After steamy kiss on 'Selling the OC,' why are Alex Hall and Tyler Stanaland just 'friends'?

Spoiler alert: The following contains details from Season 2 of "Selling the OC," now streaming on Netflix.

Those who ship “Selling the OC” agents Tyler Stanaland and Alex Hall might be disappointed to learn that things seem to have cooled since their steamy night in the hot tub.

Season 2 of Netflix’s “Selling Sunset” spinoff, which focuses on agents at The Oppenheim Group’s Newport Beach, California office, concludes with Stanaland confessing to Hall at castmate Polly Brindle’s birthday party that he thinks about the two being more than friends.

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While shooting Season 2 earlier this year, “there was a lot of buildup,” Stanaland tells USA TODAY. “We were spending a lot of time together, and our friendship was also evolving. We had had a couple conversations before that of just like, ‘Is there something here? Is there not?’ And ultimately, we decided to put a pin in it and just be friends.”

But at the party, “for whatever reason, after 14 hours in the jacuzzi, it just kind of all started pouring out of me,” Stanaland says. “I don't really know why, that night, other than it just felt like the right time, right place.”

The agents had a flirty friendship in Season 1, when Stanaland was still married to “Pitch Perfect” actress Brittany Snow. That couple announced their separation in September 2022 after two years of marriage, and their divorce was finalized last July.

“Things with you are very easy, and no matter what,” Stanaland tells Hall in the jacuzzi. “If I’m in a crowded room, and I look across and I see you, everything feels normal.”

He adds in the finale that he wants to court her and take her to dinner. Hall wonders why Stanaland has never told her this before. She scares him, he says in the episode, because they’re opposites. “You are so different than anybody I’ve ever dated. You’re loud. You’re opinionated,” he says. “You are a nightmare, and I genuinely love everything about you.”

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Though the two feel as if they’re opening a Pandora’s box, they kiss, and the eight-episode season ends.

“I shot my shot,” Stanaland says, seated beside Hall for an interview. The moment in the hot tub took Hall by surprise. Watching it, she finds Stanaland’s confession “so cute and so sweet. He melted me, obviously.”

Though the two are not in a relationship, Hall says, they are “still very close” today. They also might be tight-lipped because their potential relationship continues to unfold in Season 3, Hall teases.

“We're still very good friends, and just navigating uncharted territory.”

Exploring something romantic with a friend is a first for Stanaland, and explains his hesitation.

“She is very important in my life, and depending on the day, I think I'm important in hers, and so there was a lot more pressure to exploring what this is or may be,” he says. “We're just delicately figuring it out.”

Hall and Stanaland grew closer when she provided a shoulder as he worked through his divorce. She’d invite him to dinner. Stanaland appreciated that Hall could relate, having gone through a divorce herself. (She and ex-husband Neil Flores share two children.)

“Nobody gets married to get divorced,” Stanaland says. But it “doesn't have to be a negative thing. You hopefully do learn and grow because of it, and you evolve and hopefully understand yourself better because of it. It wasn't easy. It's still not super easy, but I'm at least to a point now where I feel like myself again and feel good, and a lot of that is thanks to the people around me.”

What the future holds for Stanaland and Hall is still a mystery.

“Right now, I'm just taking it one day at a time, focusing on life and work and not overthinking everything else,” Stanaland says. “Just seeing where the cards fall.”

Adds Hall: “Less thinking, more feeling.”

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