PRIVATE PROPERTY
HGTV’s twins continue to share all in new memoir
There’s really no avoiding the fact that Jonathan and Drew Scott are a package deal.
They do everything together and they do it successfully. The dynamic duo is best known for their successful TV shows Property Brothers, Brother vs. Brother and Property Brothers at Home. They have topped bestseller lists with their design book Dream Homes, they have had YouTube success with their singing and, most recently, Drew has been shaking his groove on the U. S. TV show Dancing With the Stars (DWTS).
The show is just past the halfway mark and Drew is still dancing, albeit with the second-lowest score on the most recent show.
But here’s the funny thing: Even though it’s Drew kicking up his heels in shiny outfits every week, Jonathan has managed to get in on the action and remind viewers that yes, the 39-year-old twins are a team.
A couple of weeks back, Jonathan was a surprise addition to the jive number danced by Drew and his partner, Emma Slater.
“I would like to point out that I am also casting for the new show, Dancing with the Contractor,” said Jonathan during a recent conference call from Los Angeles.
“I do dance on all our construction sites anyway.”
Jonathan went on to praise, well sort of, his little brother (Jonathan is four minutes older).
“Seeing Drew week-to-week get better is great,” said Jonathan.
“He’s never, ever moved like this before.”
Jonathan’s addition to the dancing show was a big secret. He said the judges had no idea and the fans were certainly in the dark.
“Our fans absolutely died,” said Jonathan.
While learning a new dance number every week may seem like a full-time job, it is just one of the many cogs the Scott brothers machine has moving at any given time.
The pair, who have been flipping homes since they were 18 years old in Calgary, just wrapped the new show, Drew and Linda’s Home. The HGTV series chronicles Drew and his fiancee Linda Phan’s renovation of a stately old house in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. The show goes to air in November.
Meanwhile, Jonathan (who was asked to join DWTS as well) has been back and forth to Toronto where he’s managing a series of properties the brothers invested in. He also lives in their Las Vegas compound.
“We always have something on the go,” said Drew.
“We are admittedly overachievers,” added Jonathan. “Drew and I naturally conquer everything we do. We are efficiency freaks. Everything we have done in life is all about being the most efficient.”
They have to be efficient when you consider the brothers do almost 50 hours of original programming a year for HGTV, produce other TV and online projects and have Scott Living, a line of home decor items.
As well, they are successful authors. Their design book, Dream Home: The Property Brothers’ Ultimate Guide to Finding & Fixing Your Perfect House, topped bestseller lists and now they are taking another run at publishing with their memoir, It Takes Two: Our Story. The book, which came out this fall, has been well received and is on a handful of newspaper bestseller lists.
“What all our fans were saying is they really wanted to know our story and really wanted to know what made us tick,” said Drew. “What we were like when we were kids and who inspired us. So that’s why we decided to write this memoir.”
Their first challenge was to figure out how to write a memoir with two voices. They settled on swapping back and forth in chapters. Each brother then piped in on the other’s story via handwrit- ten notes on the page. The effect goes a long way to replicate the back and forth ribbing fans know from TV.
“The other big thing we said from the get-go was this memoir is not going to hold anything back,” said Drew.
For instance, Jonathan opens up about his failed marriage:
“I went through a tough time, my divorce. Those are things I have never talked about before,” said Jonathan, whose marriage lasted only two years. “We wanted it to be authentic and our fans would see through anything that wasn’t and we are proud of that.”
While the brothers could have easily given their lives a fresh coat of paint for this book, they decided the downs were just as important as the ups.
“We have had some struggles over the years. We’ve had some hard times and some good times and I think that is what makes it relatable to our fans, and a better read,” said Drew. “They really get to see who we are.”
And who they are is a pair of focused, ambitious men who have bold dreams and big plans.
“Really Jonathan and I find the overarching theme is if there is something you are passionate about, if there is something you really want no matter what that is, if you work hard and find that drive within yourself you can achieve that,” said Drew.
“We didn’t come from a wealthy family. We have had to work hard for every dollar we have made. Through the ups and downs, we kept pushing and supporting each other and anything we have achieved in our lives is because of that drive.”
Putting together a memoir is a tricky task. How do you remember things? Did it really happen that way?
“We discovered I was putting myself into all these stories and I wasn’t even there,” said Jonathan. “It turns out we have been telling them for so many years that I remembered myself being there.”
So some fact checking with family and friends was a must. Luckily, they are tight with their tribe.
“It was genuinely a fun adventure because it was reminiscing with friends and family,” said Jonathan.
If all this time working together has led to tension, you’d never know it. The brothers laugh at each other and believe that two heads are better than one.
“In all our years since we were kids I think we’ve maybe only had three fights and mainly when we were kids or teenagers,” said Drew. “At the end of the day, we call it a no BS policy ... If something is bugging us, we get it out and deal with it and move on.
“Together we always make a better decision than apart,” added Drew. “So it always works out.”