It's been 10 years since Fixer Upper first aired on HGTV, and Chip and Joanna Gaines are reflecting back on the past decade. They commemorated their milestone by buying and renovating a lake house (which they're chronicling on a new series), but Chip has admitted that he was skeptical of the opportunity at first.
In a behind-the-scenes video shared by HGTV on Tik Tok, Chip and Jo are asked, "Who was more on board with starting Fixer Upper," and they both agree that the answer is Jo. Chip writes on his white board, "I thought it was a scam." Then he jokes, "I'm still not positive that we didn't get scammed somehow."
This isn't the first time Chip has talked about his doubts early on in their career. In a 2019 interview with Willie Geist on TODAY, he and Joanna went into details about how the show came to be. Jo had a design blog (with, she says, "literally nine people that followed me"). Someone from a production company working with HGTV saw a before-and-after project on the blog and contacted her and said, "What do you think about if we came to Waco for a couple days days and shot stuff, and I was like, 'what'"?
Jo explains, "I called Chip, and this is a true story, he said 'Do not call that person back. It's a scam. How much did they say you have to pay for them to film you?'"
Chip continues, "I was adamant, and Jo was like, 'I think she's telling the truth.'" The very professional film crew arrived and, Chip explains, "Real quickly it went from 'this has to be a scam' to 'wow, what an opportunity to be a part of something like this.'"
Ten years later, it's hard to imagine how much has changed for the couple from Waco, Texas, but we're grateful Joanna followed her instincts with this one!
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Katie Bowlby is Digital Director at Country Living, where she covers gift guides, product reviews, crafts, and TV shows like Yellowstone. She’s currently stitching up a cross-stitch pattern for the magazine’s next issue
