The Magnolia Story(59)

Mark: Great. I know your goal is to keep it within the Waco area. Is that continuing still?

Joanna: We don’t go any further than thirty minutes outside of Waco. That’s a choice we made. Some people, even before our first season, told us that would change. I honestly think before our first season we didn’t know what it would turn into—because Waco is such a small market.

Mark: That’s what I’m wondering. Are there enough properties and clients close by to keep you going?

Joanna: Absolutely. We basically said, “We can’t travel.” Our number one priority is our family, our home, our children. The idea of traveling would really compromise that, and so we just told them from the beginning, “We’re not traveling.” And it’s worked—we’re going into season four! It’s exciting that we’re not running out of houses in the Waco market, and it’s really fun that we don’t have to travel.

Mark: As it stands now, do you have more clients than you could ever tackle?

Joanna: At this point we’ve had to basically turn down any renovation outside the show, because of the demands of the production schedule. Right now we’re doing eight houses at one time. So we’re not only managing the construction of those eight houses, we’re also filming and designing. So it’s a big beast. If we accepted outside jobs, it would be a disservice to those clients, really.

ON CHIP’S FEAR OF THE CAMERA>>>

Mark: You mentioned once to me that right from the beginning, you were uncomfortable on camera during that first . . .

Chip: Oh, gosh, and I mean, the worst, man. Long story short, years and years ago before the show, probably I’d say two or three years before the show, one of the local news channels called us up out of nowhere. “Hey, this is such and such local news. You guys are doing some really neat things in town. We wanted to talk to you guys about energy efficiency, etc. etc.” These dudes rolled over to my house and I had an actual nervous breakdown. And I’m talking about the local news. That should’ve been some indication that this business wasn’t for me.

Joanna: I had just had a baby and I was hiding in the room. I didn’t want to be seen, and I definitely didn’t want to be interviewed.

Chip: I mean, a real-life nervous breakdown.

Joanna: When they called, Chip thought, Oh, I can do this, and he started talking on the phone about energy efficiency in homes, answering all of their questions.

Chip: It’s not like I’m the type of person who’s gonna say, “Hey, I’m going to suck and I’ll just give you a heads up. Find somebody else.” I was going, “Bro, this is my deal. I’m going to be awesome. I’m going to set the local news on fire. You just meet me here at 8:30 Tuesday afternoon and we will go to work, man. Me and you, we’re going to make some great television.” I swear to you, I bragged.

Joanna: Once the camera arrived, I hid in the bedroom with my ear pressed up against the closed door listening to the interview, and the guy was asking Chip a question . .

Chip: Just a simple question.

Joanna: And all I could hear Chip say was, “Uh, uh, uh . . .

Chip: They were easy questions! “Tell me something that an average homeowner could do to save money on their energy bills?” And I went, “Uh . . . uh . . .”

Joanna: I opened the door and Chip is sweating profusely. He looked at me . . .

Chip: I couldn’t breathe.

Joanna: . . . with this deer-in-the-headlights look, like, “You’ve got to take my place.” I shut the door and I’m like . . .

Chip: I walked right into that room and told Jo she had to do it.

Joanna: Meanwhile, I’m in my pajamas. And, again, had just delivered a baby.

Chip: Yeah, yeah. With a three-day-old. It wasn’t like a one-month-old. This was a brand new baby. We had gotten released from the hospital like two days before.

Joanna: So we’re fighting in the room. He’s saying, “You’ve got to do it!” I’m saying, “No, you do it!”

Chip: I begged her, “Jo, I am not kidding. Go out there.”

Joanna: He was really freaking out. I heard the camera man say something along the lines of, “Wow, you were really talkative and confident on the phone. I didn’t know this was what it would be like in real life.”

Chip: Yeah.

Joanna: He was mad. At one point he even put the camera down and said, “I can’t get the interview.”

Chip: He started dogging me out to the local news agent. He goes, “Is this guy serious? He didn’t sound like this on the phone.” Meanwhile, I’m sitting right there. Normally, I don’t take personal putdowns very well, but I’m just thinking, I mean, he does have a good point. We went on and on. But I swear to you, it was on the news that night. Neither of us watched it.

Joanna: At one point, they showed Chip screwing in a lightbulb, and he kept going the wrong way! He knows how to screw in a lightbulb, but in that moment, his hands were shaking. I kept saying, “Pull yourself together.” I’ve never seen my husband that nervous.

Chip: Public speaking has never been a deal that’s bothered me. I’d go on stage, go up on a pulpit, maybe a group presentation in college—any kind of public setting and have a ball. It just never dawned on me that I had an actual phobia of cameras, but that news interview sort of triggered it. Then these people came to Waco to shoot our “sizzle reel,” to see if we could get ourselves a TV show, and it was the same thing. I mean literally, Jo, is in our house, walking around with all four of our beautiful babies hanging off of her, scared to death of these cameras. And I am behind the camera talking to the camera guy, going, “Tell me what kind of equipment this is. That’s really neat. That’s fascinating,” because I knew as soon as I stepped in front of this thing, I’d put my tail between my legs like a freaking scared dog.