HGTV Went Scorched Earth on Host Who Said a Racial Slur During Filming

I love consequences when people do bad things! They’re pretty great and, currently, are in short supply. Anyone who watched any of Pam Bondi’s insane hearing with Congress yesterday saw some abhorrent behavior by the top law enforcement official in the country, and yet that will likely be old news by Monday. She may get in trouble eventually (Zod willing), but it’s not going to happen overnight. That would be too brave of the U.S. government. Instead, we have to look to HGTV for holding people accountable for their actions.

My relationship with the network and its shows is complicated. Despite it making me sound like a stereotype, I’ll admit that my wife loves it, and I will often find something else to do while she watches. I’m not the most handy person to begin with, and watching other people be as much in drummed-up scenarios laden with poorly read lines that are clearly fed to the stars off-camera is not my cup of tea in the slightest. Still, I’m not always a wet blanket and have picked up some names over time. But not Nicole Curtis’.

Curtis has been the host of the show Rehab Addict for 15 years, spanning two networks. In it, she takes old, pre-World War II homes, attempting to preserve them instead of demolishing them. Sounds pretty good, right?! It must have been, because she did it for 15 years and even gave a TED Talk at one point. I actually grabbed the header picture from it, and would not recommend watching it, both because this lady looked nervous as hell while doing it, and because she just casually dropped the n-word while making her show.

The news broke yesterday that, after HGTV was made aware of a clip of her spouting the slur, which was shared on YouTube by Radar, her show had been cancelled, and new episodes, set to air that night, were to be pulled. But it gets better! HGTV also scrubbed her show from HBO Max and Discovery+ (the latter of which I forgot still existed). Granted, Curtis spouted the slur while filming her show last year, but as soon as it made it into the world, HGTV put the hammer down and released a statement distancing the company from Curtis and her language.

The former star issued an apology on her Instagram, but it now looks like her account has been deleted. According to The Ashley Reality Round Up, Curtis said, “I want to be clear: the word in question is wrong and not part of my vocabulary and never has been,” and y’all, I’m going to call BS on that claim. You can watch the clip here if you want to, but it’s pretty clearly something she has deep in her bones.

I’m mixed and have been called and witnessed all manner of racial slurs in my lifetime. Because of that, I have a pretty good ear for when people are saying something to get a rise out of you, are being intentionally hurtful, or just have some casual, deep-seated racism (though, to be clear, all examples I’m talking about are racist). Curtis drops the N-word so casually that the shock comes from the banality (something Welcome to Derry would never understand). It is very clearly a part of her everyday vocabulary; she knows immediately that she screwed up by saying it in front of the cameras, and the punishment she received feels swift and just. Hook it to my freaking veins.