On an industrial-looking stretch of Red Hook’s Van Brunt
Street sits Katie Brown’s workshop, its exterior painted bright orange with
crisp white trim. Inside are shelves displaying hammered wooden mixing bowls
and white ceramic dishware; a gaggle of wooden desks with iMacs; an idea board covered in notes and magazine clippings;
and a spacious, rustic-looking test kitchen.
This is where Brown—host of PBS’s cooking, crafting and
gardening show “Katie Brown Workshop;” author of a handful of books on
entertaining; designer of a line of home goods and frequent guest on national
shows like “Good Morning America” and “The Today Show”—works her magic. (Well,
Brown and her energetic staff, as she’s quick to point out).
Brown’s career as domestic diva began almost 15 years ago
when, as a struggling actress and proprietor of a funky vintage boutique called
GOAT, she was tapped by Lifetime as “the next Martha Stewart” and became the
host of the show “Next Door With Katie Brown.” Since then, Brown has become
known across the country for her smart, simple, embrace-your-mistakes approach
to making a house a home—as well as for her earnest, “you-can-do-it!”
enthusiasm.
Today, as a working mom of two, Brown finds the line between
work and family life increasingly hard to define. In fact, as we sit down for
our interview, Brown’s daughters, Prentiss, 6, and Meredith, 2, are scampering
about the workshop, fraternizing with the staff and generally spreading joy and
laughter wherever they go. “It’s really hard to separate what I do for work
from what I do at home,” Brown admits.
But it’s a gray area she can live with. After all, as Brown
tells her audience, it’s okay not to know all the answers—but “if you keep it
simple, you can’t go wrong.”
You grew up a member of a large family in Petoskey, Michigan.
Were your parents crafty, cooks, gardeners?
My mom was totally crafty. When we turned 11, our gift was
that we each got to decorate our own room. That was my first introduction to
things like looking at wallpaper books and choosing my favorite colors. I have
32 first cousins and 14 aunts and uncles, and we all grew up in the same town
and all of them are great cooks, all of them are great gardeners. You know how
some families go sailing together or whatever? We’re that family who likes to talk
about food and decorating. It would be like bragging rights: “How many did you
cook for last night?” “Try my tomato!”
Your big break came almost 15 years ago when Lifetime chose
you to host your first show, “Next Door With Katie Brown.” What do think the
television executives saw in you?
I think they saw my passion, I think they knew I really
loved it. I think there was a youthfulness to my approach that wasn’t happening
then. With Martha [Stewart] everything was so perfect, and then there were
people doing things with popsicle sticks. But there was nobody in-between for
people who didn’t have a ton of money to redecorate or wanted to do a dinner
party but weren’t sure how. I was the first generation who grew up with working
moms and there was a lot of [knowledge] that needed to be filled in. A lot of the
cooking show hosts would say, “Put it in a double boiler,” and I was like,
“What if you don’t know what a double boiler is?” So I explained everything. “The
Wall Street Journal” once wrote that I did “domesticity for dummies,” and at first
I was really insulted, like they were insulting my audience. But then I read on
and it wasn’t that they were dumb, it was that I was answering their questions,
and providing people with ideas, and telling them they can do it. I was a
cheerleader in high school, and I’m like everybody’s biggest fan. One time I
remember with Lifetime I had made this cake, it was beautiful, and it came out
of the oven—this is on camera—and I was like, “Looook at this caaaake!”
and they said, “Cut, cut! Don’t get so excited when you take the cake out,
you’re an expert!” And I was like, “No, that’s when you should fire me, if I’m
ever not excited about the cake.”
Tell me how you met your husband, TV executive William
Corbin.
First of all, I didn’t get married until I was 40. I used to
do stand-up comedy to entertain the crew in-between takes of my show, and I’d
say things like, “I’m so pathetic that I have to tell everyone else how to be
wife cause no one will marry me.” And one day I’m doing this and I hear the
executives, who are off in their little booths, announce, “We have a guy for
you.” So they set up this meeting, and we’re sitting at this big conference
table, and this one foxy guy is sitting about halfway around the table. He gets
up about halfway through the meeting because he had to go, and he handed me his
card and said, “I’ll help you with all the website development and everything.”
And the minute he left, all the executives turned into twelve-year-olds and
leaned in and were like, “That’s the guy, that’s the guy, what do you think?”
And that was it.
Together you and your husband produce your show, “Katie
Brown Workshop,” right?
Yes. I had always wanted my show on PBS, it’s my favorite
network. I grew up being a huge Julia Child fan and watching all the cooking
shows on PBS and to me that was just the ultimate. So I convinced my husband,
“I want to be on PBS, I want to produce it myself, I don’t want to have any
bosses.” So he quit his job and he got Procter & Gamble and Kraft to
underwrite my show, and we’re now in our sixth season.
Tell me about your children, Prentiss (6) and Meredith (2).
What do you love about being their mother?
Prentiss has a compassionate creativity about her that I
learn a lot from. And Meredith has a feisty stubbornness, an original
determination, that I love watching. I love watching Prentiss be a big sister;
that was something we almost missed. I didn’t have Prentiss until I was 41, and
I adopted my second baby, and that was a tough decision and a struggle. My
husband kept saying, “Stop thinking about all that IVF stuff, let’s adopt,” and
he was right, because the minute I saw Meredith I was done.
Tell me about being an adoptive mom. What impact has the
adoption experience had on your family, and on you as a parent?
It is a brutal process, but it’s all worth it in the end. You
know how with birthing they say you don’t remember the pain? Same with
adoption. And there’s something about my bond with Meredith that I think is
wrapped up in the fact that I almost didn’t have her. There’s something about that
feeling of, Oh my God, how did we luck
out to find you? that is just otherworldly and so precious and so great. I
feel like I have the family I was meant to have; I think you find who you are
supposed to find. That’s part of the reverence that I have towards Meredith and
our connection—it’s like, “Well, there
you are!”
Until recently, your family called Brooklyn home. Tell me
what your life was like there—what were your favorite things to do as a family?
The great thing about Brooklyn is it’s so family-oriented. I
was able to have a house with a backyard. It was only about 10 blocks from [my
workshop], so I loved it because I could go home for my girls a lot. We loved
the Carousel in Prospect Park, we loved the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, we
loved Carroll Park. Some of my favorite restaurants are on Court Street and Smith
Street. I loved the view from the top of our brownstone; we could see over
Manhattan and we watched fireworks from there. We loved our neighborhood
because on one side of us was a sort of yuppie couple with a child, and to the
left of us was this couple who have lived there forever—he grew up in that
house, they would make us pasta fagioli—so I had two extremes. And because
Meredith was adopted and she is a child of color, I thought Brooklyn was a
perfect place because it’s a colorblind place, and that was right for us.
You recently relocated to a new home in Connecticut. What made you decide to move? What do you like about it?
I don’t know yet! We are remodeling our house; that’s pretty much what we’re focusing on right now. I like the fact that I can walk Prentiss to the end of my driveway and the school bus picks her up and brings her right back home. And we’re on four acres now, so that’s pretty nice. My husband was commuting back and forth from Connecticut for work, so I like it for him. I took one for the team, let’s put it that way!
What are some of your favorite crafty things to do at home
with your girls?
We always have a giant room that is dedicated just to their
fun, and a lot of that has to do with craft. I always have big long rolls of
contractor paper, and I’ll roll it up, put out the paints and we go to town. I
always have clay, crayons and markers galore. I think it’s fun for them to be
able to go away somewhere and make messes and feel like it’s their art studio.
Did becoming a mom influence your approach to your work?
Absolutely. My tagline has always been “Keep It Simple,” but
get yourself two kids, and you really
have to keep it simple—like, don’t even give me one hard thing. I have 23- and
24-year-olds who work for me and they’ll say, “We found this great scampi
recipe!” and I’m like, “No, no, no, I’m a working mom with two kids, I’m not
making that recipe. How can we cut four of those steps out?”
How would you describe the Katie Brown aesthetic?
It’s comfortable, it’s casual, it embraces mistakes. There’s
a reality to it. That’s what people see in our show and in the books I write
and the stories I tell—not every tape is cut perfectly, not every ribbon isn’t
frayed. I like things that aren’t perfect because you can see the life and you
can see the struggle.
Katie Brown’s Home Design Tips For NYC Families
*Fill a room with light—and not just from the ceiling. Lamps
at different levels go a long way toward bringing unique, rewarding
perspectives to the places you thought you knew.
*I like homes that show the struggle. Whether it’s
rough-hewn wooden floorboards or a stray brushstroke on the beams above a
painted wall, the unplanned quirks of a home are what allow you to relate to
it.
*Every room should have something reflective in it. It
doesn’t have to be a floor-length mirror, just something with a surface that
reflects a depth beyond its material.
*Always have something black in the room. This is my Aunt
Nan’s advice, and she’s right: keeping just a few black items around, whether
as big as a couch or as small as a vase, reliably upgrades a space to classic
classiness.
Pictured: Katie Brown and daughters Meredith (left) and Prentiss (right) make a fun, floury mess in the test kitchen of Brown’s Red Hook workshop. Photo by Michael Jurick.
