Jonathan Knight: 11 Surprising Facts About The HGTV Star
There aren't too many celebrities whose resumes include performing with one of the world's biggest boy bands, renovating New England farmhouses, and then taking that expertise to HGTV for a hit TV series. Yet that's been the journey of Jonathan Knight, whose famous mug could be found on countless lunchboxes and T-shirts back in the late 1980s and early 1990s as one-fifth of the mega-popular boy band, New Kids on the Block, alongside Donnie Wahlberg, Joey McIntyre, Danny Wood, and his brother, Jordan Knight.
While the group resumed performing in 2008 after a decade-plus hiatus, Knight had meanwhile developed a passion for old farmhouses in his native Massachusetts, restoring these stately old buildings to their former glory — both for himself and for clients who'd hire him to work his magic on theirs. Since 2021, Knight has been the host of "Farmhouse Fixer," an HGTV series in which he's joined by interior designer Kristina Crestin to breathe new life into these structures, some of which are hundreds of years old.
Knight has been a fixture on the pop-culture landscape for so long that his fans probably think they have all the scoop there is to get. However, there's much about this multitalented singer, home renovator, and TV personality that may not be widely known.
He once dated pop star Tiffany
In 1988, New Kids on the Block was tapped to be the opening act for Tiffany, the mononymous pop star who hit radio gold at age 15 with her 1987 hit "I Think We're Alone Now." During that tour, NKOTB's popularity exploded; by the tour's end, it was Tiffany who was opening for the boy band.
While on tour, NKOTB's Jonathan Knight became friendly with Tiffany, who recalled how they got together in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. "I was just so excited to have somebody my age on the road," she explained, recalling all the pizzas they'd share after performing. "Jon and I became really good friends, then, of course, we became boyfriend and girlfriend," she added. According to Knight, they bonded over the shared experience of becoming suddenly famous as teenagers. "It was nice to relate to somebody who was in the same boat," he said. "We were both experiencing the same things and I had never had anyone besides the guys experience those things with me. She helped ground me and it was a good escape from the rigors of touring."
They dated for about two years, with the relationship ultimately coming to an end as Knight came to realize that he was gay. While he was ultimately happy to have come to that realization about his sexuality, their breakup was difficult. "I really felt like I was betraying her, so that was hard and caused a lot of guilt," he added.
He was advised not to come out as gay over career fears
Despite leading to a painful split with Tiffany, Jonathan Knight's realization about his sexuality proved to be freeing. However, being a teen idol in one of the world's hottest boy bands resulted in intense pressure to remain in the closet. Appearing on the "Frosted Tips with Lance Bass" podcast, Knight revealed that his manager was insistent that he keep quiet about being gay. "He pulled me aside and he was like, 'If anybody finds out, then your career is over, the New Kids' career is over ... Sony's gonna lose money,'" Knight said.
"It was just so much pressure and looking back, that's a lot of pressure to put on somebody who is just trying to figure out the world themselves," Knight added. While the young star had opened up to his bandmates about his sexuality, he played it relatively low-key when it came to romantic relationships on the road, terrified as he was of his secret being revealed. In fact, he recalled being "so afraid ... like what if somebody sees?"
Knight was still in the closet when an ex outed him in 2009, selling incriminating photos to the National Enquirer. While he wasn't hiding his sexuality in his private life, he hadn't come out publicly. "I didn't want to [come out]," he said. "And then it was like, no, you have to make a statement, you have to publicly clear the air."
He quit NKOTB due to anxiety and panic attacks
As the popularity of New Kids on the Block continued to soar, so too did the pressure on Jonathan Knight to keep his sexuality a secret. "And I think just as it went along, the stress built up and built up and built up," he said while appearing on the "Frosted Tips with Lance Bass" podcast. "It was crazy." Ultimately, that stress was a contributing factor to Knight's decision to leave NKOTB in 1994, at the height of the group's boy band fame. Detailing the reasons for his decision to leave, he said, "Number one, being a young gay kid, I was frustrated and wanted to get on with my own life."
Another factor was that he'd started to experience panic attacks, which grew increasingly severe and more frequent. "We performed in front of 30,000 people every night, and I had lots of anxiety attacks. Those attacks had a big impact on my determining to leave the entertainment industry," Knight told People in 2000.
After Knight announced he was quitting at the end of the 1994 "Face the Music" tour, New Kids on the Block wound up temporarily disbanding. "I felt that we had done it long enough," Knight told People. "I was the first to jump ship. The others were angry at first, but they understood."
Renovating old farmhouses led him to HGTV
When Jonathan Knight quit New Kids on the Block, he also walked away from show business. A year or so after leaving the band, he forged a new path by reinventing himself as a home renovator in his native Boston. Speaking with The New York Times, it all began when he received a call from an acquaintance who'd done security for NKOTB and had been successfully flipping houses — then invited Knight to team up with him. "When he said ”flip houses,' I thought, Is this some mafia thing? We're going to go in there and rob these people? It was a term I'd never heard," Knight said. Since then, Knight estimated that he'd renovated and flipped more than 100 homes.
The renovation skills he acquired during his house-flipping exploits came in handy when Knight and his husband, Harley Rodriguez, purchased a circa 1760 farmhouse in rural Massachusetts, restoring the place to its former glory. "It was standing since the 1700s. I wouldn't tear it down. Now this thing will be around for another two or three hundred years," he told the Times.
Knight's day job eventually morphed into his own HGTV series, with network execs clearly determining that a former boy band singer renovating vintage homes was a no-brainer. "Restoring the American farmhouse is not just a hobby for me — it's my passion, my obsession and I've been doing it for more than 25 years," said Knight in an HGTV statement released in advance of his series, "Farmhouse Fixer."
He has his own farmhouse fixer
It was while growing up in a rundown Victorian home in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood that Jonathan Knight first developed an affection for older historic homes. That was what led him and his husband to buy the 260-year-old farmhouse that became their passion project — and a welcome change from totally regretting the purchase of his first home. "I was like, 'I have to buy it, I have to,'" Knight told The New York Times of the historic property.
While renovating a vintage farmhouse for a client is one thing — particularly when there are finite deadlines as it's being filmed for an HGTV series — Knight's renovation of his own home became increasingly expansive. "It's never-ending," he said in an interview with the Boston Herald, referencing the ever-growing to-do list. "I always get these romantic notions."
One of those notions, he revealed, was creating his own miniature forest so that one day he'd be able to chop down a Christmas tree from his own yard. "I go online and I order trees not even knowing what I was ordering," he explained. "Three days before [The Mixtape Tour] started, 100 Christmas trees showed up at my house, little seedlings. I'm up all night before tour, putting them in pots, making sure they're going to be OK while I'm gone."
He lost 20 pounds by becoming a vegetarian
In the mid-2010s, Jonathan Knight made a big dietary decision when he decided to ditch meat and go vegetarian. As he told Entertainment Tonight, his initial motivation had to do with his love of animals. "Just seeing how animals are raised and the slaughterhouses freaked me out," he admitted. "I had never thought too much about where meat comes from and was like, 'This is not right.'"
Initially, Knight attempted to go full vegan, but abandoned that idea almost immediately. "That lasted three days!" he recalled. Once he removed meat from his diet, a chronic digestive issue immediately vanished. Meanwhile, the health benefits he experienced from vegetarianism were accompanied by an added bonus. "Two weeks later I noticed I had lost weight, so I decided to start weighing myself every day and it just kept dropping. It was crazy," he recalled. "Seven months later, I'm down to 175 pounds and I didn't work out or anything."
That weight loss proved to be a boost to his confidence, which he admitted had taken a hit when he and the other members of New Kids on the Block were featured in the reality TV series "Rock This Boat," and he became shocked when watching himself on television. "On 'Rock This Boat,' I was like, 'I'm the fat New Kid,' and to me it's true," he said.
He traveled around the world on The Amazing Race
In 2015, Jonathan Knight made an unexpected move that few saw coming when he and future husband Harley Rodriguez became one of the couples competing in "The Amazing Race," CBS's globe-trotting reality show.
As Knight explained in an interview with People, he was nervous about being with Rodriguez on such a constant 24-seven basis while being under a pressure cooker as a camera crew filmed their every move. "I don't know if I am looking forward to that much time together with him," Knight said after he'd agreed to join the show. "It's going to be interesting." Rodriguez agreed, pointing out that their respective schedules kept them apart quite a bit. "I think that space has been good for us," he added. "I think every couple need space or you can get on each other's nerves."
One of the motivating factors behind Knight's decision to do "The Amazing Race" was to overcome his issues with anxiety. "That was one of the main reasons why I did it, just to prove to myself that I could do it," he explained during an interview with Entertainment Tonight. As he pointed out, being part of NKOTB meant that he didn't always have to step into the spotlight — which wasn't the case on "The Amazing Race." "Being in a group with five guys, it's like, it was always easy for me to just fall behind, or not speak up at interviews and stuff like that," he added.
He secretly married Harley Rodriguez in 2022
Spending all that time together on "The Amazing Race" did not prove to be detrimental to Jonathan Knight's relationship with Harley Rodriguez. In 2022, Knight revealed that he and Rodriguez had quietly tied the knot. "We did," Knight told "Entertainment Tonight" when he was asked about his wedding ring while promoting the new season of "Farmhouse Fixer." "But everybody just assumed we're married, so, I never say yes or no 'cause I don't wanna lie," he added, revealing that they'd had a small private ceremony due to the pandemic, but that an actual ceremony was on the horizon. "It's coming," he promised.
One year later, Knight reflected on his marriage to Rodriguez during another interview with Entertainment Tonight, gushing about how much he was enjoying married life. "It's great," he exclaimed. "We've been together 14 years. It's nice to find love. We found each other later on in life, which makes it even better. We both understand each other."
He bashed up his face in an NKOTB tour bus accident
Being the member of a middle-aged boy band does not come without its potential hazards, something that Jonathan Knight found out firsthand during a 2015 tour with New Kids on the Block. Ahead of one show, Knight took to social media to reveal he wouldn't be able to take to the stage that night. "Had an accident on the bus. Banged up my face badly, broke my nose and got a few stitches ?? #FightClub," he wrote in a since-deleted tweet, as reported by ABC News.
He also issued a post via Instagram that detailed all the damage by including a photo of his banged-up face. He followed that up with another Instagram pic of his injuries.
That wasn't the only time that an injury unexpectedly kept him from performing with NKOTB — supposedly, at least. In 1994, Deseret News reported that Knight wouldn't be joining the other four members on a 27-city nightclub tour due to a back injury he'd sustained when he was thrown from a horse; Knight wound up quitting the group shortly after, leading to speculation about the extent of his injury, or whether he'd even been injured at all.
He's had a long feud with a conservation organization
Jonathan Knight's real-life farmhouse became the center of controversy when his property attracted the attention of the state's Trustees of Reservations. The organization has the right to govern what can and can't be done on his property — and determined during an inspection that the barn he'd converted to a home was supposed to remain a barn after renovation. Due to restrictions placed upon the land back in 1976, the structure was to remain devoted to agricultural activities.
The organization sued, giving Knight the option of either transforming the home back into a barn, or bulldozing it to the ground. "I just hope people see the ludicrousness of this," Knight said in a 2022 interview with Boston Magazine, which documented his years-long legal battle with the Trustees of Reservations.
As Knight revealed, he had no intention of backing down. "If I didn't have the money to fight them, I would probably cave," he told the magazine. "But I will keep fighting."
He launched a Farmhouse Fixer spinoff series
There's no question that "Farmhouse Fixer" has been a hit for HGTV, with the second season delivering monster ratings. Success, as they say, breeds success, and in 2024, HGTV unveiled a spinoff series, "Farmhouse Fixer: Camp Revamp." According to HGTV's press release, the four-episode limited series chronicles Knight's efforts to completely overhaul an abandoned 12-acre campground resort.
"I'm taking a huge risk to pursue a dream I've been chasing," said Knight in that press release, commenting on taking on such an ambitious project.
Interviewed by People, he explained his motivation for the mammoth undertaking, which involved renovating 10 cabins in addition to a larger structure that serves as the property's primary house. "I've always wanted to own a place where people could stay, like a bed and breakfast or a boutique hotel," he said. "I fell in love when I saw it and jumped at the chance to make that dream a reality. We definitely took on a lot with this one, but it was just a great opportunity and I knew I had to do it." Meanwhile, members of Knight's family also chipped in to lend a hand. "My family was all involved — my brother, my sisters, my husband, my mom — so there's a lot of family shenanigans," he added.