Discover Fredrik Eklund’s candy-coloured home in LA

When Fredrik Eklund was a young boy, he would dress up as a witch. Clad in sorcerer’s robes, he’d create a sideshow act, charging his friends’ parents a small fee in exchange for a glimpse into their future. For Eklund, this was no childish game. Rather, it was a way to understand a gift of intuition; a belief that life had big, huge plans for him. “I can always see into the future,” he says with no hint of a joke. “I call myself ‘the witch’. It’s a real thing. My grandmother has some psychic abilities too.”

Clad in a silk kimono gown (“a gift from a recent stay at The Brando in Tahiti”), the property-mogul-cum-reality-star is pacing around his home office in Beverly Hills. He’s been on Zoom calls since 6am. I’m his 9am. A phone buzzes, and he suddenly stops talking supernatural. “Sorry, it’s my developer.” He then dictates a quick text response: “In an interview with Vogue. Haven't heard back. Called and texted.”

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“Sorry, about that,” he says, giving me his full attention. “We're waiting for this mega contract to be signed.” Things are blowing up for Eklund, who currently helms Eklund Gomes, a global real estate agency that has become a go-to for the rich and famous. Last year alone the company brought in four billion dollars of sales. Business in Miami is booming with one property in particular, Shore Club, selling like crazy. As Eklund describes it, “It’s like a real estate agent’s wet dream right now.”

The success, however, is of little surprise to ‘the witch’. “I always knew or felt I was going to live abroad. I was going to travel a lot. I was going to be successful. I was going to work a lot and build something,” the Stockholm-raised Swede explains. However, he may have underestimated his mammoth life, one that can hardly be condensed into a two-page profile. The famed realtor grew up in a prominent Swedish family. His grandparents were actors, with his grandfather, Bengt Eklund, working with Ingmar Bergman. His father Klas is a top economist and author who has advised Swedish PMs, while his older brother Sigge is a novelist and co-hosts Sweden’s number one podcast. Earlier this year, Eklund released his own three-episode podcast Frekvensen that found him competing with his brother for the top spot. But Eklund says there is no sibling rivalry here. “Sigge, he is the podcast king and if anything I only had a short, small success because of him,” he says.

In this part of the world, the Eklunds are household names. However, Fredrik’s origin story is a tad juicier than his pedigreed upbringing. In a move he thought would “shake up Old World Sweden”, he donned the name Tag Eriksson and tried his hand at the world of adult entertainment in America. The experience led to the autobiographical novel Bananflugornas Herre (Lord of the Fruit Flies), which somewhat became his coming out story when he sent his father the draft.

The book, the porn, the witchy feelings propelled Eklund to New York. He had no job, just a sense that he was where he was meant to be. “While moving to New York and being successful was always my dream, I didn’t really have a plan on how to achieve it,” he says. A friend suggested real estate because he was “number driven” but also “a bit eccentric, which clients like”. He got his licence, secured his first deal and was “instantly hooked”.

There are millions of real estate agents in the world, yet his clicky ‘porn to property’ headline got him noticed. But it was his laser-focused determination and charming charisma that allowed him to win clients and close on properties. He admits he also leans into his Swedishness to help him get ahead. “In America, especially on the West Coast, people don't always say what they really mean. And people play games,” Eklund explains. “I always say straight up to my sellers and my clients, ‘You can see in my eyes that I'm here to help you, that's because I'm Swedish, I tell it how it is’.” Before long he’d nabbed a spot on Bravo’s property show Million Dollar Listing New York where his signature high kicks and punchy one-liners quickly made him a fan favourite.

Over his 11 year run on the reality TV show, fans not only got a front row seat to the bombastic wealth of his A-list clients (who could forget 50 Cent’s 50,000 square foot property he bought on a whim?) but also Eklund’s personal highs and lows, something he was all too happy to share. “It’s totally me,” he says when asked if that was the real Fredrik Eklund projected into our living rooms. “If anything I shared more than the format could hold. To me, nothing was off-limits. Even me fighting with other cast members was questioned by the producers. Though they loved it for ratings.”

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The cameras rolled as he met, and then married, the love of his life, artist Derek Kaplan, who describes an instant chemistry with Eklund. “I was in Mykonos at a pool party, about to leave when I felt a tap on my shoulder,” recalls Kaplan. “I turned around and was met with bright blue eyes and a smile as warm as the sun. I thought, ‘I can’t just let him slip away’.” They both credit their different approaches to life, their ability to laugh together and the way they’ve both learned “the art of which battles to fight” for their strong partnership. “He grounds me,” adds Eklund. “Without him I would have exploded a long time ago.”

The cameras were also there when the pair experienced the heart-wrenching pain of a miscarriage, followed by the life-affirming joy of welcoming twins into the world via surrogacy in 2017. In the episode where they met Milla and Fredrik Jr. for the first time, hearts globally swelled as Eklund looked at Kaplan and said, “I’ve never seen you so happy”. This is a moment that could never be scripted.

Eklund will tell anyone that becoming ‘Dada’ is his proudest achievement, but the path there wasn’t easy. “I also knew that I was going to have kids and I was going to have a daughter specifically. And this name, Milla, I don't know where it came from, but I knew it before puberty and before I realised I was gay,” he says. However, as a gay teen in the early 1990s, having kids, a topic that wasn’t being discussed openly, seemed off the cards. “I felt a lot of sadness that this vision of the future I felt I could see clearly wasn't connecting with what was going on in my life at the time,” he says. However, making dreams a reality is Eklund’s modus operandi. “It took many, many, many years with some miscarriages and some more sadness but I really manifested them for us.”

Despite the strong desire for children, he doesn’t sugarcoat parenting, especially parenting twins. “It’s challenging,” he says. “I call it ‘twin-sanity’, this notion that you never, ever feel fully peaceful.” He goes on to describe this constant pull, this feeling you can’t always be there for both of them. “A good example is that you can’t even hold them both,” he says. “You have one on your chest and you’re cuddling. And that's an amazing feeling. But you're not feeling fully complete because someone else is holding the other one, or the other one is screaming. So it’s intensified, but the love is intensified too.”

I ask if he is teaching them Swedish and he answers with refreshing honesty, “I mean I’d love to but it’s hard, we don’t have time.” Like many parents, the past five years has been set to survival mode, so much so that the couple have decided not to have any more children. “We're so grateful for what we have,” says Eklund. “And it's just been a lot. The twins are finally five and we’ve checked that box. We’ve survived! Now we’re looking forward to travelling with them and really being a unit of four.” However, this could all change come April 2024. In a recent trip to a psychic medium named Roy, Eklund was told they’d be trying to or be pregnant by then. “This is something this witch hadn’t seen,” Eklund says with a smile. “So we will see if he is right or not. I mean, we have 11 beautiful, perfect embryos waiting for us...”

Pursuing a life in the public eye has made Eklund a role model to many, but this was never really his intention. When the cast and crew of Million Dollar Listing New York became like his family, he says he felt safe to open up about deeply personal events. In the case of his miscarriage, he explains that after it happened he arrived to film and simply couldn’t keep it together. “I was so sad and they were like, ‘Why don’t we talk about it in the interview?’ So I sat down and I just started crying. And that led to us to include it on the show,” he says. “It wasn’t really a conscious decision that I wanted to help people.”

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But help people, it did. When the episode aired, it exploded. “What I shared is a big, huge conversation that is often internalised by a lot of couples. I got to listen to it. I got to be part of it. And it just opened my mind. You know, a lot of people go through [miscarriages] and yet it wasn’t really something people talked about at the time – especially men.” This was similar for the couple’s 2013 wedding, which aired at a time that coincided with the United States legalising gay marriage federally. In fact, Eklund and Kaplan were one of the first same-sex couples to ever get married on TV. Eklund remembers an overwhelmingly positive response. “People wrote saying ‘I didn’t understand my daughter or my son and then I watched your episode and now I understand and thank you’,” he recalls. “It was really beautiful and overwhelming. But it wasn’t ever planned. I am just telling my story.”

Sadly, stories more often than not have villains, and when Eklund and Kaplan announced their twins to the world they felt the burning pitchforks of internet trolls. Hateful, homophobic comments flooded social media. “One can say, well, if you put yourself on television, if you put your kids out there, then what do you expect?” says Eklund. “There’s crazy people in this world and there’s trolls and you’re going to get both love and hate. So why are you complaining about the hate? And usually I never do, but in that moment where you’re reading these horrible, hateful comments and you’re sitting there with your two newborns it’s not easy.”

This period was tough for Eklund. Despite appearing to have an unwavering sense of self, he found that the trolls brought up past insecurities during a vulnerable time as he navigated the nervous and overwhelming reality of being a new parent. “Growing up there was a lot of shame in me,” he says. “There was a lot of guilt for being different and for not fitting in. Although I didn’t tell anybody, I lived with that sort of shadow internally. So I think when something like that happens, some of that gets activated.”

Eklund is a person who likes to be in constant motion. Spiritually, financially, emotionally, physically. He is constantly looking at himself from different angles, re-evaluating, striving for improvement. “I always want to move forward,” he says. “I want to take steps forward, not take a step to the side and, God forbid, stay in the same position. And never, ever take a step back.” This is what led to his sobriety just over two years ago. There was no particular rock bottom, for him alcohol was something that was “physically heavy”. While it was alluring and fun, the high was short in comparison to the sluggish aftermath. He talks about the decision to go sober like he would any business venture. It all came down to what he could actually gain from having a drink. “I was always negotiating with myself. Like alcohol gave me 51 per cent and took 49 per cent but then it started to go out of balance,” he says. “Eventually it took 59 per cent and gave me 41 per cent. So it was foolish to continue.”

With an ability to make lemonade out of lemons, Eklund transformed his teetotaller status into Magic Kicks, a line of non-alcoholic, mushroom-based beverages created for those occasions Eklund often found he turned to alcohol; to party, sleep and have better sex. An avid entertainer, he also needed something to elevate his dinner parties. “I couldn’t serve green tea,” he quips. His next move is to potentially expand the line into mushroom-powered edibles.

I tell Eklund a dinner party favourite among friends is to pick three places to buy property. Anywhere in the world, unlimited cash. The game’s stakes, however, seem higher when you do actually have the financial means and an expert knowledge of the floorplans of earth’s best real estate. “Soooo,” he says. “I would definitely buy one of those incredibly hard-to-get, once-in-a-lifetime castles on [Stockholm’s] Djurgården.” Then there is Tuscany, which he is about to pull the trigger on. In fact, the Wall Street Journal followed him to Italy after Covid lockdowns were lifted as he searched for his idyllic la dolce vita escape.

“Last thing... umm I already own in Miami, New York, Beverly Hills, Connecticut...” he thinks. “A big flat like in Paris, but it needs to be like the right kind of apartment. Very Parisian, very high ceilings, very, very big windows. Quite classic. It doesn’t have to be fancy, fancy. It’s like a loft in Paris.” Oh to be young, successful and have an estimated net worth of $30 million. Speaking of wealth, Eklund has closed over $20 billion in deals to date and last year he sold the most expensive resale in all of New York: 432 Park Avenue for a cool $79 million.

As for the dreamy Beverly Hills address that fills these pages, Eklund lets out an immediate “No” when asked if it’s the forever home. “Fred and I are nomads at heart,” says Eklund. “We enjoy changes in our scenery and environment,” adds Kaplan. At the moment, the East Coast seems to be calling ‘the witch’ and his family, so a move to Miami or New York seems imminent. I ask if Sweden would ever be on the cards. He pauses. “My brother always laughs that I live in a Stockholm bubble,” he says. “When I return I always say ‘I should move back’. But he says that I’m really just in love with the suite at the Grand Hotel or the suite at Ett Hem with the perfectly laid Christmas table.”

When Eklund visits he always gets the best of what Sweden has to offer: perfect August weather in Gotland, dinners with friends at Stockholm’s iconic Sturehof – a romanticised version of his homeland. For now, he “enjoys picking the cherries out of the Swedish cake.” It seems there’ll be a fair bit of cherry picking happening this year as Eklund has just landed a judging role on Draknästet (Sweden’s version of Shark Tank). Bringing his business acumen to the hit franchise, Eklund says he’s more about investing in people rather than ideas. “As an entrepreneur myself I know you have to work relentlessly and not take no for an answer,” he says. “I’m looking for that spark and passion in their eyes.”

While Eklund has a firm grasp of where his future’s going, it’s the thought of tomorrow that’s sparking the greatest joy right now. That’s when he hops on a plane for a trip to Italy with Kaplan and the twins. “My soul has this urge to see a lot of things,” he explains. “I always felt this stress when I was a kid because we have one life and it’s quite short. The earth is so beautiful. There’s so many different people and places. I want to try it all.”