Christopher Lowell: Discovery's ace home maven
By GAIL PENNINGTON, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
These days, any time is a great time to be Christopher Lowell. Viewers drawn to his colorful TV persona continue to boost ratings for his self-titled home-decorating show on cable's Discovery channel, and wherever Lowell goes he stands a chance of being mobbed by adoring fans.
These days, any time is a great time to be Christopher Lowell. Viewers drawn to his colorful TV persona continue to boost ratings for his self-titled home-decorating show on cable's Discovery channel, and wherever Lowell goes he stands a chance of being mobbed by adoring fans. SHNS photo courtesy Discovery Channel
Still, one recent stretch was outstanding even by Lowell standards. On May 6, a dead-on "Saturday Night Live" spoof elevated him to official pop-culture icon status. Then, two weeks later, he won a Daytime Emmy as best host of a service program, defeating not just legends Julia Child and Jacques Pepin but also arch-rival Martha Stewart.
Lowell isn't humble about his success. Discussing the budding Christopher Lowell empire, he boldly predicts, "We'll be where Martha is — no, we'll be stronger than she is — a year from now."
But off screen and away from crowds, Lowell shrinks down from the larger-than-life "Christopher Lowell character," as he often refers to his TV self. Quiet and thoughtful, he sometimes appears fragile and, for a split-second, even insecure.
In a recent appearance in St. Louis, Mo., Lowell turned on the full force of his personality for television cameras and in one-on-one encounters with fans such as 82-year-old Estelle Daly, who said, "He's great. I'd like to get him in my kitchen."
Then, wearing a black Nehru-style jacket buttoned close to the neck, he sat down for a private interview, sipping from a bottle of water, speaking quietly but nervously swinging his foot throughout.
"I was blessed with a lot of talent, but I never knew where to direct it," Lowell says. "I was an actor, and my work was well-received, but it felt self-indulgent. What I really wanted to do was take my talent and make a difference."
These days, any time is a great time to be Christopher Lowell. Viewers drawn to his colorful TV persona continue to boost ratings for his self-titled home-decorating show on cable's Discovery channel, and wherever Lowell goes he stands a chance of being mobbed by adoring fans. SHNS photo courtesy Discovery Channel
He's done that, he believes, with "The Christopher Lowell Show," a TV series whose rah-rah motto is, "You can do it."
Fans, he says, "don't ask me for decorating tips. They tell me my show has changed their lives. They tell me, you gave me self-esteem. By transforming their homes, now they have the courage to transform themselves."
Lowell, 44, knows something about transformations, having reinvented himself on a large scale. He doesn't like to talk about his personal life ("It's so boring") and says even a forthcoming autobiography won't be heavy on details.
But by most accounts, he was born Richard Madden and once thought he might become a preacher, like his father, who was also an inveterate handyman.
Instead, he had careers, many of them simultaneous, as an artist, an actor, a musician and a set designer. He owned a gift shop, taught design workshops and was a successful advertising creative director.
"Lowell" is his middle name; "Christopher" comes from his childhood hero, Christopher Robin of the Winnie-the-Pooh books. For a while, Richard Madden and Christopher Lowell existed side by side, with Madden the businessman and Lowell the creative type. Now, however, he's Christopher even to his family.
Lowell was living in Ohio, directing a major image campaign for Matrix hair products, when he pitched an interior-design show to Discovery in 1995, using his own money to tape a pilot episode.
"They didn't even finish watching it before they bought it," he recalls.
Still, test audiences had varied reactions: "The most conservative communities loved us. The most liberal — they were tough."
In particular, San Francisco, with its large and vocal homosexual community, objected to Lowell as a stereotype of a gay decorator. (His take: He's bubbly, energetic and "androgynous.")
Once on the air, though, the show, then a half-hour called "Interior Motives," was an immediate hit. Within six weeks, it became Discovery's top-rated daytime show. Today, "The Christopher Lowell Show," airing twice each weekday, averages a million viewers daily.
Lowell believes viewers took to him quickly because "I don't look like anyone else on TV. I'm bald, and I have a beard — how often do you see that? And I think they liked my theatrics — my devilish sense of fun."
That sense of fun includes dressing up in costumes, as an effete archaeologist, an ear of corn or Scarlett O'Hara, for comedy bits that open each show. Some critics have labeled his humor cornball, but that doesn't stop Lowell from liberally inserting terrible puns and worse jokes into the midst of decorating projects. Lowell calls this lightening up the atmosphere of fear that can hold would-be remodelers back. "Where there is fear, there's no creativity," he says.
His projects, too, are heavy on fun. In a recent show, he built a four-poster bed entirely of PVC plumbing pipe. Another was devoted entirely to things you can make with peel-and-stick floor tiles. Another time, he created a cushion for a window seat by covering a foam pad with fabric duct-taped in place.
Lowell's love of plywood and staple guns has led some to wonder whether he's building useful objects or merely theatrical sets. "Yes, these things are usable," he insists. "They are for people on a budget and will give them a home to be proud of until they can afford something better."
Asked about Martha Stewart, Lowell first says, "We're not really rivals. We're doing two completely different things, and a lot of what she does isn't appropriate for my audience. I think there's room for everyone."
Encouraged, though, he'll gently slam Stewart for projects that are unrealistic and too expensive for most viewers even to contemplate. "I mean, she did a segment on bee-keeping, and that costs something like $10,000 even to start."
Lowell goes back into production in September for the sixth season of "The Christopher Lowell Show." Working from an eight-room house at Universal Studios in Los Angeles — "We're right between the 'Psycho' house and the 'Leave It to Beaver' house; what does that say?" — it's a big change from the early days, when projects were done "on a budget of $2 a show, just about."
Currently, the hour-long series has a crew of 31, with 10 people working year-round. Between 63 and 65 episodes per season are taped and repeated ad infinitum.
When he's not on the set, taping two episodes a day, Lowell is hard at work building the empire that will challenge Martha.
First there's a book, "Christopher Lowell's Seven Layers of Design," due from Random House/Discovery Books in September. It's the first of three books Lowell will write, with another decorating guide and the aforementioned autobiography to follow.
Then, if all goes well, will come a half-hour syndicated show, which could debut as early as January if buyers give the go-ahead. The show would focus on "weightier matters" than the cable hour, including self-esteem as well as fashion and beauty. "You've decorated your house, now decorate yourself," Lowell explains.
A magazine, Cool Stuff, will launch next spring and "basically be the television show in print form." Each issue will include directions for two room redos.
And then there's the ongoing plan to open home decorating boutiques in Burlington Coat Factory stores nationwide. The boutiques, which will focus in the beginning on paint, bed-and-bath items and wall art, will group "everything you need to make over a room in one spot," says Lowell, who sees the idea as a remedy to "retailers who really don't know who their customer is and how she likes to shop."
A full Christopher Lowell line of paint, 120 colors labeled so "you can't go wrong," will be available both online and in stores. Do-it-yourself kits for his on-air projects will be sold by mail and the Internet. Lowell plans to emulate Tupperware with in-home decorating parties, and will offer — and be pictured on — a national credit card. And he'll go public with as many as three stock offerings next year.
All the for-sale items have one thing in common: "They must be fabulous without my name on them. And they will be."
So, is he having fun yet?
Turning serious, Lowell thinks about the question.
"It's an amazing amount of work. It was such a crap shoot — I had no idea the Christopher Lowell character would take off the way it is. And now everything's developing so fast. Am I having a good time? Ask me in a year." |
