:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(761x222:763x224)/Mina-Starsiak-good-bones-080823-tout-9009dcc6fc964d37b45800764d5403f7.jpg "Mina Starsiak Hawk Would Return to TV — But Says 'Not Enough Money in the World' to Relive End of Good Bones (1)")
Mina Starsiak Hawk says Good Bones fans often ask whether she’d like to star on another show — and while the answer is yes, it would have to be different from the long-running HGTV series she’s known for.
While answering questions from listeners on the latest episode of her podcast, Mina AF, Starsiak Hawk said she’s loved making television “when it was fun.” However, the final two seasons of Good Bones — in which she starred alongside her mom, Karen E. Laine — were “really hard emotionally and mentally, financially and physically.”
After eight seasons renovating Indianapolis homes on Good Bones, she announced the series was ending in August 2023. Its final episode aired that October.
She admitted on the podcast that she was starting to feel like the “weight” of the show was falling on her.
“The stakes were so high,” she said. “It was all my money. It was my family's money. It was my business's success.”
Starsiak Hawk started her company, Two Chicks and a Hammer, with her mom in 2007. Laine stepped back from the company in 2019, but continued to appear on Good Bones alongside her daughter and their team.
Starsiak Hawk added that the show’s episodes typically would feature a “huge before and after with these huge stakes.”
“That is what this amazing show was built on and it was all very real,” she said. “And the reality was that it was getting to a point where I couldn't handle the stakes and I couldn't handle the projects, and I couldn't handle the risk.”
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However, it wasn’t easy to “back down” from those ambitious renovations, she says.
“I understand why the people in charge of the show and making the show wouldn't want to do that,” she explained. “Like, it's working well. It rates well. It's great before and after. It's fun content. So, it's hard to try to say, 'Hey, let's fix this thing that a lot of the other parties feel isn't broken.'”
Mina Starsiak Hawk Returns to HGTV in First Appearance Since Contentious End of Good Bones (Exclusive)
Mina, who shares two children — son Jack, 5, and daughter Charlie, 3 — with husband Steve Hawk, says agreeing to do another show would require a “healthier” balance.
She said someone recently suggested a show idea to her that “leans back into the older Good Bones model, maybe working with some of those people again.”
“I just think it would be a really bad decision for me, like, mentally and emotionally, let alone financially, to kinda get back in that place,” she said.
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When the person brought up money, Mina wasn’t swayed.
“I said, ‘There's not enough money in the world that would put me in the place I was a year ago, Because it was that bad,” she said, before adding, “That's probably a lie. If someone was like, ‘I'll give you a million dollars an episode,' and I had to go back to that place for a year, but I'd be set for the rest of my life, maybe that would be worth it.”
Mina Starsiak Hawk Says She’ll Continue to Work with HGTV After End of 'Good Bones'
“There's no realistic amount of money that I think would be worth it to struggle as hard as I was struggling,” she continued. “And I think that's very hard for people to understand — how much I was in, like, a really bad place."
While she says those close to her knew what she was going through, she says, “I'm sure it's hard for the general population to understand why the show ended and why it [ended] the way it did,” she said. “I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain or have people understand the situation and what it was doing to me."
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While the final season of Good Bones was airing, Mina opened up on the podcast about tensions with her family behind the scenes. She revealed she wasn’t “in a great place” with either her mom or her brother Tad Starsiak.
In a March episode of Mina AF, she shared, “I think it’s been really weird or unpleasant for a lot of people when the show ended the way it ended and kind of that curtain was pulled back a little bit, like ‘Oh, her and her mom don’t have a perfect relationship like it looks like on the show. And then you get people going back and saying, ‘You know what? I could actually see that. I could see them being irritated with each other.’”
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Mina, who recently made her first HGTV appearance since the end of Good Bones on an episode of House Hunters: All Stars, revealed on the podcast in October that she planned to work with the network again.
“I still love it,” she said. “I love what I do. And I actually — weirdly enough, even though it was never a goal of mine — I love making TV. I love working with the people. I love doing something different every day, and something that’s challenging. And I have a great relationship with the network still, and moving forward will still do things with them.”
