The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

her, this is really strange. And she said,

‘No, you’re fine.’ ” The next day, “Jason and

I were filming” — in the show she looks as if

she can barely stand up — “and I don’t feel

good at all.” So they wrapped and she went

home for a nap.

Just as she was turning over, she says, “my

water immediately broke. It was just like in

the movies — it was gushing. I couldn’t even

put pants on.” So she wrapped a towel

around her middle and raced to the

hospital, where they discovered that she

was already “10cm dilated”, so there was no

time for pain relief. They tried to vacuum

the baby out — “imagine that with no pain

medicine” — whereupon the baby’s

heart rate started dropping and “I was

flatlining, the baby was flatlining”, so she

had to have an emergency C-section. She

was in so much “excruciating pain” that

she “blacked out”.

At this point “they took my husband out

of the room and they said, ‘You need to

choose one right now — baby or Christine?’

And he was, like, ‘You need to do both.’ ” It

was “absolute insanity”. “The time I walked

into the hospital to the time the baby was

born,” she says, “was 22 minutes.” If there

had been traffic, “I would have probably

died myself, along with the baby.”

She had a few days off and then she went

back to work, a little more than a week later.

W hat, I shriek. A week later? Didn’t she

feel awful? She felt “swollen”, she says, “and

it was hard to be on my feet and walk”. But

she is so “go-go-go” she gets bored if she sits

around the house — a $5 million shag pad in

the hills, with infinity pool, floating staircase

and an “environmentally friendly fireplace”

— so she found the strenuous days being

physical “in a weird way helped heal me”.

Hmmm, OK. She shrugs. “We’re women,

you know. We have no choice and we are

f ***ing strong.”

One of the great features of Selling Sunset

is how shamelessly competitive everyone is

Top, from left Quinn with her husband, Christian, taking their baby, also called Christian, and one of their dogs for a walk; out in

New York in September. Above, from left A masterclass in wearing green in Selling Sunset; the cast of the show

— Quinn may look kind of pastel but that

doesn’t mean she won’t crawl over broken

glass to sell a house for $10 million. Baby C’s

baby shower included an “extreme high-

fashion jungle” and a live sloth — “My

favourite animal in the whole world.” Her

wedding, which featured in one episode of

the show, cost $1 million, with snow, swans,

a black wedding dress and a gothic wedding

cake that “bled” — it was the highlight of

series three.

But she cried when she saw that they had

chosen to focus on the pathetic Chrishell,

who flounced out of the party after a fight

with another estate agent, rather than broad-

cast her “vows”. If you want people to “see

your side”, she tells me, you have to get up

and get back on the show, even if you’re

splitting at the seams. Did the producers of

the show apply pressure to come back as

soon as she had given birth? “No, not really,”

she says. “I think it was a decision that I

made to go back, because if I don’t tell my

story, someone else is going to tell it for me.”

Even so, her husband can’t watch the show

because it is “edited and manipulated and

spun and turned around”.

Having said that, I’m astonished at what

they put her through. The new series shows

her nearly giving birth on set, nearly dying

when she has the baby, then coming straight

back to work, only to be dragged to pieces by

The Mega Agency, Netflix, Getty Images

The Sunday Times Style • 15