The couple tell ET why they 'held back' in season one and how they're keeping their relationship strong amid their newfound fame.
Bristol and Aubrey Marunde are done holding back.
The couple returns for another season of Flip or Flop Vegas on Thursday night, but this time, it’s no holds barred.
“[In season two], viewers are really going to see the designs,” Aubrey tells ET. “They’re really outside the box… over the top stuff, things that just are so different from anywhere else in the country. Vegas has no limits, so we’re just going to go all out.”
The Marundes were the first Flip or Flop spinoff to premiere last year, and couldn’t have set a better tone for the franchise, with Atlanta and Fort Worth following in 2017, and Nashville, Chicago and Paradise premiering in 2018. More than 15 million viewers watched Bristol and Aubrey during the first season of Flip or Flop Vegas, and now, they’re ready to give them a real taste of Las Vegas style.
“I feel like we held back a little bit in season one with the designs, just because we weren’t really sure how the viewers were going to take Vegas style,” Aubrey explains. “But now, we kind of have the green light to go ahead and do the designs we want to do, and that’s what we’re going to see in season two.”
The second season premiere takes Bristol and Aubrey back to the neighborhood where they first started flipping years ago, and while they insist they “have a lot more skills now than we did then,” not much has changed when it comes to their working relationship.
“Aubrey and I, we are very opposite in our personalities, and we understand that, so we bring our skill set to the table,” Bristol says of why they seem to jive so well on camera. “We both provide our gift to the business. Aubrey does her design, her real estate, and I do my construction, and then we come together. It’s about the job… We know we’re gifted in certain areas, and we allow ourselves to be us.”
“We have extremely defined roles in our business, and we try not to step over those boundaries. It’s been almost 10 years in the making, so we’re really good at that,” Aubrey adds.
And except for a few things here and there -- like a bold accent wall fans will see in the season two premiere -- Bristol and Aubrey don’t seem to have a lot of disagreements. As they tell ET, being together 24/7 as business partners, spouses, parents and now co-stars has only brought them “closer to each other.”
“A lot of our stuff is all intertwined. We bring the kids on the job site, and they help paint or sweep or clean, and it's really a family affair for us,” Aubrey shares of their young sons, Kale and Kane, before dishing on how she and Bristol keep their personal relationship at its strongest.
“We don't have a lot of time to go out and take a whole day to spend together and go to a dinner and do a movie, but our days are together all the time,” she reveals. “So we may have a 30 minute break, where we go and we grab coffee and we sit down and we just get to regroup, and that's so huge for us.”
“Our personal time together is strong, and fortunately, we're going through this together,” Bristol expresses. “It would be extremely difficult if only one of us had a TV show. I don't know how that would work, but we're in it together.”
It was actually Bristol, an MMA Fighter, who was approached to star on a renovation show, but according to Aubrey, after his experience on Ultimate Fighter, the pair said no. “Then we talked about it a little bit more, and I’m all about opportunity,” she recalls. “We’re entrepreneurs, and when an opportunity presents itself, we try to go forward with it.”
Now the couple are HGTV stars, telling ET that they “definitely” get recognized while out and about in Vegas (and approached in hardware stores, where Bristol loves helping out fans), but are still doing all the work on their flips themselves.
“We’re here day in and day out. I pick every single staging material that goes into the house, all the way down to the silverware on the table to the candles, and Bristol’s there doing all the installs,” Aubrey says, adding that sometimes they’re working until 1 o’clock in the morning to get the job done. “We’re just so hands on, that’s the way our business has always run, and we really want people to see that.”
“I want viewers to be entertained,” Bristol adds of what he hoopes fans take away from season two. “I want them to enjoy our show, and I want [them to have] a fun experience, but I also want them to learn something.”
Season two of Flip or Flop Vegas premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
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