As the co-host of HGTV’s Hot Mess House and winner of season 36 of Survivor: Ghost Island, Wendell Holland has had enormous success. But prior to making his way onto the screen of television sets across America, Wendell spent his entire life building - building his mind, building his dreams, and building with his hands.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Wendell’s father was a successful attorney. And when he wasn’t working on court cases, he was enlisting the help of his son for projects around the house. “My dad is an attorney but he is a very hard working man and he instilled that in me,” Wendell says. “He could have hired contractors to frame out our basement when I was growing up, or frame out the attic. But he went down there and he was doing it himself, and I would help him out at building these things. I remember having my friends come over and help put drywall up and things like that.” While it was still just a hobby at this point in young Wendell’s life, it was building the foundation for his future success. After graduating high school in Philadelphia, Wendell graduated magna cum laude from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia with a degree in International Studies; and seemed poised to follow in his father’s footsteps by attending the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It was around this time that Wendell started to turn the skills he had built up over the years into more than just a hobby.
“As a broke college student, me and my roommate didn't have a lot of stuff so I built our coffee table and some other things around the house. And after law school, when I was working as a law clerk, I didn’t have much of a budget so I decided to build my own bed. I was so proud of it that I posted it on social media and it generated a lot of response. So I put the bed for sale online and it sold, which showed me there was some kind of a market out there.” Wendell built three more beds shortly thereafter, and began building and selling furniture online after work and on the weekends. When the judge that he worked for retired, Wendell decided to start building full time, creating his own furniture company, Beve Unlimited.
While Wendell had a successful legal career and furniture business, there was still one dream that had remained exactly that - a dream. For over five years, Wendell had submitted audition tapes and attended casting calls to appear on the hit TV series Survivor. Finally, after auditioning and being passed over for Survivor seasons 18 through 35, Wendell was selected to be a contestant for season 36. “I think I got on at the right time in my life because of course my career just changed, but also I had had successes and failures. I was 33 years old, I’m not this 20 year old kid that’s just living on a reality show. And I think that is what really helped me win, having that life experience and being competitive and knowing the show; but also me not being accepted on my first application. I think it is a testament to not giving up and just continuing to try different things and reinvent yourself.”
Knowing this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, Wendell wanted to make the most of it by using his time on Survivor to show off his personality, as well as his building skills to help create positive rapport with the other Survivor contestants. Not to mention the millions of people who would be watching when the season finally aired. “Going into Survivor I knew win, lose, or draw, if I could be sent on an island with essentially nothing and could build some cool stuff, then maybe someone out there might see it. And that’s kind of what happened. So we got out there and we didn’t have a lot of tools, but I built this awesome shelter and all these cool things. I even built games for us to make people a little more comfortable, which I guess made me a little more likable.” But what Wendell wasn’t expecting was that the contestants weren’t the only ones appreciating his skills. “We would come back from a challenge on a different island and we would get back to our island and walk up, and I would see some producers and members of the tv production crew playing some of my games.”
Filming took place in June 2017, but the season didn’t air until the following February, with the season finale airing in May 2018. So after winning Survivor: Ghost Island, and the million dollar prize that it comes with, Wendell had to keep it all a secret for 8 long months. Little did he know that even though his Survivor season had officially ended, his reality TV career was just getting started. Soon after the Survivor season aired a TV production company from Philadelphia, with shows on a variety of networks, told Wendell that they had noticed his building talents during Survivor and wanted to develop him for HGTV. “As a builder, it was a dream come true because HGTV is the network for design and building and all of those things. So they started pitching ideas to HGTV and pairing me with different co-hosts.” And just as he had been doing since building out the basement with his father in his childhood home, Wendell diligently used the opportunity to study and fine-tune his craft. “I believe that we can learn and grow and get better every day,” Wendell says, before telling stories of being paired with HGTV co-host Carrie Locklyn of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. “They had us working together for about six months shooting a pilot. And every day I would just watch how she would present herself, how she would stand; her posture, how she would stand close to me in our interviews, all of these things. I would just soak it up.” Even though the pilot they spent six months shooting didn’t get picked up by HGTV, it was enough to get noticed. A few months later, Wendell received a call from an executive from HGTV saying they wanted to place him in some other shows they were developing themselves. “I have a philosophy, which is essentially a mantra that all reality TV people have to have: if you stay ready then you don’t have to get ready. Because in the reality TV world, you might work on a project for months that doesn’t get picked up, but somebody might see your performance or your talents and they might be developing a project that you would be perfect for.”
Wendell recalls how he got the co-hosting gig for the HGTV show, Hot Mess House. His agent got a call on a Sunday saying they needed a co-host for an entire season that will start filming in New York City, that coming Tuesday. “I think I had three days to figure it out and pack, make my beard look cute and all of that,” Wendell says with a chuckle. Hot Mess House is an HGTV show co-hosted by Wendell and Cassandra Aarssen. Cassandra goes in and helps people declutter and organize their home and then Wendell builds out whatever is needed for the new space. Noting that a lot of the clients on the show have hoarder-like tendencies, Wendell is proud of the fact that they use their show not to belittle or humiliate the home owners, but to dig deeper and figure out why they have those tendencies and truly help them overcome them.
Wendell says his most memorable and most challenging HGTV show has been Beach Cabana Royale, a design competition show hosted by Snooki from Jersey Shore. For the show, the contestants were taken to a luxury beach club in Atlantic Beach on Long Island and were tasked to renovate a beach cabana storage unit for wealthy patrons to store their things while they enjoy the amenities of the beach club. “It was just a really cool opportunity to be on another HGTV show and get out of my comfort zone. I really needed to just take a risk and although I didn’t win the competition aspect of it, when the show aired they gave me great screen time. And just being there and performing my best allowed many other opportunities to open up. I remember every single day when I’d leave home for grade school as I walked out the door my mother would give me a hug and say, ‘I love you, do your best.’ So I’ve just gone out and done my best at every stage of life, and very fortunately, the universe has been very kind to me. I’ve lived a very blessed life, and the majority of it is attributed to my parents doing a great job with me and my two sisters.”
