Chip and Joanna Gaines may be approaching a saturation point in Waco. Since the couple first let cameras roll on their home renovation operation with 2013’s Fixer Upper, an unrivaled hit for then-network HGTV, the Gaineses have managed to transform their Central Texas town into the hub for a thriving entertainment and lifestyles brand. There, they’ve built a retail empire, started a successful magazine, launched a TV network and, as of this autumn, opened a hotel — all while becoming household names for a large portion of America. “We’ve only got 33 rooms,” says Chip, his Lone Star State modesty coming through during a late-October Zoom alongside his wife. “I don’t even think this qualifies as a boutique hotel.”
Related Stories
“It’s still 50,000 square feet,” notes Joanna, who began renovating the defunct Shriners lodge in 2019, when the youngest of their five children was barely a year old. (They sent their oldest off to college in August.) “We’ve been working on this for so long. It’s aged us a little bit.”
Like nearly all of their endeavors, this one will find its way to TV. Fixer Upper: The Hotel, a six-episode series, premieres Nov. 8 on their Magnolia Network, Discovery+ and, crucially to bosses at Warner Bros. Discovery, streamer Max. The Gaineses were among the platform’s calling cards when it launched in May. It’s also key to their own sprawling media outfit, recently setting a development slate of family-friendly programming exclusively for Max.
There’s a noticeable lack of demolition in this new show, Chip. Are you cutting back on the physical work now that you’re a suit?
Chip Gaines No way! Demo day is still my favorite. I like breaking stuff down more than building it back up. But in this one, everything that required demolition was so specific and technical. That’s not really my thing.
Joanna Gaines When they saw Chip coming, they’d divert his attention. It’s a historic building. We had to be more meticulous.
The finished product is very art deco. Jo, you built your reputation on the farmhouse aesthetic. Do you ever find yourself fighting that expectation?
Joanna There is a large group who only see me in that light.
Chip They almost feel offended when she steps out of that lane.
Joanna And we still live in that farmhouse that was on Fixer Upper, but I have to constantly evolve. I don’t ever want to get stuck. If you really follow my work, you’ll see I try to let the project tell me what it needs to be. On the original Fixer Upper, we were working for homeowners who said, “I want a house that looks like yours.” They were paying for it. I couldn’t tell them no! (Laughs.) So I do see how I got stuck in that.
With the original Fixer Upper, HGTV always wanted more houses, more episodes when the show hit so big. You quickly established boundaries. Now that you’re programmers, do you find yourselves asking talent for more?
Chip I feel like we were scarred in that way. Being on the opposite side of the aisle, sometimes it’s like, “If they could just give us six more episodes. How hard would it be?” But we resist that impulse. It’s hard to drive somebody to the net conclusion of “more is better” and then in the same breath say, “We want to honor you and your quality of life.”
Joanna And when you force it, the magic leaves the room.
Chip We wonder sometimes … if we had a little more leverage, more bandwidth or capacity, could we have stayed in the HGTV ecosystem for years and years longer? Because we worked so hard, five years felt like a hundred. We were really ready to exit stage left.
It’s been over two years since Magnolia Network launched digitally and nearly a year since you launched on cable. What have you learned about your audience?
Chip The fun thing about the current market is that the smartest people in the world don’t know what the future of this business looks like. So for creatives, it gives us room to make mistakes, to try things. We’ll say, “Hey, Casey Bloys, we would like to try this.” Then we sit on pins and needles, and Casey is like, “OK, do it.”
Joanna What’s fascinating is that there are two different audiences. On the linear side, we’re finding people are drawn to how they first met us — home renovation and design. The demographic is a little older. There’s more of a desire to build the library out for them. On streaming, you could do a show for one or two seasons and then the audience is like, “What’s the next thing?” So that’s what we’re looking into.
Do you have holiday programming? There’s likely an opportunity there with your audience.
Chip Jo and I are a house divided because David Zaslav and I have had multiple conversations about doing a Hallmark-style movie.
Joanna Scripted holiday!
Chip I’m very interested. I would be awesome in that.
Joanna I can’t. As long as Chip can have another wife, and y’all are good with that, I’d love to see it. But I did not greenlight this. We’ll think about it next year.
Between the Silos retail and recreational complex, the restaurants, the offices and now the hotel, you might have hit peak Waco. Do you talk about expanding physical retail or hospitality in other markets?
Joanna We’re really wrestling with that right now.
Chip You must’ve talked to the mayor. Waco is like, “Hey, maybe you want to try a different city for a change.” (Laughs.)
Joanna It’s been 20 years since we started Magnolia, the business, and right now we’re just letting it all sink in before thinking about where we’re going next. But, at the end of the day, we love to build and create things. What we want to scale and what we don’t want to scale, that’s what we’re considering right now.
Earlier this year, you bought the late Larry McMurtry’s bookstore in Chip’s parents’ hometown, Archer City. What’s going on there?
Chip Larry McMurtry was arguably the greatest writer that claimed Texas as his home state. He was a slightly older classmate to my parents — and when he passed, his shopkeeper, Crystal, inherited the bookstore and his collection. She called my parents to see if I was interested in buying it. We now own Larry’s collection.
Joanna Chip thought of putting a piece of that collection in the hotel library and our office. I needed 15,000 books.
Chip So I called Crystal and said, “Remind me how many books you have.” This is past tense, by the way, I’d already bought the whole store. She says, “Oh, there are 356,000 individual titles.”
Joanna There are hundreds of thousands of books still in Archer City that we’re working through. Once we figure out what we’re doing, we’ll let folks know.
Your oldest left the nest this summer. How are you doing?
Joanna The last 10 years have been a bit of a whirlwind for us both, and I stayed very even-keeled. But my kid leaving for college? That changes things! Maybe it’s coupled with a midlife crisis. I did start to ride horses. My goal is to barrel race by age 50. I’m looking at things very differently.
Chip The other day, I saw her scrolling through red Porsches.
Joanna I did not! You can’t believe half the shit he says.
This story first appeared in the Nov. 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
