HGTV fan favorite Alison Victoria is back with a second season of “Sin City Rebab,” her Las Vegas-set follow-up to her previous hit series “Windy City Rehab.”
When making the show, Victoria is adamant about not sugarcoating the difficulties involved in a renovation project — and that includes occasionally dealing with some “shady” tradespeople.
‘The Good, the Bad and the Really Ugly’
In a new interview with People, Victoria said that her intent is to showcase “the good and the bad and the really ugly part of this business” — which she says makes her show unlike many others on HGTV.
“It’s fully intentional and the only reason that I do television,” Victoria explained. “When I created [my first show] ‘Windy City Rehab,’ that was way ahead of its time. I was showing the truth of the business.”
As she predicted, viewers loved watching her warts-and-all struggles because they could relate to them.
“People were very much like, ‘Oh my God, this is the truth. This is what they go through,’” Victoria said, adding that “the only reason I ever said I would do any of this is because I wanted to show [all aspects] of this business.”
It’s that philosophy that continues to guide her through “Sin City Rehab.”
“I’m proud of showing people the truth and not hiding things from people. I’m really, really proud of it,” she added.
The ‘Shady’ Side of Home Renovation
As viewers have seen, Victoria tends to do her homework when it comes to deciding who she’ll work with on a project — although even that hasn’t prevented her from getting drawn into bad situations when tradespeople aren’t who she thought they were.
“Some of them pull the wool over your eyes and I want to believe the good in them, but the business can be shady and the people in it can be even shadier,” she admitted.
In fact, just two weeks before her interview with People, she described having a tough talk with an electriction whose work was not up to her standards.
“I was like, ‘You’re going to get the [expletive] out of my house right now. You have absolutely lied to me. You’ve taken advantage of me. You think I don’t know what I’m doing. I know everything you’ve done, all of it’s incorrect. You could have burned my home down,” she recalled.
Her only regret about that altercation? “I wish there were cameras there,” she joked.
It’s All About Authenticity
For Victoria the most important thing is “being authentic,” explaining, “If people don’t want to see that, that’s okay. They can tune into so many other HGTV shows that are feel-good and don’t show you all the nightmares behind the camera.”
At the same time, she envisions “Sin City Rehab” as more of a sequel to “Windy City Rehab” than a spinoff, noting that she’s “not just trying to repeat what I was doing on ‘Windy City,'” noting that “I wanted it to feel even more like my life, like you were following this story.”
Looking back at the new season, she added, “I’m walking away from this season feeling almost like I was in a boxing match and we went nine rounds, nine episodes. But the through line is my favorite part, which is I couldn’t be more excited for people to see the designs because that’s what keeps me going.”
“Sin City Rehab” airs Wednesdays on HGTV.
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HGTV’s Alison Victoria Explains Why She Doesn’t Shy Away From the ‘Shady’ Side of Home Renos