Property Brothers stars Drew Scott and Jonathan Scott are back on HGTV show with another new show this summer. Chasing the West will feature the twins, who spent their childhood on a horse ranch, returning to their roots as they help buyers who wish to escape city life get acclimated to ranch living.
The show was originally set to premiere on HGTV on July 10, but was pushed back to July 30 amid other major programming shake-ups at the network. TV Insider caught up with Drew and Jonathan, who said it strictly came down to HGTV’s schedule and their own filming schedule.
“A lot of people don’t realize when we’re shooting these shows, we have certain shooting deadlines,” Jonathan explained. “We want to turn around our edits and our deliverables, but we’re also following real stories of real life. We just surpassed our 600th episode of our shows, 600 families that we’ve been able to help, and at the end of the day, that’s all we really care about.”
He added that “there’s just as much uncertainty in when we’re shooting the shows and following the real story as there is on the scheduling side, and we’re trying to figure out the best time.” For the most part, the brothers don’t love airing new shows in the summer when many viewers are away and not watching television. However, “this just felt like the show that people are asking for right now and that’s why we did it.”
Drew also jumped in to add, “We produce the shows that our fans are asking for to try and inspire them, whether it’s the homeowners we’re actually helping in the show or it’s the viewers. And we’re also airing in over 160 countries. It’s really cool to see how we can inspire people around the globe with what we produce.”
Scroll down for more from our chat with the brothers and find out what to expect from their anticipated new show!
Tell me about the show and how it came to fruition – did you guys pitch this to the network?
Jonathan Scott: We get half a million messages on social media a week, each, and a lot of fans were saying, “I’m fed up with the city, it’s so crazy expensive, I want some room.” More and more people were talking about moving to the country and having that ranch lifestyle, and we were like, “That would be such a good show,” so we shot all over Texas, Arizona, North California, Southern California, and the stories we’ve found were really incredible. [It’s] people who wanted that beautiful aesthetic of living in the country, but also were not being totally realistic about how much work is involved to do that.
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Drew Scott: We grew up on a ranch, so this was our life. We had a horse ranch and we had crops, as well. There’s always something you have to do. A lot of these homeowners thought, “Move to the country and have that quiet, simple life, nice and slow.” But it is a go-go-go life. Because there’s always something to do. So we were that reality check for those homeowners.
How will this show be similar to what we’ve seen from you in the past, but also a fresh take?
Drew: This show is not a deep-dive renovation that you’ve seen us do in some of our projects in the past. This is taking homeowners through the process of upping their entire lives and moving somewhere different and trying to see how their budget can stretch in a different way out in the country. So it’s actually sort of game-ified for homeowners as well, or viewers watching the show, because they don’t know which house the homeowners are going to go for [after] we tour. We also didn’t know which house they would choose. In fact, sometimes, Jonathan and I figure that they chose the wrong one, but obviously, it’s their decision.
What are some of your favorite memories from growing up on a ranch?
Jonathan: Nothing beats watching the sun set. We’d sit around a campfire, my dad would be playing guitar, and we’d be singing, and it was just … those are the kind of memories that we just absolutely love. You look up, you can see the stars, there’s no pollution, bright lights of the city making it so hard to see. Everything is so peaceful and quiet that you can just hear yourself think.
Drew: Even when we were 10 years old, we were riding horses since we were one. When we were 10, we’d slap the saddle on the horse and just ride into the hills. That’s not something you do in the city. I don’t have that now, and in fact, before the series, I hadn’t ridden in years because we hadn’t been around that. So it was a lot of fun, very nostalgic to get back in the saddle.
How much of your personal lives are intertwined into the show, in addition to your work with the clients?
Drew: It’s a fair bit because you hear a lot of our stories from back in the day with us, and then we’re also trying to teach them from our experiences. Keep in mind, ranch life is different for a lot of people. Some of the owners wanted horses, some wanted cattle or chickens or pigs, others wanted to create a wellness retreat or event space for weddings and have a thriving business. It was also just educating them that you can’t just hire a whole bunch of people to do the laborious work. You have to get in there and roll up your sleeves because your margins are very thin when it comes to ranch life and you want to make sure you don’t have a business that goes under.
Do you think viewers will see a different side of you on this show?
Jonathan: I think so. I’m amazed at how many people never knew that we grew up on a horse ranch and we did do a show about 10 years ago called Property Brothers: Home on the Ranch and we talked about how nostalgic it was to be back where our family ranch was. For that show, we’d even written some music, just because it was very nostalgic, and then one of our songs ended up Billboard charting. It’s funny, that was almost 10 years ago, so I was thinking for this we should’ve written more music.
Drew: We should’ve!
Jonathan: But it’s a little peek into who we are and how we grew up and I remember every time we would shoot, every day we’d finish shooting for this show, production would reach out and go, “Hey, you mentioned as a kid you did this with a horse, can we get pictures of that?” We’re constantly finding old photos and videos from when we were kids to incorporate into the show.
Drew: I remember when we were really little, our mom would slap us both on a horse, like together, we’d be on a horse and riding. Parker, my 3-year-old, started riding a few weeks ago and it was the same thing, we’re sitting up on the saddle, but you can’t quite reach the stirrups, but he loved it, I loved it back in the day, and it’s an exciting lifestyle. It’s cool to be part of trying to bring that to more people. The viewers, even if they’re not looking to move to the country, they’ll still really enjoy watching this because there’s a lot they can learn about how you can stretch a budget and how you look at different ways of getting into that property that works for your family.
You have this show, as well as Celebrity IOU, then another season of Don’t Hate Your House later this year. How do you keep up with it all?
Drew: A lot of production companies with home renovation shows will do 10, 15 episodes a year. We host 40 to 45 a year. We do a lot more, but again, it’s sort of layering the types of different shows to inspire people in different ways. And it is a lot, it definitely is. We’re just really good. We’ve been doing this for so long, so we’re good at layering our schedules in a way that can maximize what we bring.
Jonathan: Another thing, too, which has always benefitted our homeowners, is we produce so many shows, and shows we’re not in, as well. We produce a lot of other shows. We can kind of amortize some of those costs to create high quality shows across everything, so that we can actually deliver content at a higher quality and better cost than anybody else. I think that allows us to put as much money back into the homeowners’ pockets or into their designs or into the quality of the show, and we just love what we do. We literally have the greatest job in the world and we’re thankful every day because it’s a hard time out there in television. But we get to wake up every day … demolition is a lot of fun, it’s just fun and crazy, but also turning the keys over at the end and changing people’s lives, there’s nothing like it.
Drew: Working with family and riding horses for “work” … is it really work?
Jonathan: Well, the saddle sores from the riding was a little … We hadn’t ridden in a while, so we were sore after filming. You gotta have bruises. When you live the ranch life, every day is a bruise.
Chasing the West, Series Premiere, Wednesday, July 30, 9/8c, HGTV