“TV was a funny thing for me,” Gaines recalled in a new interview with Cowboys & Indians magazine published on Tuesday. “I’m an authentic, sincere person. So, as long as things are natural and organic, I’m in my element.
“But the more staged something becomes, or the more required something becomes, it boxes me up, and I felt like toward the end of the Fixer Upper journey, I felt caged, trapped.”
“I mean, why? 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,'” the dad of five explained, admitting that he “just struggled with that environment.”
“Especially at the end of it. 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.”
He continued: “So, something about breaking out of that has been liberating. 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.”