Chip Gaines Reveals It Felt ‘Liberating’ When ‘Fixer Upper’ Ended Because He Felt ‘Trapped’
Well, this makes us sad. Fixer Upper star Chip Gaines just revealed that while the show started out fun, he eventually began to resent it. “Toward the end of the Fixer Upper journey, I felt caged, trapped,” Chip admitted to Cowboys & Indians for his January 2019 cover. “Breaking out of that has been liberating,” he said of the show’s cancellation after Season 5.
Give us a second as we pick up our jaws off the floor. In September 2017, the 44-year-old and his wife and co-star, Joanna Gaines, announced that the high-rated reality show would not be returning after the fifth season. Almost a year after breaking millions of hearts around America, the power couple revealed on Nov. 9 that they are coming back to television with their own cable network. Yay!
In retrospect, it makes total sense now as to why the couple ended Fixer Upper, even though they didn’t want to say goodbye to the show. “TV was a funny thing for me. I’m an authentic, sincere person,” Chip admitted to the magazine before their network deal was revealed. “But the more staged something becomes, or the more required something becomes, it boxes me up. Jo and I couldn’t figure it out.”
Chip said being told how to act was something he could not handle. “You’re getting to have all this fun, right? But it’s like if I put a camera in your face and said, ‘Hey, say something funny.’ Or if I put a camera in your face and said, ‘Hey, be smart.’ I just struggled with that environment. Especially at the end of it.”
The author revealed that things were not always like that. “At the beginning, it was so fun. The first three years of Fixer Upper were some of the best years of my life. The last two years, not that we don’t look back on them fondly, but they were more of a job.”
As Fixer Upper will remain in the past, the lovebirds are turning a new leaf and are ready to embark on this new journey. “Jo and I are both just kinda giddy, just like, ‘Man, what’s the future look like and what’s the next step?’ Because we’re both business people, and that’s fundamentally who we are,” Chip said of their TV show that they announced while on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
As for Chip and Jo, 40, this new endeavor will allow them to spend more time with their five kiddos — the show is going to be filmed in their town, Waco, TX, and won’t require them to travel a lot. “We are having so much fun enjoying our family and growing this business here in Waco,” he said. “What the TV future looks like is a big, fat question mark.” Well, we can’t wait!
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