‘Selling Sunset’ star Christine Quinn says she had PPD while filming

Christine Quinn is opening up about the struggles she faced while filming the latest season of Selling Sunset. Season four followed the Oppenheim Group realtor as she navigated the last weeks of pregnancy, an emergency C-section delivery, and her return to work after a very brief leave of absence.

It’s clear to anyone who’s watched Selling Sunset that Quinn is portrayed as the “villain” of the show—something she normally embraces and plays up for the audience. But she says the conflicts she engaged in during this past season took a heavy toll on her, even if it didn’t appear that way.

“I was pregnant on top of dealing with postpartum depression…this season was really difficult for me,” she tells ET Canada in a new interview. “I did the best that I could with the emotions that I was dealing with at the time and that I’m still dealing with now.”

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The show made her transition from pregnant woman to new mom look seamless, but Quinn says that’s not the real story about what was happening behind the scenes in her real life. The main dramatic storyline of season four centered around Quinn and her allegedly cheating ex-boyfriend, who began dating the newest Oppenheim agent, Emma, after he and Quinn broke up. There were lots of confrontations and uncomfortable moments during each episode.

Quinn says shes felt “misunderstood” and “constantly attacked” while having to deal with postpartum emotions taking a toll on her mental health at the same time.

“The problem that I was facing [was] everyone was saying, ‘Oh, well, you know, she’s so thin. She’s so this. She’s so that.’ But inside you know, I was dealing with PTSD,” she says.

Quinn’s water broke while she was actually in the middle of filming the show, and she was rushed to the hospital already dilated to nine centimeters. Earlier this year, she says she was hyperventilating from the pain and was rushed into an emergency C-section because her heart rate was “plummeting,” as was her baby’s. Her son, Christian, also had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

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When I watched the latest season of Selling Sunset, I felt uncomfortable with how often everyone on the show commented on Quinn’s body and congratulated her for being so thin. Not only is it never appropriate to comment on a woman’s body, but to comment on someone’s body when they’re pregnant or postpartum is particularly problematic.

I lost 30 pounds in less than a month after delivering my first baby, and I remember how many people couldn’t believe it. I was also in the depths of postpartum depression and anxiety and could barely eat enough to sustain my milk supply, so it wasn’t exactly a compliment. It just made me feel worse about my own mental state.

“They make fun of the fact of me being late in the show. ‘Oh, Christine’s late. Oh, Christine’s late,'” Quinn says, describing her own struggles during the show. “And it’s because I was literally having panic attacks and I was worried about my pregnancy and something going wrong because every time I was working, I was walking into work,” says Quinn. “It was a lion’s den and these girls were pitted against me. And it was really, really difficult.”

According to postpartumdepression.org, approximately 70% to 80% of women will experience, at a minimum, the ‘baby blues’. Many of these women will experience the more severe condition of postpartum depression or a related condition.

A recent study found that 1 in 7 women may experience postpartum depression in the year after giving birth. With approximately 4 million live births occurring each year in the United States, this equates to almost 600,000 postpartum depression diagnoses.

If nothing else, this is a solid reminder that you can never truly know what another mama is going through. Even if it all looks like roses and sunshine on the outside, it can be a wildly different scenario internally. Whether she’s actually a “villain” or not doesn’t matter. You could say she reaps what she sows, and that’s not untrue. But she also deserved a more empathetic experience during such a vulnerable time.

If you or someone you know is suffering from postpartum depression, you can find resources for help and treatment here.

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