George Gray, "What's With That House?" HGTV host: Mr. Media Interview, Part 1
George Gray is having way too much fun on his HGTV show, “What’s With That House?”

The show, now in its second season, is kind of a goof on the proliferation of shelter TV shows, where viewers are taken into fabulous homes and mansions and led around by announcers in hushed, respectful tones. There’s no respect in Gray’s tone -- and rightfully so.

If you haven’t seen the show, I absolutely insist you pause this interview and set your DVR, Tivo, or VCR to record the show. It’s on HGTV every Wednesday at 11:30 PM Eastern or Pacific. You won’t be sorry. (You could also sample it by watching this clip...)





Back now? Okay.

If Gray seems familiar, it means you probably saw him in ESPN’s sports fantasy reality series “I’d Do Anything” or the syndicated version of “The Weakest Link.”





BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: George, welcome to Mr. Media.

GEORGE GRAY: I am so excited to be here. Actually, you were talking fitness. I’ve been doing Kegels the whole time I’ve been listening to you.

ANDELMAN: Well, I hope whoever you’re with next appreciates that I gave you the opportunity to do that.

GRAY: And you used the word proliferation. You gotta slowly ramp up to a word like proliferation, which is nice.

ANDELMAN: Well, I thought this was kind of a nuclear moment.

GRAY: Makes me sound way heavier than I really am. So glad to be here.

ANDELMAN: Well, that is quite a head you’ve got on your shoulders, if you’re gonna make that reference.

GRAY: It’s just the ego.

ANDELMAN: What color is that hair?

GRAY: Actually, it’s funny because my hair…you achieve that kind of blond by sticking your head in a bucket of Clorox about every five days. And so it’s very natural. But, actually, now that the show is on hiatus right now, my hair sort of looks like I got whacked with a carrot. I seem to go to extremes.



ANDELMAN: What is the natural color of your hair?

GRAY: Oh, when I was doing “The Weakest Link,” that was pretty close, although the lights were so dark in the room, it looked darker than it was. Kind of a dark blond, I think. Dirty, dirty blond, something like that. I don’t even know. Who knows? I started growing the soul patch. I did a show called “Junkyard Wars” before “Weakest Link,” and I grew the soul patch that I have now worn for years as a joke. Not a lot of guys were wearing them at the time, not that I was the first to ever do it, but they really weren’t in vogue. And I really did it as a joke, and I thought it looked so silly and stupid that I just decided to wear it for a couple of weeks. Then I booked “Junkyard Wars” and just left it. And so that’s been on my face. So I sort of do things, I don’t know, just out of sheer stupidity.

ANDELMAN: This is way off topic, but as a guy who’s worn a beard for way too long, how do you trim that soul patch thing so it always looks the same? Do you ever slip with the razor or the electric?

GRAY: No, I’m a Braun man. I don’t really pay that much attention to it. My mother hates it. She wishes that I would slip with the razor by accident. A beard would drive me nuts. I couldn’t do that. I don’t know how you do it. You got a really long one, do ya?

ANDELMAN: No, no. It’s not too long, but my wife refuses to let me cut it. She says I look about 10 years old without it, which, as I’m pushing my way up to 50, I guess maybe that might be a good thing. I don’t know.

GRAY: Maybe she’s got a Santa Claus fetish. “C’mon, go gray baby, go gray.”

ANDELMAN: I’ll try that little red hat on tonight. So what’s this, you got a TV show? I don’t remember what we’re here for.



GRAY: TV, shmevee. Very nice words, by the way. Thank you for telling everybody that they should tune in to watch. “What’s With That House?” is a guilty pleasure show. It really is slamming on your brakes – a “What the hell is that?” kind of show.

ANDELMAN: It’s funny. It was brought to my attention and, for Mr. Media, I really focus on things that I like, and I want to share with other people. And this was something that was brought to my attention. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it before, and I watched it, and it was just…it’s really funny. We watch so many reality-type shows or home shows or cooking shows, and this was just so left-of-center. It’s a fun show. People really should give it a try.

GRAY: Leftist? Are you saying it’s a Democratic show?

ANDELMAN: I don’t know if it’s a blue state/red state show.

GRAY: I try to run a strict Libertarian ship there on the show.

ANDELMAN: One of the moments in watching the show that made me literally laugh out loud, and now I’m gonna repeat it, and maybe it won’t be that funny. Maybe if you put it in context, but you told a couple -- and looked at the camera -- you said, “Thank you for showing me your toilet.”

GRAY: That sounds like something classy that I’d say.

ANDELMAN: Do you remember that in particular?

GRAY: No, I don’t. If you could get to see me in the voice-over booth which, for anybody that doesn’t know, you shoot a show, the editors cut the show, the network approves of the show, then they write a script of the show -- which is kind of a backwards way to do it -- and then you go into a booth and you say words that they lay in on top of the show to kind of fill in all the thoughts. And when I go to do voice-over stuff, I don’t have a script for “What’s With That House?” so I just say whatever I want. I just say whatever comes to my mind. And they only use a portion of it, and a lot of the stuff I say isn’t for air. I just say it to amuse myself or the editors or the homeowners or whoever, so everything’s from risqué to whatever just pops out of my mouth. And sometimes I’ll say something, and I would swear it’s somebody else that said it, and it’ll make me laugh. I’m like, “Wow, that was funny.”

ANDELMAN: I wondered how much might be scripted before or after, and how much is not.

GRAY: Zero.


ANDELMAN: Do you spend any time with the homeowner before taping begins, or is that mostly a production issue?

GRAY: The only thing that I do is I show up and say, “Hello,” and introduce myself. I usually walk into the house and yell, “Hi honey, I’m home!” But I have time to relax, and it’s fun that I have no script, that there are no rules. A lot of people aren’t very savvy with TV. They get that whole deer-in-the-headlights-Richard-Nixon-during-the-Kennedy-debate look on their face, and it’s not pleasant. It’s really beads of sweat and the big eyes. And I just say, “Everything’s gonna be fine.” Everybody gets comfortable, and then we just roll, and that’s it. It’s very, very natural and just whatever comes out of it. I, personally, hate fake reality TV, and there’s so much of it these days. It’s just one of those things. You watch those shows where you just know that they’re reading from a script. It’s an MTV show: “Hi, my name’s Dan, and I’m here to rock it because I’m from Detroit.” It’s like, “Oh, wow, they just told you to say that.”

ANDELMAN: You see the writers listed at the end of some of the reality shows if you check the credits, and you think, “That explains a lot.”

GRAY: Exactly. I just think reality TV should be reality, which is just let it go, and we’ll see what happens. With “What’s With That House?” the premise behind it is it’s all those houses all across the country where you slam on the brakes and wonder what the homeowner was smoking. And we’ve all seen those houses. Every single person in every single state, city, and small town has one of those houses near them, and they know which one it is. And it’s probably nicknamed like “The Mushroom House” or “The Witch’s Hat House” because of what it looks like. And so many people just love to tour those houses, and we finally get to, so that’s why the show’s a lot of fun.

ANDELMAN: We have one that went up about a block from us that they refer to it as “The Italian Prison.” It’s a neighborhood of nice houses, and then this house goes up that eats up the entire piece of property, and it is two stories tall. It is one big rectangle, flat walls, every window is the exact same tiny size. So when I saw this show, I immediately thought of that, and I could equate to it completely. In one of the episodes I saw, you were in Oakland Park, Florida. And every neighborhood, it seems like, has one of these most bizarre, curious houses.

GRAY: And it’s great that you’ve nicknamed it “The Italian Prison.” I guarantee there’ll be like five or six names out there that people have for it, each one funnier than the last one. And it really polarizes everybody in these neighborhoods. I guarantee, if I went through the neighborhood, which we do, and we say “Hey, excuse me, Bob, you live on this street, what do you think of that place and what do you call it?” You’d say, “I call it ‘The Italian Prison. I think it’s ugly.” We’ll talk to another neighbor who will say, “I think it is a beautiful, post-modernism statement about architecture.” And they’ll love it. And it’s hysterical that you get some people that just absolutely think that whatever this house is is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and some people think it’s just moldy.

ANDELMAN: Do you have any great moments with neighbors that you really loved what they said, but you couldn’t possible use?

GRAY: Well, HGTV is definitely a more family values, conservative type of network, and so it’s a little on the squeakier, cleaner side, but I’m very impressed with them. They did air something one time that was very, very, very, very funny. We went to this house and saw all the neighbors. The problem is, when neighbors live close by, they’re probably friends with the people so we don’t want to say anything bad about the house. And so I was asking neighbors, “What do you think of this house?” “Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine.” “It’s fine” is the only thing. “It’s fine. It’s fine.” Well, c’mon, is it good, is it bad, what do you think? “Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine.” And, finally, I asked some guy who happened to live about six blocks away, and he didn’t know the people. I said, “Can I ask you on camera what you think about the house?” And he said sure. So I said so tell me, what do you think of the house? I didn’t even finish the sentence, and he said, “It looks like crap.” And I started laughing because it was so funny the way he said it. And he wasn’t being angry. He was just being very honest. And I said “No, really, just what do…” And he just again cut me off and repeated it, and it just made me laugh so hard. It was so funny to just see that kind of honesty. And they actually aired it. So it was great.


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©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Labels: George Gray, HGTV, Junkyard Wars, Kegels, shelter, The Weakest Link, What's With That House

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