This Is the Woman Behind All Your Favorite HGTV Shows
Lindsey Weidhorn very clearly remembers the conversation that would change Chip and Joanna Gaines' lives forever. Then in programming at Scripps, the parent company of HGTV, she had called the couple behind what would become Fixer Upper and told them that their show was moving forward.
Incredulous, Chip kept searching for the caveat: "… But?" he asked.
Maybe it was the sound of her voice. Lindsey's steady tone somehow registers as deadpan, even when she's excited. And she was excited about this show-although it did take a couple tries.
"The first pilot was so bad," Lindsey, 36, tells us from her office in New York City, where she now runs her own production company. "I remember thinking, 'Does this guy even talk? This guy just looks like an idiot standing there quietly." Lindsey laughs now at the irony that anyone would ever think something like that about charismatic Chip Gaines. "He didn't talk and she just looked kind of mean," she continues. "Joanna is super introverted, so that wasn't necessarily the easiest thing."
The next cut wasn't much better, but it did have its shining moments: The reveal, for one, was beautiful, and it was an opportunity to showcase an overlooked city. Lindsey ordered a reshoot, a bold move for her first pilot, even if she had experience on Love It or List It and Property Brothers.
"It was not a smart gamble, but it worked out, thank God," she says. That's partly thanks to Chip's "impulsively generous" purchase of a houseboat for his wife, which the crew caught on camera, and partly thanks to Lindsey's realization: Unlike its predecessors, the heart of this home show would lie in those moments when the camera lingers a little. Fixer Upper's charm would be found in the scenes when a spontaneous Chip springs something on his wife, or when an amused Joanna brushes a booger off of her husband's face and says, "Baby, you're so gross."
So when Chip pressed Lindsey for the bad news that day, all she could say was: "I guess the 'but' is, you gotta get rid of the houseboat. You don't have time for that anymore."
Small Town Tourist
You probably wouldn't recognize Lindsey if you saw her on the street. But the brown-haired, brown-eyed Long Island native has worked on some of HGTV's biggest hits. In addition to Fixer Upper, there's Good Bones, Home Town, and Hidden Potential.
Talking to Lindsey feels like watching one of her shows. Unlike most people, she’s never lost the ability to make friends in the unguarded, completely open way of, say, kids on the playground. She reads everything, watches everything, and, by her own admission, is late to everything. Each year, she takes four road trips in different parts of the country, keeping her eyes peeled for special people and places.
"The amount of talent you find in these small pockets of small towns is incredible," she says.
Tell her where you're from, and she'll pull out her phone and promptly take down the name. She's notoriously bad at naming shows-she's been trying to make "Housetory" happen for quite some time now-but she doesn't give up easily on her ideas. Proof: She's been pitching a treehouse show for 15 years with no success, but she keeps on pushing. Her own office, a cozy garret with a view of the Empire State Building, will have to do for now.
The Little Show That Could
Lindsey oversaw Fixer Upper, or as she called it in the beginning, "The Little Show That Could," for four seasons. The night of the premiere, she sat in a New York City restaurant with the stars, then unknown and a long way from Waco, Texas. Together, they attempted to live-tweet, but only about five people joined in. Chip gave himself the goal of 100 Twitter followers, never believing he'd actually achieve it.
Several successful seasons later, Chip and Jo had amassed millions of fans and launched multiple businesses. Lindsey, who had added hits like Junk Gypsies and Good Bones to her roster, was in Waco for Silobration, the annual event hosted by the couple's company, Magnolia, and was struck by something she saw.
"These kids were wearing sweatshirts that said, 'I liked Waco before it was cool,'" Lindsey tells me from her office. "And I thought to myself, 'We saved this city.'"
It was a joint effort between Chip and Joanna and the city of Waco, but Lindsey wondered: "If a show could do that on the scale of Waco, imagine what we could do in a town like Laurel."
She had just ordered a sizzle reel on a married couple in Laurel, Mississippi, named Erin and Ben Napier, but HGTV hadn't yet landed on a concept.
"There's a moment where Ben's eyes get a little teary when he's talking about revitalizing Laurel," she says. "I thought to myself, 'There's something here.'" That something, of course, was Home Town.
HGTV's Number One Fan
Lindsey's own hometown is in Long Island, New York. She grew up in a middle-class house, the self-described "odd child" of a paintbrush maker and a teacher-and she always knew she would make HGTV series. At home, Lindsey and her mom watched their favorite shows and talked about the day that Lindsey would create her own. A diary entry detailed a dream that was really more of a certainty: Lindsey would work at HGTV someday.
A decade later, Lindsey had landed her dream job at Scripps, HGTV's parent company (it's since been acquired by Discovery), and cut her teeth working on shows like Candice Tells All and Holmes on Homes, but her first big gigs were Property Brothers and Love It or List It.
By her late 20s, her father had been diagnosed with cancer. Lindsey recalls walking the hallways of the hospital where he was being treated. Inside every room she passed, TVs were tuned to her shows.
"It's like Xanax," she tells me. "When you're going through a hard time in your life, you can turn to this show and know that you're going to get a happy ending, that it's going to be sweet, and that it's going to be wholesome. You're not going to feel bad about this at the end of the day. Especially with all the crazy things going on in the world today. We're your vacation. Even if it's just for a half hour."
Lindsey's dad passed away when she was 29. Today, she shakes off any sympathies, insisting that she and her family are actually "better because of the loss."
Of course, she'd give anything to have her dad back. But, she explains, "There's all this amazing stuff that comes very much into perspective when you lose someone who was your pillar of strength. Because all of a sudden that pillar that you were leaning on isn't there anymore and you realize you're actually able to stand on your own." For Lindsey, that meant finding the courage to leave HGTV and start her own company.
Building a Home at 547 Barnard
Throughout her father's cancer battle, Lindsey was struggling with an ailment of her own.
"I realized that I was homesick for that place of your youth where I was lucky enough to feel protected," she says. She took to writing her childhood address on her wrist every day for comfort: 547 Barnard. When the ink kept rubbing off, she got it tattooed, but even its permanence couldn't cure her longing.
"When I was starting my own company, I always knew it was going to be called 547 Barnard," Lindsey says. "It's the home that I grew up in; it is my safe place where nothing can hurt me, nothing can go wrong, and I'm protected. I only want to create a work environment that feels that way."
She still sees her old office as "the greatest place in the world," but at the time, she also knew she needed more flexibility-and to ensure she was headed for the right path. "I know what I'm good at and want to stick with what I'm good at. I don't want to grow into something that I'll just fail at. Why put yourself in a position where you're going to fail?"
Good Shows, Good People
What Lindsey is best at is making shows that feel like home. Her secret is simple: "Good shows, good people"-both in front of the camera and behind.
Since going solo, she's partnered with the all-female Toronto-based RTR Media, the same production company she worked with on Income Property and Home Town. Their first series, Hidden Potential, starring Jasmine Roth, is currently in its second season.
Lindsey may be a big player behind shows like Fixer Upper, but she cannot and will not take credit for the enormous hit it became. Not even Chip and Jo can do that.
"These shows have such a huge team behind them," Lindsey explains, listing everyone from the cameraman capturing B-roll to the directors wrangling Chip's lines to the editors condensing 60 hours of footage into 30-minute episodes. "So I recognize that and am super grateful for the credit that I do get."
Ultimately, the goal for her shows is the same as her business.
"If you work with good people and you are a good person, you're going to make good programming that makes you feel good," Lindsey says.
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