At the heart of the show are the mansions with sweeping oceanfront views, modern interiors, and super high price tags that the cast is trying to sell, score for buyers, and make huge commissions from. They each have their own way of running their listings, and with several properties being co-listed among one or more of their fellow agents, it’s easy for people to butt heads. Refinery29 caught up with Peggy Zabakolas and Noel Roberts, two of the estate agents with the most beef between them, to get the lowdown on each other and the rest of the stars.
Noel says that he actually thought that he and Peggy were “going to be the best of buddies” when they first met. That quickly proved to not be the case. Their personalities clashed, especially when Noel showed a house to one of Peggy’s buyers and wasn’t as informed about the property as Peggy felt he should have been. As soon as she felt like something he was doing was putting her business and her buyers in jeopardy, that was it. Their drama continued for the rest of the season, but they both tell me now that they’ve quashed the bad blood between them. However, moving past the drama didn’t necessarily mean becoming friends.
“There was really no resolution to it,” Peggy says. “Before, I was trying to maybe hopefully find something a little bit deeper as a friendship or as a person … [now] I know what I’m going to get. And I’m okay with that.” She adds, “Listen, we’re five people. You don’t have to love everyone that you work with. We all have strong personalities and we’re going to butt heads. We’re going to disagree. You know, it is what it is. You don’t have to be best friends.”
For Noel, he says he just has to remind himself that they’re on the same team. “It should be us against the world and not us against each other.”
That’s nice and all, but we wanted the dirt. So we asked Peggy and Noel to tell us all about their fellow cast members — and give them each yearbook-style superlatives. Enjoy.
Michael Fulfree
Instagram: @mike_fulfree
Superlative: Most Spirited
He goes by Fulfree to his friends, and Peggy says that his big personality earns him “most spirited” on her list — as in, everyone’s biggest cheerleader. Noel says it took him and Michael a little longer to warm up to one another, because he doesn’t think they understood each other initially. Now, Noel thinks Michael is best to go to dinner or a party with, because he’s a “jovial, happy, hilarious guy.”
On the show, we see this side of Michael as he prepares to become a first time dad. He suddenly needs these Hamptons’ house commissions more than ever! But he takes it all in stride even as his wife is due to give birth basically any minute while he’s also at an open house. (The show taped over a year ago, because his son Luca was born in July 2019.)
Also, before Michael was an estate agent, he was a high fashion model. He lived in Italy and modelled for brands like Alexander McQueen, Dolce & Gabbana, and Armani. So, he knows expensive things when he sees them and also how to make them look good to others. A key part of working in real estate.
James “Jimmy” Giugliano
Instagram: @jamesnestseekers
Superlative: Slippery Jimmy
Noel says he doesn’t call him “Slippery Jimmy,” but Jimmy’s high school friends do. The real estate agent, who goes by James professionally, is Southampton, in New York State, born-and-raised, and Peggy considers him “most connected in the Hamptons.”
Even though he’s on a reality show, Jimmy seems to know when to stay out of the spotlight. He’s not featured nearly as much as the other agents because he’s not causing any drama. At one point when some of the other agents are having an issue, he remarks that he just “closed four deals this summer, while they’re sitting around arguing.” But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t around, paying attention. “He hangs back and picks things off [on the] periphery and puts them in his pocket,” Noel says. That must be where the “slippery” comes from.
On the show, Jimmy says he’s the kind of guy who eats, sleeps, and breathes property selling, but Peggy suggests that he has more of a life outside work than he’s letting on.
“He does whatever he wants and he’s super successful,” she says. “He’s not up super early and he’s more carefree about his job, but he’s über successful.”
Jimmy recently joined Michael as a first time father, welcoming his son Rocco with his wife Kelsey.
JB Andreassi
Instagram: @jb_andreassi
Superlative: The Smooth Operator aka Rico Suave aka “Most Nice Guy Ever”
Peggy compares rookie real estate agent JB to “Rico Suave” because he’s “a smooth operator type” who she thinks is hungry to make himself known in this industry. But he probably won’t make himself known by backstabbing any of his friends, because Noel calls him the type of guy who would be “voted most nice guy ever.”
He gives off that vibe on the show, because he’s just trying to make it in an industry that he’s relatively new to. Although he grew up in the Hamptons, he didn’t become a real estate agent in the area until two years ago, per his LinkedIn. After playing American football at Dartmouth university and graduating with a history degree, he went on to work on the corporate side of the National Hockey League until he eventually made his way back to the Hamptons.
That’s when he joined the Nest Seekers real estate brokerage firm alongside his longtime friend Michael Fulfree. While Peggy says that she met most of the show’s cast for the first time last summer when filming began, Michael and JB go way back. And they’re still hanging out even after the show, recently celebrating JB’s 30th birthday together.
Peggy Zabakolas
Instagram: @peggy__z
Superlative: Most Likely To Succeed
Peggy gives herself the “most likely to succeed” superlative, before quickly adding, “I’m going to toot my own horn, but I’d rather not. I feel like that’s like being super cocky.”
Noel, who called Peggy “deals on heels” on the show, now says he thinks her “driven” nature and background in law makes her most likely to “find a way to prove everybody wrong,” which he says is a trait he also has.
So far, Peggy has been living up to her chosen superlative. She’s made it big in both the Manhattan and Hamptons real estate markets, which are notoriously tough to crack. She’s been in the business for over a decade and her contact list is long. If Jimmy is “most connected in the Hamptons,” then Peggy might be most connected, period. This isn’t even her first real estate reality show, as she used to pop up semi-frequently on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York. Oh and did we mention that she’s fluent in Greek? NBD.
Peggy may have thought she was being cocky by declaring herself most likely to succeed, but she might also be right.
Noel Roberts
Instagram: @noelxroberts
Superlative: The Strategist
All of the cast members are strategic in their own ways, but Noel has a very specific goal to live life like the Hamptons-ites do. “When I became a real estate agent, I didn’t want to just be a normal real estate agent,” he says. “It was a lifestyle thing. I want to be hanging out with wealthy clients. I want to be on boats. I want to be playing polo.”
So far Noel’s strategy to achieve those things is working. Within in the Nest Seekers real estate brokerage, he founded Private Client, which allows him to work with the tippity top of the one percent. Noel describes them as “high net worth, prominent families, people who don’t necessarily want the world to know about their real estate transactions.” Ooh, secretive.
Peggy, meanwhile, just describes Noel as “most unique” admitting that she doesn’t know him well enough to offer anything more specific. Noel does make it hard, at least to the outside world, to get to know him much beyond his stylish real estate agent exterior. His Instagram is mostly model-type shots of him looking suave on the beach or playing polo. The show gives a brief look at his family life when we meet his identical twin brother Joel, but that’s about it. It’s like he’s wearing metaphorical sunglasses to keep everyone else from being able to really see him — just like he wore sunglasses to a house showing and upset Peggy with his aloofness.
I ask Noel if he’s hung up the sunglasses for good after that argument or does he still plans to wear them? “Only when it’s a hundred degrees out and the sun is beaming through the windows and I want to show a customer how much light the home gets,” he says.
In other words, yes.
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