Courtesy of MJ Coyle/Instagram (2)
Good Bones’ MJ Coyle Recalls 1st Day Working With HGTV’s Mina Starsiak Hawk: ‘Unhinged’
It’s hard for MJ Coyle to forget his first day of work on Good Bones with Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E. Laine. During an episode of the “Mina AF” podcast on Tuesday, October 24, the designer recalled his “unhinged” first interaction with the HGTV host and her mom.
“In typical Mina fashion, on my first day, Karen got there first because Karen was still part of the company, so I was getting a complete, total earful,” he recalled. “Then you walked in with a paper towel in your hand full of hard-boiled eggs, and I was like, ‘This woman is completely unhinged. Who brings hard-boiled eggs anywhere? What is happening? And now she is going to peel and eat them right in front of me on my first day.'”
Mina explained through laughter that she gets on “kicks” with food for a few months before getting tired of it. MJ first joined the Good Bones crew at the end of season 3, leading into season 4. At the end of the series, he was Mina’s longest-standing employee, having worked with her for about five years.
Karen left the family business, Two Chicks and a Hammer, in 2019, but still remained a regular cast member on the home improvement series in the years that followed. In recent months, she has not been in a “great place” with Mina, and the pair have kept their distance.
“My life is crazy, and I have a lot of really, really amazing people in it that support me, and I have a lot of people in it that don’t, so [for] those that don’t, I’m not going to put energy and effort into it,” the realtor told podcast listeners on September 20 of her relationship with Karen.
As for MJ, he also admitted that he has not kept in contact with some of his Good Bones costars since filming wrapped on season 8.
“I haven’t talked to Cory [Miller] in a long time,” he revealed. “I haven’t talked to Tad [Starsiak]. I’ve talked to your mom just like briefly when everything kind of ended, but no, I think everyone just kind of needs space, and a little bit of time, and healing.”
Still, his relationship with Mina remains strong. MJ is assisting in her lake house renovation, which is currently being documented for an HGTV spinoff series.
“I am filming the lake house, and MJ is in there here and there; he comes and helps us demo, and I’m always throwing stuff against the wall to see what will stick,” Mina said of the future two-part special. “If any new show ever did stick, MJ would definitely be one of the people that I’d be like, ‘Hey, do you want to do this?’”
