Charlie Albone spills the secrets behind Selling Houses Australia as he leaves the show for good
Charlie Albone’s final episode of Selling Houses Australia airs on Wednesday. The landscaper reveals when he told his castmates he was leaving as well as spilling some of the secrets behind the scenes.
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Charlie Albone recalls his motivation to join the cast of Selling Houses Australia back in 2008.
“My ex girlfriend said ‘You’ll never try TV and if you do it you’ll be really sh-- at it’,” Albone recalls.
“They were her exact words. I was a 26-year-old landscaper who got into his TV because his ex said he’d be no good at it. That really spurred me on to have a go at it.”
This February when Albone announced he’d joined Better Homes and Gardens and was leaving Selling Houses Australia after 13 seasons, he got a reminder of just how passionate the viewers of the hit Foxtel show are.
“There were people calling me Yoko Ono,” Albone jokes.
When the offer from Channel 7 came in, while Albone was filming Selling Houses Australia last year, he initially thought he could juggle both shows, just as his co-stars Shaynna Blaze (who also judges on The Block) and Andrew Winter (who also co-hosts Love It Or List It) do.
Even when they finished their last house together, which is also the series final airing on Lifestyle tonight, Blaze and Winter still thought Albone was planning to do double duty.
“They didn’t know I wasn’t coming back,” Albone admits.
“I didn’t want to let anyone down. But it became too hard on me and my family.”
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Albone said the constant travel, along with having two young children, became a deal breaker – whereas on Better Homes and Gardens means he can work mainly in Sydney, where he lives, and he can promote the joy of landscaping rather than always solving major gardening or home-related problems like on Selling Houses Australia.
“The thing with the property market is everything sells so quickly in Sydney no matter where it is, so on Selling Houses we didn’t really do any houses where I’d be staying at home,” Albone said.
“So every second week for eight months of the year I’d be on an aeroplane doing up a house, leaving Monday, coming back late Thursday night and I also run a (landscaping) business so I’d be up early Friday – so really the whole week was gone.
“The following week where we do the backstory I’d only be home a few days. It really is a full time job away, fly in, fly out type thing. I just wasn’t seeing my family.”
Albone told Blaze and Winter – who he has become firm friends with – he was officially leaving Selling Houses just before a promotional photo shoot for the new series in February this year.
“It was a little stab in the heart,” Blaze admits. “First it was ‘No, no, we talked about it, Andrew does two shows, I do two shows’ but Charlie has little kids. They only know him being away. You have to work out what’s right for your family.
“But we are so close. It’s not easy to get a team of 13 years to work like that. We don’t have to think about what we do. We just do it. It’s so natural and easy.
“I feel like they’re my two brothers. So to not have a brother there is going to be weird.”
Winter said he had been amused by viewers on social media who think they had noticed bad vibes between the trio in Albone’s final season.
“We filmed the final house in January, so it was relatively recently,’ Winter said. “We learnt at the end of the second week (of filming) the last episode Charlie was thinking about leaving. On social media people are saying ‘You can see Charlie had told the other guys he was leaving during all these episodes’. No you couldn’t, we didn’t know.”
There will be a new landscaper on the show, even if Blaze does not like to use the word “replacement”.
“Charlie is irreplaceable,” she said.
COVID-19 has not only put plans for a new season temporarily on hold but also the audition process, with new landscapers currently unable to fly to meet Blaze and Winter, who are both in different states.
Blaze and Winter have both committed to the show going forward.
“I never thought we would go on if one of us left,” Blaze said.
“But over the last two years the three of us have fallen in love with the show more than we ever have. As much as after 13 years we’ve had the best ratings we’ve had, we love it so much more, I can’t imagine letting it go now, and I know Andrew isn’t ready yet.
“Andrew’s always said he won’t leave until he’s in a Zimmer frame.”
Winter added: “I’m happy to stay there kicking and screaming until I’m in my 80s.
“But as far as a new team member I think you don’t want someone that looks like Charlie or is the same age or personality, they will be endlessly compared to him.”
Albone has some tips for the new person who will take on his old job.
“Just be yourself. That’s what the fans of the show like. Shaynna and I, we’re who we are, doing what we do and we’re natural about it.
“Andrew’s obviously the fakest man in the world but he can pull it off.
“The landscaping part of things, I look forward to someone putting their style on it. It’s tricky because you’re trying to sell a house so you’re trying to appeal to the widest number of people.
“The new person has to gel with Shaynna and Andrew, I hope this gives the show a new boost and gives it another 10 years.
“Of course I’ll still be watching the next series. I’m sure there will be times I wish I was there but then I’ll remember they’re probably in the middle of nowhere and it’s taken them five days to get there and it’s quite nice to be home.”
Blaze admitted it “might take a while” for them to get used to a new cast member.
“It will change the dynamic of who we are,” he said, adding Winter had a few ideas.
“Could Shaynna do the gardening and I’ll start scattering cushions?”
SELLING HOUSES AUSTRALIA SECRETS
THE HOUSE THEY WISH THEY’D BOUGHT
A home in Neutral Bay in Sydney which was being sold due to the couple divorcing, Albone had to fix a nightmare backyard which wound up having Sydney Harbour views.
Albone: “They sold it really cheap once we were done, well, it was $900,000, a lot of money, but it’d be worth close to $3 million now. That was eight years ago. Some of these houses we do up and we think ‘nah, we’d still never buy this place it’s a sh--hole’ but that was one we would have loved to buy.”
Blaze: “There was nothing wrong with it. Charlie did an incredible garden and it’s one where you kick yourself. It was so cheap for that area. I mean we’re on a TV show we can’t do a sneaky, but sheesh, we would have loved to have bought that one.”
THEIR WORST EXPERIENCE
The epic two part episode with the old house in Yass. No.
Albone: “Oh. That one. That was tricky. He bought this house, he was renovating it to how he wanted it. His wife didn’t like it. She convinced him to do the Selling Houses makeover. He didn’t want us there. So anything we did he hated and he let us know. He kicked us off site for a whole day. There was a tense negotiation between him and his son, and us about getting back on. The show was almost canned. He was walking around telling us how much he hated everything we were doing. We were doing it all for him. It was a very awkward two weeks. He was happy to say on camera how much he hated us.”
Blaze: “It was a divine home that had been on the market for so long. The owner felt we were destroying his livelihood. That was really hard because we weren’t. We know what we’re doing. It was very tense. We all came out a little bit traumatised.”
THE MYSTERY OF ANDREW’S HAIR
It is a thing on Twitter, and, apparently, on set.
Charlie: “Andrew has an addiction to his wig shop, apart from that he’s a full time TV whore. His hair has had a real journey. He’s happy to admit he’s dyed it since day one. He’s a silver fox really but he stuck with the one wig for eight or nine years. Now he’s got this thing and I don’t know what’s going on with it – it’s shocking. We tell him to his face, ‘Andrew, what’s happening with your wigs?’ … ‘It’s not a wig,’ he says, ‘you’re just jealous of my lovely long hair.’ It is actually his real hair, even though I call it a wig. It just looks like a wig. I think he uses a can of hairspray every morning.”
THE SURPRISE OBJECTS
You have got a TV show coming to fix up your house. You would get rid of, er, personal objects? Apparently not.
Albone: “It’s a little MA rated – it’s amazing what people leave under their beds when they know a camera crew is coming in to remove everything and renovate their house. If one was to have those things in their house you would think one would know where they were and would want to remove them.”
Blaze: “People forget what is behind their beds or dressers, or do they? Let’s just say you get quiet well mannered people and you find out some interesting things about them going by what’s under their bed. Sadly I’ve had to pick up a lot of jocks and socks that needed to go into a laundry, let’s just put it that way. I have used a lot of tongs.”
Selling Houses Australia series final, Lifestyle, 8.30pm Wednesday