Beneath the dazzling facade of New York City’s real estate market lies the dedicated team of SERHANT agents who are determined to make deals happen. While the pursuit of multimillion-dollar transactions naturally invites drama, the real intrigue often comes from the interpersonal dynamics among the realtors featured in the show Owning Manhattan.

The second season primarily focuses on the tensions between Jessica Taylor, Nile Lundgren, and Genesis Suero. However, there’s also an undercurrent of unresolved issues. Tricia Lee’s candid discontent with Jessica Markowski—expressed both to her fellow SERHANT agents and during her confessional segments—raises questions about the current state of their relationship.

Within the series, Lee criticizes Markowski for portraying real estate as effortlessly simple and suggests that Markowski’s success largely stems from her husband’s influential connections.

In an interview at DECIDER’s studio, conducted before Season 2 launched on Netflix, Lee admitted she hasn’t directly communicated these concerns to Markowski. She stood firm on her “observations.”

“In real estate, everyone has their advantage,” Lee noted. “I had a thriving business in my borough that introduced me to many influential women in Brooklyn. That was my advantage, my ‘cheat,’ if you will. It opens doors for me that others might not access—even now, a decade later. Opportunities continue to come my way because of that.”

“We all have a cheat and her husband is a cheat,” she continued. “I’m not dissing it. That’s the reality. You’re not getting those opportunities on your own. That’s your cheat. It’s just the same with my former business. I’m not always getting those opportunities on my own. It’s the relationship and reputation I built from that world that benefits me in this world. So it’s a workaround to be more successful in real estate.”

Lee’s problem is that she feels like Markowski “takes that and layers it with this, ‘Oh, well-ah, I just sold a $1 million property, or well-ah, I just sold a $10 million property.’”

“When people are out here having to build a business from scratch, like 99.9% of agents, you’re selling this image that hurts us, which is we get overpaid for little work and we have no true value,” Lee said. “I don’t agree with anyone that puts that out there.”

The SERHANT agent added,  “We’re out here trying to work and be respected. We don’t need anyone on TV or otherwise promoting the fact that we show up with great hair and great heels, and that’s how we get listings. That’s just not the truth. If it was, we wouldn’t be working anymore.”

Markowski, for her part, was unaware that Lee felt this way until we spoke to her ahead of Season 2 (side note: none of the cast had seen the episodes before they dropped on Netflix).

“It saddens me that she feels any type of way about me, because one thing I know about myself is I work harder than anybody knows,” Markowski said. “Coming from an immigrant family, we came to America with nothing in our pockets and I work so hard.”

Markowski explained that she only posts the “highs” of her successes on social media for “optics,” noting that she doesn’t show off the “hard work” that goes into deals behind the scenes.

“I do work hard,” Markowski reiterated. “I have a $30 million listing in Greenwich Village. I have a $17 million apartment in One High Line. I have new developments I’m working on. I’m on the top No. 1 team at our company, and for her to feel as though I am not promoting well or doing well, it just saddens me that she feels this way.”

“But you know, jealousy gets the best of people sometimes,” Markowski concluded.

Owning Manhattan Season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.