Jonathan Knight and Page Turner Weigh In on Going From ‘Rock the Block’ Judges to Contestants
Judging HGTV’s Rock the Block is one thing. But competing on the show is something else entirely, as Farmhouse Fixer’s Jonathan Knight and Fix My Flip’s Page Turner recently learned. Both are former guest judges now facing off against other HGTV stars in a new season of Rock the Block, which premieres March 6.
‘Farmhouse Fixer’ star Jonathan Knight says he was warned about doing ‘Rock the Block’
Knight might be a first-time competitor on Rock the Block, but he’s not new to the show. In season 3, he served as a guest judge, evaluating the team’s kitchen renovations, along with his brother and fellow NKOTB member Jordan Knight.
“I don’t know if [that experience] gave me an edge, but I do know, you know, judging past seasons, I called a lot of the past contestants and asked them, like, what am I getting into? Some were, you know, they were saying, ‘Run, don’t do it,’” he said in an interview with Showbiz Cheat Sheet.
But once he and Farmhouse Fixer designer Kristina Crestin arrived in Berthoud, Colorado, to film season 4, Knight said he was “pleasantly surprised.”
“Everybody’s like, it’s going to be the hardest thing you ever do. And I was like, ‘Uh, I don’t know about that.’ he said. “It was just so much fun.”
Page Turner says her experience on the HGTV show was ‘intense’
Turner wasn’t quite so sanguine about her Rock the Block experience.
“I don’t know what vacation Jon was on,” she said. “We definitely did a lot, you know, smil[ing] through our pain.”
The real estate broker and house flipping expert was a guest judge in seasons 2 and 3 of the show, which pits teams of HGTV stars against each other as they renovate identical houses. The team who adds the most value at the end of six weeks wins bragging rights. (They also get a street named in their honor.)
“It was intense. And even as a previous judge, I saw glimpses. But you don’t know until you have to show up at five in the morning when it’s dark and it’s 20 degrees and at noon it turns 100 degrees,” Turner said, who competes this season with her Fix My Flip co-star and contractor Mitch Glew.
Fellow competitors Michel Smith Boyd and Anthony Elle were also unprepared for the harsh conditions in Colorado. The Atlanta-based Luxe for Less stars had to make an emergency supply run after they arrived in the Centennial State.
“As a matter of fact, we went to Walmart and purchased BCBG jackets out of the women’s section and they only came in like these incredibly bright colors,” Elle shared.
The ‘Rock the Block’ designers were inspired by the local landscape
The Rock the Block filming environment was sometimes unforgiving. But the contestants couldn’t help but be inspired by the wide-open vistas and mountainous horizon when designing their homes.
“I would say the natural elements from the area were incredible in us really executing a design that felt like Colorado, something authentic to the place we were in,” Smith Boyd said.
It doesn’t hurt that one challenge sees the teams – which also include Renovation Island’s Bryan and Sarah Baeumler – getting a bird’s-eye view of the area via hot air balloon.
“There’s a lot of inspiration here, Michel, that we would have never seen had we not had this angle,” Elle says while riding in a hot air balloon in a season 4 supertease (via YouTube).
“For me, it’s the mountains,” Sarah Baeumler tells host Ty Pennington during her hot air balloon ride. “I’m used to seeing water all the time. But here to see all the different peaks and the variations in the color of the stone, maybe we need a statement in the kitchen that says, ‘I’m in the Rocky Mountains.’”
Rock the Block Season 4 premieres Monday, March 6, at 9 p.m. ET on HGTV and is available to stream the same day on discovery+.
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