It would seem impossible, at this point, to be a fan of any home renovation shows and to not know about two of the most prominent stars in the field, Drew and Jonathan Scott of Property Brothers fame. The HGTV hosts have become incredibly successful over the past decade plus at turning their knowledge as a real estate agent/home designer (Drew) and contractor (Jonathan) into a number of professional enterprises, which all stemmed from the popularity of their flagship series. Now, though, they’ve revealed just how “bad” they were on television when they started out.
What Did The Property Brothers Say About Being Bad When They Started Doing TV?
The Scott siblings began doing the show in their native Canada, and later had it picked up by HGTV. That has led to mountains of success for the brothers, including everything from a number of spinoffs, like the tear-filled Celebrity IOU (which sees famous folk gift deserving people in their lives with renovated homes), and funny appearances on scripted shows like Girls5eva. A lot of their bread and butter, though, is still based on their original renovation series, and according to what they recently told the crowd while speaking at the Lifestyle Leaders gathering (via Variety), they definitely had to get used to plying their trade on TV. As Jonathan said:
When we started the show, it was so bad, because we were trying to be what we thought a host should be. When Property Brothers hit, it was the time we were finally like, you know what, we’re not going to pretend to be something else anymore, we’re going to be who we are.
Even though the renovating twins (whose mom has one way of telling them apart) are known to be quite funny and personable, with sometimes rather goofy personas, it’s understandable that when they started out they felt the need to fit into a TV host mode. But, as a lot of people can probably attest to, regardless of their profession, it’s usually a lot easier to just be yourself in many areas of life and not try to force yourself to fit into any preconceived boxes, even if that does mean bickering over bagpipes with your twin on camera. He continued:
And we thought there was an opportunity to help renovate people’s dream homes — but have a hell of a lot of fun while doing it. And we thought if we had fun on camera with what we’re doing, the people at home watching are going to have fun as well. And it worked and so the less we tried to be something else, the more that we just tried to be ourselves, the more successful the shows became.
I haven’t seen any of those super early shows of theirs, but it sounds a lot like they were trying to hide their country music-singing, aspiring-magician ways under some very stiff ideals of what they could do as hosts. Luckily, they realized pretty quickly that such a thing wasn’t really going to cut it for them and their “no b.s.” work policy, and loosened up enough for their viewers to get to know the real them.
