‘Buying It Blind’ Designer Michel Smith Boyd Says ‘Intense’ New Series Is an ‘Emotional Rollercoaster’

Imagine being so fed up with the house buying process that you’re willing to hand over everything — including your life savings — to a team of strangers.

That’s where the prospective homeowners of Buying It Blind, Bravo’s newest reality show premiering Friday, Nov. 2 (produced by Kinetic Content) are. Luckily, the families who decide to purchase their new home without ever seeing it are in good hands when it comes to the buying and renovation process with experts Atlanta real estate agent Anna Kilinski, contractor Jen Metzger and designer Michel Smith Boyd.

Boyd told PopCulture.com prior to the series premiere that while he’s designed for countless star clients in the past, trying to shape a strangers’ new home without guiding them through the process was definitely “a risk.”

“It’s such a new concept and like, am I crazy or are the clients crazy?” he joked. “I mean we’re all crazy.”

From the initial meeting with the family, Boyd said he has to play “psychiatrist,” figuring out what would make the homeowners happy in the end and digging deep into their personalities and priorities using everything from how they’re dressed to his experience with past clients.

“I swear, those meetings are so intense because you really have to dig in and really find out,” he explained to PopCulture. “Everybody wants to know, ‘Why in the world would you trust these strangers?’ And you know, we want to know just as much as everybody else.”

It’s definitely a team effort, and Boyd said he leans on Metzger and Kilinski like they’re family as the trio hustles to put the new home together. And even at the end of the process, when he feels like he’s done everything as best he can, the designer admits the doubt creeps in prior to the big reveal.

“I swear to you, I’m like a kid on the first day of school. Like, oh my God, did I do enough? Is it horrible? Are they going to hate it? Are they going to hate me? I’m going to look terrible on TV, I have no idea,” he admitted. ” All the confidence that I had the night before leaves, it just goes down the drain, because I mean, it’s high stakes. These people are really trusting us with their life savings and where they are going to live, where they are going to raise their family. And all that really becomes really, really real the day of that reveal.”

There are definitely some “tense” moments when it comes to the homeowner’s reactions to the process, Boyd teased, but viewers will definitely identify with how stressful the situation is for these people.

“I think that this show is different in that it feels like an emotional rollercoaster, and there’s not formula on this show like most shows,” he told PopCulture, adding, “I feel like we have such a great group of clients that you’ll be able to identify with every episode. … I feel like it’s so reflective of the way society works and the way our country looks right now. It’s just a cool show.”

Buying It Blind (produced by Kinetic Content) premieres Friday, Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.

Photo credit: Kinetic Content