Egypt Sherrod has a bone to pick with The New York Times.
The HGTV star slammed the daily newspaper after it published a “slanted” and “hypocritical” article about popular home renovation shows and the personalities behind them.
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“I am tired y’all,” Brown said in a video shared to Instagram Sunday. “I am tired of having to prove myself. I am tired of being overworked, underpaid, if paid at all. I am tired of not getting equal press or publicity. I am tired of being the scape goat. I am tired.”
Titled “The Strange Allure of Watching Other People Tear Up Their Homes,” the article profiled “DIY influences” and home renovation shows, including Married to Real Estate, the HGTV series Sherrod hosts with her husband Mike Jackson. The series was described as “a newish series hosted by polygot designer-builder couple Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson” and was compared to “a hard-hat Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” The reporter, New York Times Magazine assistant managing editor Amy X. Wang, went on to call the production “a well-oiled machine” in which the couple “breezed in” to complete the renovation while “a construction worker with AirPods in his ears revved a power drill for background noise.” The reporter noted, “An hour and a half into shooting, it was already time to wrap the scene.”
However, Brown made it clear that she didn’t like the way the show was portrayed. Sherrod explained that she and her husband were “invited to be in the New York Times by our network to promote this season of our show,” but after the team “came to set, took pictures of Mike and I, documented the whole experience,” the outlet “wrote it in a slant, as if we ease in and ease out of properties. As if we’re not doing the real work like, on a Sunday. After coming home from Panama.”
“We’re here right now, working on a clients’ house. No cameras, no cameras, this is what we do. When I leave here, I gotta go limewash a wall,” Sherrod continued as she cut to footage of herself and her team “still working” late into the night. Oh and no New York Times reporters here for an hour to tell us we’re just doing this for TV.”
In the caption, Sherrod went on to describe the story as “a hypercritical article about the entire home tv movement,” adding that she “won’t be a scapegoat. I won’t be martyred.” The HGTV star noted that she and her husband are “still a small family business,” adding, “So for a publication like The New York Times to use my image to headline an article filled with distortions and mediocrity? That’s not just irresponsible—it’s unacceptable! Let the fakes be your poster child. Not me.”
Responding to Sherrod’s criticism of the article, a spokesperson for The New York Times said in a statement to the Daily Mail, “Our piece on D.I.Y. home influencers was well-reported, thorough and fair, covering a wide range of figures and how they’ve turned renovation videos into a lucrative career.”