When times are tough, when the world is scary outside, and we want to find comfort, home is the place many of us go to retreat from the craziness and division, according to celebrity TV designer Genevieve Gorder. The Iconic personality who is best known for her role on the ground-breaking show ‘Trading Spaces’, as well as ‘Rachel Ray’, is back with a new series that promises not just a look into what it takes to design the interior of a house, but the heart and soul of what makes a home.
‘At Home with Genevieve’ launched on June 23 and is available to watch for free on Crackle TV. Genevieve takes her favorites from the world of food, fashion, pets and fun, and invites her celebrity friends to come on to the show to demonstrate how to make the magic happen.
After making her mark on ‘Trading Spaces’, Genevieve spent ten years as one of the top design experts at HGTV. Now she’s taking her award-winning experience and exploring every facet of lifestyle with ‘At Home With Genevieve’.
We had the chance to get cozy with Genevieve to learn more about what viewers can expect to see in the series, her philanthropy work with women and girls, and her unique perspective on why audiences are so obsessed with home design TV shows!
Congrats on your new show ‘At Home with Genevieve’! What are you most excited about for audiences to see?
I think it’s a big table of really diverse experts coming from all aspects of life, which I think is definitely underrepresented in the home category. So I’m really excited about that. Plus we dig into all the things that we find fascinating in home and getting answers to our curiosities, from plants to cleaning, food, and love therapy. Home is not just the paint and tile, it’s about the relationships that exist within that home, the food we eat, and the living things we have around us. Let’s make it the full powerful thing that it truly is beyond the facades and beyond the walls.
As an iconic and audience-favorite TV designer, how did you make your entry into design television initially?
Before ‘Trading Spaces’ there really was no design television. We had ‘This Old House‘ which was more of an educational TV show about preservation, and we had Martha Stewart. That was it. So ‘Trading Spaces’ was the first show in our country that really made design television a movement. So I’m very proud to have been a part of that. How did I get that? Well, obviously I didn’t try ’cause it didn’t exist! They [the show’s producers] scoured the planet for award-winning designers of all sorts. I had just won all these nerdy design awards for a Tanqueray No. 10 Gin bottle that I designed when I was 22. It happened to win awards the same year that they were looking at design award winners.
So they brought in approximately 6,000 of us to interview, and I was one of six that was chosen. I was the baby of the group and it was risky because no one knew what it was. And my parents wanted to know “does it have benefits?” No! But it was a wild freaking ride and it changed my life forever. And all of those people, cast and crew members, are still my friends. To this day, it doesn’t matter what I do, everyone wants to talk about ‘Trading Spaces’ which I’ll never downplay. I’m absolutely happy to talk about it.
What have been some of your most memorable design projects, whether on TV or out in the real world?
I would say that Tanqueray No.10 Gin bottle was pretty memorable as it changed my life, dramatically, into the world of TV. Beyond that, most recently working on a hotel design for Six Senses Resort in Mexico, designing a ship with the Royal Caribbean line, and getting into the world of hospitality, that has definitely been some of my most memorable work. Doing with with Oxfam, working with creatives in refugee camps, trying to get their work out in the world has been a really incredible opportunity as well.
What do you think it is about design shows that get viewers so hooked?
We all live somewhere, the majority of us, and we wanna know how to make it more beautiful and a better quality of life. So that’s the hook. Beyond that, I think Americans love a good before and after. It doesn’t matter how good the show is in between, if there’s a dramatic rags to riches before and after, we all can’t stop watching.
Through your philanthropic work, you have focused on empowering women and girls globally. Can you share more about this work, and why it is important to you?
It’s important to me because I didn’t come from a lot. I came from some difficult home stuff with divorce and addiction, and I really know the power of home for both children and adults. It is the pride of your life when it’s good, and it’s the shame of your life when it’s not. So I feel like it’s important to fight for home as a basic human right around the world. And I definitely work mainly through the world of women and children because they are the ones that weave the fabric of home no matter where you are in the world. They make the most decisions when it comes to the home and how we live.
So my philanthropy work is mostly focused on those communities. I lobby for bills and laws that help support equality with ownership of home outside of the US and work with displacement within the us with Oxfam. It’s a big media question with a lot of long answers, but that’s it in a nutshell.
Who are some of the exciting guests viewers can expect to see on your new series?
I have lots of guests that are both famous and not famous, from Stacey London and Paige Davis, who you may recognize from my old days at T L C network, to some really incredible talent from social media in the world of plants, food and cleaning. I want tricks and I want tips that come with a stamped approval. So much of what we see on social media isn’t always vetted and that really kind of upsets me because in the world of television, we had to be vetted to go on and do our work. It couldn’t just be a random person who posed as a designer or as an expert in whatever field. We had to see if that was actually true.
So I love going in on IG and TikTok and really grabbing my favorites and offering them up as a vetted stamp of approval expert in this field because we do our homework, and I know if it’s false in the world of home ’cause I can smell it! So I really love to offer up new talent, really incredible gifted human beings who are hilarious at the same time.
Home should be sexy, home should be fun. Home doesn’t have to be clunky and all for under a hundred dollars. Let it be as cool as food and fashion because it is, and it’s more important.
At a time when there is so much darkness and division on our news timelines, how do you hope your series will offer some light and joy to audiences?
Well, the home is bipartisan, which helps its success during really tough times. Home is a place that we go and we become whole again. It’s where we hibernate, it’s where we hide, it’s where we go when things feel bad, it’s our cocoon of good. I feel like anything in this genre right now, with great division, with a lot of hardship, with great inflation, home is where we go inward.
It’s a really good place to watch and focus on making great content. When I did start in the home category 9/11 had just happened and it’s when everything in home started booming because we were scared. As we know with the pandemic, this is where we go when we’re unsure. So let’s dig into all the layers of home, not just the frosting, which has been offered over and over again in home television. Let’s dig into the guts and the good stuff and that’s what I hope my show will offer to everybody.
What do you want audiences to feel most after watching ‘At Home with Genevieve’?
I want you to feel curious. I want you to feel excited and I want you to ask for more, more, more and more. And this is a conversation, so whatever you want to see, write to me on the site and we will do it. We are at your command, on your demand, and I wanna make myself available for that.
You can watch ‘At Home with Genevieve’ for free on Crackle TV. Follow Genevieve Gorder on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, and see more of her work on her website.
