Selling Sunset," out Aug. 7 on Netflix, Chrishell Stause's divorce from Justin Hartley is profiled at length, as filming for the new season was well underway when he filed in November 2019.
During episode six, the first episode that really delves into the divorce, Stause makes a surprising claim: Hartley informed her of their split via text message.
"I found out because he texted me that we were filed," she tells co-star Mary Fitzgerald during one scene from the episode, titled "One Text Changes Everything."
"Forty five minutes later, the world knew."
The 39-year-old actress and reality star later adds, "If that's really what you wanted, there are better ways to go about it."
TODAY reached out to Hartley regarding this claim and his team denied to comment.
In January 2014, Stause and Hartley's relationship was confirmed for the first time after the pair walked a red carpet at an event in West Hollywood. Two and a half years later, in July 2016, the pair announced that they were engaged to be married. On Oct. 28, 2017, the couple tied the knot in an intimate ceremony.
“They don’t make them any better than Justin, and I could not be more thrilled to officially be Mrs. Hartley!” Stause said at the time. "The wedding exceeded anything I could have ever imagined."
Fast forward two years to November 2019, when the "This Is Us" star filed for divorce, saying they had "irreconcilable differences." People reported that Hartley, 43, listed the actual date of separation as July 8. Stause filed for dissolution of the marriage in December, and posted a quote on Instagram at the time that read, in part, "It's hard to watch people change right in front of you."
"I'm a happy guy. I sleep like a baby. I don't have anything on my mind," Hartley said during an interview with Entertainment Tonight in July 2020. "I treat people the way I want to be treated and I have lovely friends who love me and I love them. And I've got this wonderful daughter, and I've got a great family, and I am a very, very lucky, lucky individual."
The hit Netflix reality series "Selling Sunset" follows the lives of real estate agents working at the glamorous brokerage the Oppenheim Group in the Hollywood Hills. The new season does a gut-wrenching and poignant job of profiling the experience of going through a divorce, especially one that is so public.
Stause exhibits a vulnerability and rawness during the last three episodes of the season that is difficult to watch and will resonate with any hopeless romantic.
"When I think of marriage, I think of, you know, you work on things with people if they're not perfect, no one is, you work on it," Stause says during an emotional confessional. "You talk about it. You don't throw it out... you don't go out looking for greener grass. Sometimes you have to water the grass that you have, and that's what marriage is."
"Sometimes it can be hard, I mean I don't think it should more hard than easy at all, but that's why I'm so confused... I didn't feel like that balance was off."
To Fitzgerald, she explains, "It's hard, it takes a toll on your self-worth where you just feel the anger, 'How could you do it this way?' And then the sadness, like, 'I love him so much. This was my best friend. Who do I talk to now?'"
"It's just such a roller coaster."