Canada’s favourite twin brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott are back to do battle in Season 6 of Brother vs. Brother, premiering Monday night on HGTV Canada.
The Scott brothers head to the San Francisco Bay Area, with six weeks to purchase, renovate and sell a property in the Bay Area’s high-stakes real-estate market. The brother with the biggest net profit from his house-flip is the winner.
As in Brother vs. Brother‘s previous seasons, Jonathan and Drew go head-to-head, with their older brother JD acting as referee. Of course, there will also be a panel of guest judges every week who’ll review the individual room challenges. The weekly challenge loser will have to suffer through a miserable outing as punishment — for example, get locked in a cell in the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The winner, on the other hand, gets to potentially hang out with Golden State Warrior’s Steph Curry.
READ MORE: ‘Property Brothers’ star Drew Scott marries longtime girlfriend Linda Phan
All proceeds from the show go back into local communities via Rebuilding Together, a U.S. non-profit organization that preserves affordable homeownership and helps to revitalize neighbourhoods. Global News caught up with Jonathan and Drew Scott to chat about their upcoming season, and what people can expect.
Global News: What’s new this season? What makes it different from all of the other seasons?
Drew Scott: First off, it is super epic. We always like to challenge ourselves. Jonathan and I are buying houses and flipping them, whoever makes the most money wins and all the proceeds go to charity, which is the thing we love the most about the show. We decided we needed to challenge ourselves so we went to one of the most expensive markets in North America, San Francisco. We decided to buy the houses sight unseen, which we definitely don’t recommend for people to do but we wanted to challenge ourselves. So we saw the listings online but we didn’t physically go through them until after we bought them.
Jonathan Scott: My house was a disaster. It turned out that when we had went in there, it had been abandoned for 10 years. Everything and anything that you could possibly imagine to go wrong from infestation to rot to water problems, it was all there.
That leads into my question which was, ‘Were there any mishaps on the job?’ but it really sounds like there was.
DS: Oh yeah, there were a ton. You see this in every episode but even with my house on the listing, it said five bedrooms but I get to the house and realize what they were calling a bedroom was really this illegal room off the garage. We had to climb some steps over the foundation wall, off the garage to go into this room which was completely illegal because if you turn your car on inside the garage, all the fumes go into the bedroom. But the main thing that we love with this show is it’s educational, it’s inspiring, it’s showing people how they can have certain elements in their home, it’s showing them how to stretch a budget to renovate a house, but it’s also showing how to make a house safe and functional and not just make it pretty.
Are there any pranks that take place? I was reading about Drew dressing as a cop, giving out tickets.
JS: That was so annoying. We were down to the wire, crunch time, we had to get all these things done and all of a sudden, one of my crew said, ‘They’re ticketing people out front.’ And we were like, ‘What, what, we are not parked illegally.’ And we ran out there, there’s Drew in a cop outfit from Reno 911! and he’s giving out these citations. I don’t even know where you’d get that outfit but I’m pretty sure it was meant for someone half his size.
JS: Creepy or genius?
DS: And on top of the pranks, this is one of the most epic things. With Brother vs. Brother, we get judged by other HGTV talent, which we love and it’s always fun. So there is a reward for the winner and a punishment for the loser every week which is always something relating to the area. So this season, we had an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of Alcatraz and the loser gets locked in a cell. The Golden State Warriors are from the San Francisco Bay Area so there may be a little something exclusive for the winner with Steph Curry. There’s a Star Wars experience because Lucasfilm is there and so many fun things, it’s going to be an epic season for everyone to watch.
How was your experience appearing on Home To Win?
DS: It was so much fun, whenever we get together, it’s like a little reunion. Home To Win is premiering June 3 and we’ve done it many times. It’s great to work with Sebastian and Sarah and Paul.
During your Home To Win episode, someone cuts the board wrong … Does the competition between you two ever stop? Or does it grow as the years go on?
DS: Oh trust me, I’ll make fun of Jonathan for stuff like that.
JS: It’s never going to stop, I won the first race. I was born first, Drew was already four minutes behind on that. And the whole rest of our life, he’s been trying to catch up.
Drew, congratulations on the wedding in Italy. When is the wedding special airing and what can viewers expect to see?
DS: The wedding special airs on June 2. I’m excited because it’s giving our fans that behind-the-scenes look and making them a part of the wedding which is something we really wanted to do. It will show the whole lead-up to the wedding, I mean, we only gave ourselves three months to plan the wedding in Italy which is crazy because you usually give yourself a year or more if it is a destination wedding. I will tell you now, there are a lot of tears from me, my family, Linda … Jonathan.
One of the things I did was I wrote a song for Linda, just as a way to really show her that I love her. I wrote it with two friends of ours down here in Nashville. I recorded the song and got it put onto a record and I got a vintage record player. The morning of the ceremony, while Linda was getting ready for the wedding, I had that taken over to where she was with all the bridesmaids getting ready. When she played it, I ruined her makeup because she cried so much from the song.
Jonathan, did you feel any pressure as the co-best man since you and JD shared the role?
JS: It was actually nice because when I was filming on set, JD was working on the bachelor party so we kept switching back and forth. It turned out well and it was so much fun, the scavenger hunt that we did. There was no drama, we are very, very close. So having 300 people, some of the people that were at the wedding I hadn’t seen in decades since high school.
What’s next for the Scott Brother’s brand? I know that production for Property Brothers starts in the fall in Calgary.
DS: Well, we actually decided to do another fan cruise called, Sailing with the Scotts. This December from the 3rd until the 7th, we’re taking 2,000 fans to the Bahamas and we are getting them out of the cold weather and we’re going to have the most fun. We’re going to do lectures on design, do beach parties. People can go to SailingWithTheScotts.com if they want to join us.
What drives you guys to continue on with all your projects as entrepreneurs, TV personalities, authors, musicians and everything else?
DS: I think it’s just always trying something new. Jonathan and I feel like we’re life-long learners so we always love learning and experiencing new things. We love going somewhere new and meeting new people. We will never get tired of that and it’s why we’ve done so many shows. We have five shows on the network, and two books out. We have a children’s book which is coming out this fall. It’s just always fun to experience life.
Congratulations to both of you for receiving the highest recognition by Habitat for Humanity. Can you talk a bit about that and explain the future work you will do with them as ambassadors?
JS: It was pretty humbling and in their history, Habitat’s only ever given that honour to four other people — Trisha Yearwood and Garth Brooks as well as (former) president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. And they are an organization which is unbelievable with how they stretch budgets. I mean, we thought we were good at it on Property Brothers but they can take the funds and donations raised which would usually only cover building one house but they can stretch it with their network of volunteers and they can stretch it to benefit hundreds of homeowners. They do a phenomenal job all over the world. We just finished two more builds with them in Nashville and our friends come out and help.
DS: The number of people getting together to work together is what’s amazing. And on Brother vs. Brother, the proceeds go to Rebuilding Together which goes back into the neighbourhood that we were filming in and on top of that, we always have furniture and decor left over from Wayfair and so HGTV, Wayfair and us, we donate this to the Habitat restore which is one more way we work with them.
You guys have designed a house for models to live in on America’s Next Top Model, appeared on several shows including Jimmy Kimmel Live and Hell’s Kitchen, recorded country singles, played in the NBA Celebrity All-Star game, is there anything that you haven’t done yet but you would love to do?
DS: You’ve done your research!
JS: We have not hosted Saturday Night Live which is on the radar and we have not travelled to space so I’m going to have to have a conversation with Richard Branson.
DS: Yeah, or Elon Musk.
If you could describe Brother vs. Brother in one word, what would it be?
JS: I would say epic.
DS: I would say… well, because if you use a hashtag, it turns it all into one word so #TeamDrew.
Brother vs. Brother Season 6 premiere airs on HGTV Canada Monday, May 28 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Home To Win episode featuring Drew Scott, Jonathan Scott and be joined by Danielle Bryk airs on HGTV Canada Sunday, June 3 at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
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