Chloe Tucker Caine doesn’t call herself the “Broadway real-estate agent” for nothing. The Owning Manhattan star struts into Sarabeth’s on New York’s “Billionaire’s Row,” just steps away from Carnegie Hall, where every theater legend has graced the stage. She has the hallmarks of a Broadway diva — glittery cardigan; black fur; her 8-year-old pooch, Sadie, in a Chanel tote bag — but the warmth and giddiness of a family friend, hugging me as if she’s known me for years. (She did, in fact, follow me on Instagram first.)
You would never know that Tucker Caine had a self-described “menty B” the night before at Zero Bond, as she watched the Season 2 premiere with her castmates for the first time. “You have all this buildup. You don’t know what’s going to air, and it’s like the last two years of your life,” she says, before ordering a cappuccino. She got especially upset watching herself and castmate Jade Shenker rehash their fallout. But like a true performer, she snapped out of it. “I had a good little cry, and now we’re like, ‘I’m good.’”
In Season 1 of Owning Manhattan, Tucker Caine distinguished herself by leaning into her past as a triple threat. (She appeared on MTV’s short-lived The Search for Elle Woods, as one of 15 contestants vying for the lead role in Legally Blonde: The Musical, and later spent two years playing Sophie in the touring production of Mamma Mia!, before her career stalled after moving to New York.) But it wasn’t all gravy. Her feud with Shenker, who was going through a divorce, became a central plot point when, in an emotional argument, Tucker Caine appeared to defend Shenker’s husband.
At the time, Tucker Caine explains, she didn’t believe that Shenker’s husband had cheated on her. “A lot of us thought it was a fake storyline,” she says. “Jade holds everything very close to her chest, and she understood the assignment of ‘If you have something big to say, you wait for cameras.’ Looking back, I come off so cold. As her best friend, I was not compassionate, I was not empathetic, and I felt like I’ve been a really, really bad person for the last couple of years.”
In Season 2, she does her best to forge friendships, rather than start fights — and even has a teary-eyed come-to-Jesus moment with Shenker. “There are definitely some people who are not happy I’m friends with Jade again,” she teases, as we trade slices of our banana and pumpkin muffins. “They were like, ‘We will not be friends with you if you’re friends with her.’”
While her friendships still might be shaky at times, her business is booming. In Season 2, she doubles down on her theater background, staging a full-blown musical to showcase a tough-sell Chelsea townhouse, backed by an eight-piece orchestra and a troupe of dancers, including her boss, Ryan Serhant. In the finale, it sells for $4.775 million.
Tucker Caine says it’s the sale she’s most proud of; it shows how far she’s come since scraping by as a struggling actor just a decade ago. Back then, she made ends meet by bartending (“I kept getting fired”) and illegally renting out her apartment on Airbnb (“I kept getting caught”), until her now-husband, Leon, suggested she get her real-estate license. Ironically, the man who inspired her to start this career can’t support her on the show — his finance job forbids him from filming. “He’s very normal, stable, logical, the complete opposite [of me], very British,” she gushes. “He keeps me super grounded, does not understand this reality stuff, doesn’t think it’s cool at all.”
She learned the art of selling from Serhant’s YouTube house tours and began making videos of her own listings. Those caught his eye and led him to hire her as one of the first agents at his brokerage. Despite Serhant’s history as a Bravolebrity on Million Dollar Listing, she likes to think she planted the idea of reality TV in his head. “There was one night where I was drunk, and I was like, ‘Hey, you know what you should do? You should be the Lisa Vanderpump of real estate,’” she recalls, slurring her words for dramatic effect. “I don’t want to say it was my idea, but my delusional brain would like to think it was.”
Now, she’s curious if Owning Manhattan could open up opportunities to perform — her top choice being Dancing With the Stars. Over bites of her spinach and goat cheese omelet, as I cuddle Sadie, she tosses out dream roles and gossips like a Broadway influencer about Whitney Leavitt’s Chicago casting as Roxie Hart. “I’d actually love to do Velma,” she says, pointedly noting, “They’ve never done a stunt casting for it.” In the meantime, she’s finding other ways to put herself out there: After brunch, she has two showings, then a studio session to put finishing touches on her first original song, “Fly High.”
“You’re the first person to put that into perspective, that it’s my first original song going into the world,” she tells me, taking a moment to process. “I found the song through my musical director, Michael Ferrara, and thought, ‘This is exactly what I feel like I’m going through in the moment.’”
Still, she wouldn’t leave real estate or Owning Manhattan if Broadway — or pop stardom — came calling. “A busy man has time for everything,” she says. “Real estate is what gave me confidence as a human being.” In fact, she hopes the show digs even deeper into their lives. “I’m more interested in ‘What is it like filming a show? How does that change people’s relationships?’” she ponders. “Maybe now we can break that fourth wall.”
