‘Good Bones’ Star Mina Starsiak Hawk Admits She Was ‘Naive’ About Working With Family

Mina Starsiak Hawk is reflecting on the ups and downs of her time on television as her family’s HGTV show, Good Bones, came to an end after eight seasons earlier this month. On a recent episode of her podcast, Mina AF, which published ahead of Good Bones‘ series finale, Starsiak Hawk responded to a listener asking what she wished she had known before embarking on her television journey.

“I think I knew … that this was going to be hard and it was going to challenge relationships, because when you put anything under a spotlight, in a pressure cooker, there’s the opportunity to explode,” she responded. “And I myself am not stable enough to not explode at times.” She went on to note that her “whole complicated family organization” and the filming involvement of family members like her mom, Karen E. Laine, led to a lot of different personalities and “people with so many different issues, weaknesses, things left to learn.” She admitted, “I just wish I had known how bad it could be.”

Starsiak Hawk has spoken candidly in the past about her falling out with Laine, sharing on the Oct. 16 episode of her podcast that they had gone through challenges in the past and overcame them, which made her more confident in filming Good Bones with her. “[I was] naive to think that these people who came along and were part of this with me and supported me while I gave them an opportunity along the way would always feel the value of that opportunity,” she continued. “It’s just really hard being on the other side and feeling like some of the people that have been part of this feel like they are where they are today, with the opportunities they have today, in spite of me, not, in part, because of an opportunity that was provided. And that’s just kind of hard.”

Starsiak Hawk clarified that despite the low points, she still has a positive relationship with HGTV and loves making television, but that “being so young” when the show first started and not having an understanding of what boundaries she “needed to set” was something she struggled with. The TV personality added that she wished she had known “you need to be firm and understand your boundaries from the very beginning because it’s really hard to change. It’s hard to go back.”