HOME TOWN GLORY
HGTV’s Ben and Erin Napier are changing their Mississippi community one flip at a time
Ben Napier is massive, 6-foot-6 and 300 pounds. His wife, Erin — five-foot-five and slim — is not. She calls him “Big” and cranes her neck in such a constant state of adoration that she appears to be risking long-term muscle strain.
“Our show is a little bit This Old House, and a little bit Gilmore Girls,” says Erin, 32, standing in the living room of the morning’s second makeover house, where the Napiers are taping Home Town, the latest hit show on HGTV. (The series airs Wednesdays; check your local listings or visit hgtv.ca.)
The show is a paean to this Mississippi town of 19,000, once rich in loblolly pine, a town of handsome early 20th-century houses and dismal 1970s downtown urban renewal, which the Napiers and their entrepreneurial friends are determined to undo.
Laurel has “seen some hard times,” says Ben, 34, in the show’s opening. “We’re committed to change that one house at a time.”
The Napiers — and Laurel — are rising stars of HGTV. This spring, more than 16 million viewers watched the debut season of Home Town. Visitors tour the historic district in search of last season’s renovations — and the Napiers’ yellow 1925 Craftsman home.
All of HGTV’s programs present, in various iterations, a Cinderella story where any house can become a princess, seemingly overnight. The owner barely lifts a sledgehammer or picks a paint colour. It’s a spa treatment makeover.
The hosts, hired for their folksy, relatable charm, are “the soap stars of our day,” says Allison Page, general manager of domestic programming and development for Scripps Networks, which owns HGTV.
Tool-belt celebrities have become the luminaries of the supermarket checkout aisle, plastered on magazine covers: mannequinlike Vancouver-born twins Jonathan and Drew Scott of Property Brothers, country bro Chip and photogenic Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper, and the sensationally combustible Tarek and Christina El Moussa of Flip or Flop. (The latter are going through a car wreck of a divorce but will cohost upcoming episodes of their show. And on Sept. 26 Chip and Joanna announced in a video that they were ending their show after five seasons. The final season premières in November.)
Home Town is a love letter to the love story of Ben and Erin, photogenic deep-Southern 30-somethings who met at the local junior college, went on to Ole Miss and exhibit an inexhaustible ability to spend time together.
“The best thing about the show is we get to do it together. We do everything together,” says Erin, holding her quilted makeup bag. “We’re never apart. My mother says it’s obnoxious.”
They share two dogs, no kids, an old house. All their fans know this.
The show’s formula is simple; the renovation is not. A potential owner picks between two houses selected by the Napiers, buys the place and pays for the renovation but gives the couple complete control of the esthetics, promising not to peek until the cameras are rolling. The Napiers don’t do the construction, but the vision is all theirs. “We’re the art directors,” Erin says.
Ben is a woodworker, a former Methodist student ministry director, and the official lumberjack mascot at town events, Mr. Loblolly. He sweats a lot.
Erin is a graphic designer, a former creator of luxury fabric wedding invitations that were a hit with Martha Stewart Weddings. She shares a daily web journal with loyal fans, tirelessly documenting their home renovation and other projects.
She is given to offering pillowready aperçus like, “I think of doing homes not as renovations but designing the book cover of people’s lives.” Which is why she’s on television. The camera loves her.
That Home Town is set in Mississippi, perennially occupying the cellar of almost every quality-oflife list, seems no accident.
The network is unlikely to shoot a show in San Francisco, New York or Washington, D.C., where prices are out of reach for most Americans, says Page. Laurel’s fine old houses are a steal: Most projects on Home Town have a US$200,000 budget, including the house sale price and the renovation.
After only 11 episodes — granted, rerun into the ground — the Napiers have been featured in Southern Living, the cover of Okra (a hipster Southern Living) and on The Today Show. People magazine ranked the show 44th on its 100 Reasons to Love America, a notch above American cheese singles. Chip and Joanna were No. 1. A hit show can deliver a high thread-count payday for the network and hosts.
Four years after their first episode aired, Chip and Joanna Gaines are an empire, more Upper than Fixer with a staff of 450, a line of rugs and textiles, paints, an online Magnolia Market and a physical store in Waco, Texas, which has become a tourist destination for fans. In an era of personality-driven publications, they have their own magazine.
The Napiers are the rare cable stars that the network found rather than the other way around — the 21st-century version of discovering Lana Turner at a soda fountain.
This being the 21st century, a former HGTV executive found Erin through her Instagram account.
“I’ve been stalking your Instagram for a while. It sounds creepy but it’s actually my job,” the executive wrote Erin. “I’m in love with your town, and I’m in love with your relationship, and your house. And I feel like there’s a show there. I’m just not sure what it is yet. Have you ever thought about doing TV?”
To which Erin says, “It was never our dream to be on television.”
The Napiers are partners in two businesses: Scotsman Co. (wood furniture, work aprons, workwear, flannel button downs) and Laurel Mercantile, a website and fetching physical store that would not seem out of place in Napa or the Hudson River Valley, stocked with American-made goods including US$26 scented candles, heirloom tools tagged with their provenance, and US$125 ceramic platters created in Brooklyn.