Photo: lev radin / Shutterstock
She used to date Taye Diggs.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on May 24, 2020
Selling Sunset is back for a second season. The Netflix reality series that mixes high fashion and high-end real estate is the perfect summer binge-watch. And the Oppenheim Group has added another real estate agent to their roster, Amanza Smith AKA Mary Fitzgerald's BFF, who's shaking things up among the other agents and adding new drama.
Smith isn't new to the firm, however. She's a designer who has been staging homes for the agency for eight years. She recently got certified to sell real estate herself and now she's taken a desk of her own in the office. She brags that design is her passion but selling homes is how she will help provide a better life for her kids as a single mom.
Who is Amanza Smith?
Read on for all the details.
What does Amanza Smith do at the Oppenheim group?
Selling Sunset profiles the incredibly glamorous real estate agents who work at a very fancy Los Angeles brokerage. Now in its second season, the Netflix show is stepping up the inter-office drama by adding another agent to the mix. Amanza Smith introduced herself to the cameras by sharing that she's an interior designer who has been staging houses for the group for eight years already. She and Mary go way back and are super-tight. Getting her real estate license is a new credential and she's very excited to get moving on home sales.
Her relationships with the firm go back decades.
Smith explains to the cameras that she has a long history with Jason Oppenheim, one of the owners of the brokerage Oppenheim Group. He was there for her when she and her ex-husband split and she was flat broke and unable to get an apartment. He co-signed the lease for her, allowing her to start a new life after she found herself alone, trying to raise her two kids.
Smith with her children. Their father is ex-NFL player Ralph Brown.
Her post-divorce life was anything but glamorous.
Smith had been married to NFL player Ralph Brown, who put in nine seasons as a cornerback at teams like the Giant and the Cardinals. Smith explained that after her divorce, Brown hadn't been financially able to pay child support and she was left doing whatever it took to take care of her kids. She was cleaning houses and working hourly jobs to pay the rent. Eventually, she got into modeling, and was even on Deal or No Deal as one of the "case girls."
During that period, a friend asked her what her real passion was and Smith said she loved interior design. She explained in a flashback that she had grown up poor, living in a small trailer, which she loved restyling even as a child. She said her mom could afford to buy her paint once a year and she would use that to give their small home a refresh. As an adult, she started working her way into the design world slowly, starting with a specialty in children's rooms with her company Kidterior Designs. She had a gift for making houses look stylish and sellable and started working with Oppenheim Group as a stager for their listings. She added the real estate license as a way of making herself the total package, being able to list, stage, and sell properties all by herself.
Work may have led to play.
One of the high-end clients on the Oppenheim roster is Taye Diggs. Coincidentally, he also dated Smith in 2014. The couple showed up on a red carpet for the BET Awards that spring. Diggs was in the middle of his divorce from Frozen star Idina Menzel, with whom he has a son, at the time so he was keeping the details of his new relationship pretty private. They were together for several years before splitting up in 2018.
She brings the drama to the office, too.
Smith is very passionate about being a mother and her two kids are the center of her life. That's not something she can keep out of the office either and in one of the episodes, it made some sparks fly between her and childless Heather Rae Young. Smith remarked that Young and her boyfriend Tarek El Moussa were moving pretty fast by introducing her to the kids after only a few weeks of dating. That didn't sit well with Young. She thought Smith was overstepping and being judgemental. However, Smith, as a mother, a co-parent of a man with a girlfriend, and the ex-girlfriend of a man with kids, probably knows a bit more blending families that Young gave her credit for.
Look for her new line of furniture.
One thing you can say for Smith is that her sense of timing is pretty key. Joining the cast of a popular Netflix series is a prime way to get attention and she is doing just that as she plans to release her own line of furniture. She is promoing her AmanZa pieces on her Instagram account. A few seem to be custom commission she did for particular clients but she may be headed to a mass-market line that anyone looking for the Selling Sunset touch can buy.
One of Smith's furniture pieces.
Selling Sunset Season 2 is streaming on Netflix.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.