Vancouver’s own Property Brothers Drew & Jonathan Scott open up about the current season of Celebrity IOU and new episodes of Don’t Hate Your House
It has been 15 years since Jonathan and Drew Scott made their television debut with Property Brothers, but the Canadian celebrity contractors show no sign of slowing down. Between the eighth season of Celebrity IOU — featuring Wanda Sykes, Mandy Moore and Zach Braff, among others, giving back to the people in their lives — and new episodes of their series Don’t Hate Your House With the Property Brothers — in which the siblings try to get homeowners to fall back in love with homes they would rather dump — these boys are keeping busy. (Don’t Hate Your House will return September 30 on HGTV.)
If you think more than 650 renovations may have depleted these two, think again. “You will never get tired of that moment that you walk people into their house when it’s transformed,” says Drew. “To take all that stress off them and give them what they’ve always dreamed of, you see it — the emotion, the tears of joy. I’ll never get sick of that.” TV Week spoke to the brothers about what’s still to come and how changes in their own lives have impacted the franchise.
When I first read about the show, I thought it said Don’t Date Your House . . .
Jonathan: That’s a whole different show.
Drew: I think during renovations most people want to divorce their house. And most renovations almost cause a divorce. Maybe this is a new show we should look at.
How did Don’t Hate Your House come about?
Jonathan: We get half a million messages on social media each week, and we’ve noticed that more and more people are so fed up with their house, they want to walk away from it. And we said, “Well, most often the home comes with memories that they can’t get in a new house, and it could potentially work with the right renovation.” So we decided to focus more on the people who are just absolutely done and hate where they live.
Drew: Yeah, we’re joking about the “Date Your House” thing, but most people actually start to hate their house because they have this ideal of what it was going to be to own a home, to have this beautiful place for a family; then, once they get into a place, they realize it was almost smoke and mirrors. A lot of the work has been done illegally so here they are, living in this home that is completely unsafe. It makes you hate it. Our goal is to show people you don’t have to leave, we can just reimagine what you have, make sure it’s safe for your family, and you can go on actually loving your home.
After finding all this faulty wiring and plumbing, how do you make sure the owners don’t lose their minds?
Jonathan: It’s interesting because every person is different, and so it’s almost like we’re analyzing them. With some families, it’s worth it to show them the process partway through because it helps them wrap their brain around the progress. With other people, absolutely not. They cannot see it in any disarray, it will make things substantially worse. So we really take it one family at a time and figure out what we think the best approach would be. And we’re not always right. The one great thing about this show is you see when things go wrong. And you see it all.
What are some examples of things going wrong?
Jonathan: Would you like to talk about the mom and dad episode?
Drew: The classic delays that everyone experiences right now are substantial permit delays, inspection problems — things that can throw any project into disarray. It was particularly challenging with our parents because they’d moved to L.A. already and they were staying in our guest houses, bouncing back and forth between our two places. They ended up being a long, long time in our guest houses. In their minds, they were building [this new house] up more and more. It had to be so perfect, otherwise it would actually affect family life.
Jonathan: By “they,” you mean mom, right?
Drew: Yeah, exactly.
Jonathan: They wanted to move closer to the grandkids. We found them this home, and we’re very particular with our own homes — we get it from our mom and our dad, and especially our mom. She had a long list of things, and then she would see something new that we did, or she would watch an episode of our shows and be like, “Oh, I really like that, can we do that?” It can be very frustrating with how many times people flip and change during a process.
There is an episode where you’re trying to impress a pre-teen. Is that the most difficult client you’ve ever had?
Jonathan: Yeah. I did a pretty good job, I think. A lot of the time, people think whoever owns the home are the ones that are going to do the renovation design, but it means so much, even if they’re little, to have kids a part of the design and pick a few things. We actually went to a vintage shop and she was picking these beautiful antiques and a lot of things that I never would’ve expected she would want in her room.
Drew: Didn’t she call you “cringe”?
Jonathan: Maybe she called me “cringe.” I was just being goofy. Her mom was surprised that she actually started to open up. By the end, she didn’t want to leave the store. She was excited.
You guys have changed formats now several times, which keeps things fresh, but how have your lives changed and does that affect your work?
Jonathan: Well, my hair’s gone grey and my waistline has expanded, but other than that, in our own journeys and coming through COVID, it really made us realize how important family is. We used to be on the road every three months in a different city, filming all over the place. Now we only film at home and it’s nice. I like to take the kids to school in the morning. I’m always home for dinner. Probably the biggest thing for me is realizing that I want to spend time with Zooey [Deschanel] and the kids. This is also what we’re offering the families we work with. It’s partially about the house and a great investment, but it’s more about creating an environment where family can really be family.
Drew: Yeah, I feel like we loved travelling around helping families all over North America, but we can still inspire people that same way by being closer to our family. It was tough. Some years we were 100 days of the year, or more, on planes. That’s just not fun for anybody.
How has Celebrity IOU been different for you?
Jonathan: I can never wrap my brain around the fact that we get this incredible array of talent. The thing that’s always funny is we’ll have these celebrities who’ve never ever done demolition or construction, and then you see Wanda Sykes up on a roof with a blowtorch. When would you ever see something like that? Or with Patricia Arquette, she has me do a magic trick and grabs my hand and she’s like, “I saw how you did that.” I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m afraid of her.”
Drew: I have Tony Hawk holding me by a harness on a skateboard. To be able to have these fun, goofy moments, and then to see a real side of them — Mandy Moore pouring out her heart, telling us why she wants to give back — I love my job. I love that we get to show a different side of these celebrities that everybody loves and help give back.
Jonathan: Actually, Mandy Moore just spent the entire episode trying to convince Drew to stop dropping lines from her pop hits back in the ’90s. He kept working all her lyrics into what he was saying.
Drew: It was a walk to remember, guys.
Celebrity IOU airs Mondays on HGTV