Will America be delighted with the antics of “Keeping up with the Olsons”?  Will casual acquaintances drop their jaws in shock when seeing our pictures in supermarket tabloids? Maybe someday… but the dream is on hold for now.  For the last few months Melissa and I have been in the interview process for House Hunters International. Unfortunately for us, last Wednesday we finally received notice that we were not selected for the show.  Fortunately for people that like gossip, I now feel free to divulge everything we learned along the way.

It was all the way back on October 22nd that I sent the initial application to a generic email address.  We were still living in Minnesota and were watching a lot of House Hunters International on Netflix from Dan and Ann’s basement.  We had never seen an international version from Switzerland, so I thought there might be a chance if we apply, and at the very least it would be funny to tell people we applied for a reality TV show.  All they wanted for the application was: our names, phone number, initial and final locations, and a picture of ourselves.

With all the stuff going on in our lives, I actually forgot I applied until March 2nd, which coincidentally was the first night in our new apartment.  As we were restlessly trying to sleep on our pullout couch, my phone buzzed to announce an email from a person in casting who wanted to know more about us.  I replied right away, and the very next day Melissa and I talked to him on the phone.

Ready for the dirt?  It was implied that everyone on the show is already living in the home they “choose” at the end of the episode. They wanted pictures of our apartment, and said they would hire movers to clear out our apartment for shooting and to put everything back again.  We learned that filming would be 3-4 days in Switzerland, and one day in Minneapolis to film the backstory.  Film days would be about 10 hours, and for our appearance we would be paid $1500.

I thought it sounded awesome, I started practicing walking into rooms and complaining about stuff right away. But Melissa was a little more hesitant.  She had to consider missing work to film, and was a little worried about having our furniture damaged.  She was ok with moving forward, but said it would be ok if we didn’t get picked too.

After the phone interview, the next step was filling out a four page questionnaire.  There were lots of background questions, and lots of questions trying to get us to elaborate on style preferences, why we moved, what our new apartment criteria were, and especially to elaborate on any conflicts we had.  When we finished answering all the questions the form was nine pages.

In addition to emailing back the questionnaire, we were also asked to send along more pictures of ourselves and pictures of all the rooms in the apartment.  Then we waited.  I emailed twice asking about the status, and on May 5th I received an email from a different producer.  He said we were still being considered and asked if we could do another phone interview.  I replied right away, but didn’t hear anything back until May 13.

On May 13, right as we were sitting down for dinner, I received a call from an unknown number.  I was thinking it was probably going to be someone talking in French to me, so I didn’t answer.  An hour later the same number called back, and I thought that was weird.   I looked up the number and saw that it came from New York City.   Aha! It must be House Hunters! I called the number back, and we had our second phone interview right then.  I probably could have answered his questions quicker and been less nervous if I had prepared for it, but I still thought it went pretty well.  The producer kept asking leading questions about if we like to travel and be outdoors, and what activities we do here.  My impression was that he was mentally writing the script for our episode.  Before hanging up, he said there was just one more person that needed to agree to the episode, and he would let us know their decision soon.

After almost a month of waiting, I emailed him back last Wednesday and received the news that we were not selected.  It’s definitely disappointing for us, but also disappointing for the huddled masses yearning to be entertained.  Would our episode have won Emmys?  Could it have made Democrats and Republicans get along? Brought about world peace?  The world will never know what it missed out on.