Receiving birthday advice from Stassi Schroeder is like getting communion from the Pope. And here, on the eve of my 36th birthday in early December, sitting poolside at a Hollywood Hills mansion—the setting of today’s photo shoot—I receive the blessed words: “Go to Magic Castle.”
I side-eye her. “It's like a haunted house,” explains the reality star, “but with magic everywhere and alcohol and food.” I’m familiar with the venue. It could be fun, sure, but not exactly the over-the-top spectacle, the near-religious experience, I’d anticipated from her. Because long before Scamanda or Scandoval, before Mormon Wives or Love Island, Schroeder’s birthdays were the stuff of reality TV gold: maximalist, dramatic, almost mythic. “It’s my fucking birthday” might as well have tolled like church bells across the Bravoverse, separating the anointed OG fans from the newer reality converts.
