Selling Sunset star Mary Bonnet “refused” to give up when the going got tough — and now she’s on top of the world.
“There were so many days where I would just cry and [say], ‘Why does it have to be this hard?’ But I just wouldn’t give up,” Bonnet, 44, told Us Weekly exclusively while promoting her memoir, Selling Sunshine: Surviving Teenage Motherhood, Thriving in Luxury Real Estate, and Finally Finding My Voice, set to be released on Tuesday, September 24. “I wanted to give other people hope.”
Bonnet details a series of ups and downs in her life, including welcoming her son, Austin Babbitt, as a teenager, overcoming a harrowing sexual assault and, most recently, battling fertility issues.
“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Bonnet told Us, noting that she wanted “the bad that happened to me to help other people.”
Bonnet admitted that “there were a couple of things I left out that really impacted me,” because she didn’t want to “hurt or embarrass anybody I love” — especially her son.
“He’ll be OK,” she said of Austin, 27. “There’s nothing in there that he would have a problem with.”
The Netflix star writes at length in Selling Sunshine about becoming pregnant at 15 and subsequently being “shunned by people” in her Indiana town.
“Things happen for a reason,” she said. “Every place I went, I was a baby with a baby, and I was judged. It was really hurtful [but] because of that, I’m able to deal with the criticism we get on the show. I didn’t know at the time that that was setting me up and thickening my skin.”
Perhaps most traumatic of all, Bonnet writes of being drugged and raped after moving to Los Angles by someone she referred to as “Joe” in the book.
“I still am affected by it,” Bonnet admitted. “It’s something that will probably never 100 percent go away.”
Even though her husband of six years, Selling Sunset costar Romain Bonnet, is “so loving and understanding” there are still moments when she jumps if he touches her.
“I don’t know if that will ever change, but I think I’m dealing with it very well by sharing the story,” Mary continued to Us. “The hardest part was that I blocked a lot of it out [for] survival, so I had to go back, actually relive it, talk about it and try to remember how I felt.”
As Selling Sunset fans know, Mary and Romain long to have a child together, and she shared her difficult fertility journey on the show and in the book. She suffered a septic miscarriage in March 2023, and has gone through several rounds of IVF.
“I’m actually speaking out more about it. I joined the board of directors for AAGL, which is a women’s health organization helping [to] raise money for different research and outreach programs globally,” she told Us. “There [are] so many issues, like endometriosis, that affect people’s fertility, and [they] help people get the services they need. I decided to use [that experience] as a platform to try to help other people.”
Overall, Mary hopes that Selling Sunset fans and readers take away the message to “keep moving forward” after reading her book.
“Whatever it is that you’re going through, you’ll get through it, just like everything else in your life. Just keep believing in yourself because I never believed that I would be where I am now either,” she said. “Stay positive. Pick yourself back up and be happy. Appreciate all the good things — because they will come.”
For more from Mary Bonnet, pick up the new issue of Us Weekly and watch the video above. Her book Selling Sunshine: Surviving Teenage Motherhood, Thriving in Luxury Real Estate, and Finally Finding My Voice will be released on Tuesday, September 24.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
