HGTV Star Speaks Out After Reading Article About Why Some Fans ‘Can’t Stand’ Her

HGTV star Alison Victoria isn’t letting online bullies dampen her spirit.

After an article surfaced online headlined “Why Some HGTV Fans Seriously Can’t Stand Alison Victoria,” the influential interior designer, who hosts HGTV shows Windy City Rehab and the upcoming Sin City Rehab, told Us Weekly that her “flame won’t go out.”

“I think that with anyone — whether you’re in the public eye or not — when something hurts, you can either be crippled by it, or you can be empowered by it. Stuff stings and it makes you second guess yourself,” Victoria admitted. “I told myself years ago that I wasn’t going to let anyone dim my light, and unfortunately, an article like that will, and it sucks. My flame won’t go out but it’s awful to read.”

According to Victoria, she came across the article while she was at the airport traveling to Las Vegas to film her new show Sin City Rehab. Posted by The List on Friday, May 16, the article referenced a 2021 Reddit thread, where HGTV viewers criticized Victoria as “obnoxious,” “angry,” “irritating,” and “so unpleasant to watch.”

Victoria said that such comments are “hurtful,” explaining that she does “reality television, which means the person that you see on those shows like Windy City Rehab and my soon to be show Sin City Rehab, that is reality. That’s as real as reality gets. But that’s who I am to my core. People are seeing me for me.” However, she said that over the years, she has come to have empathy for online bullies.

“Understand that the person on the other side is going through some sort of pain because it takes someone in pain to want to inflict pain on others,” she said. “‘If I hurt, then I’m going to hurt someone else.’ And that’s a very vindictive way to live. If you stop and you put yourself in that person’s shoes and you look at it from the outside, you can kind of feel their hurt, and you almost feel bad for them. When you feel bad for somebody, you have empathy.”

After previously starring in DIY Network’s Kitchen Crashers, Victoria joined the HGTV family in 2019 with her series Windy City Rehab, in which she renovates properties in her hometown of Chicago. She has since gone on to appear in HGTV’s Battle on the Beach, Rock the Block, Ty Breaker, Ugliest House in America, and the specials HGTV Dream Home and White House Christmas. She can next be seen diving “headfirst into multi-million-dollar client projects and risky flips” in Las Vegas in HGTV’s upcoming show Sin City Rehab, which is set to premiere later this year.