ET spoke with Drummond about quarantining with her kids, her weight loss journey and making her acting debut.
Ree Drummond is taking us inside The Pioneer Woman Mercantile. Ree showed ET's Lauren Zima around the shop in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where she talked all things Pioneer Woman, her weight loss journey and making her acting debut.
"Oh gosh, I just I feel such pride for Pawhuska," Ree gushed. "It's not really about me and my businesses as much as just the community, the amazing people that are here. We have amazing culture in Pawhuska. It's the headquarters of the Osage nation, there's oil and gas, there's just so much going on, and I'm glad that the businesses that I have opened here have attracted people from all over, who might never have come to Pawhuska.
From the sweet shop to a pizza parlor and the Pioneer Woman Boarding House, where you can stay while in the Oklahoma town, there's something for everyone at the Drummond compound.
"There are eight rooms, we each took four and so, four rooms represent Ladd and his aesthetic shall we say, and the other four represent mine, so it's hilarious to see the different personalities of each room," Ree said of the hotel suites designed by her and her husband, Ladd Drummond.
She continued, "His aesthetic is ranch, very durable, masculine finishes, leather, leather chairs. Mine is like, color explosions, bright green tile in the bathroom. One room is called the butterfly room, and it's just light blue and feminine, and we had fun, it was sort of like a little bit of a throwdown between who could design the best rooms."
As far as who won that throwdown, The Pioneer Woman is giving herself the crown, though she admits her husband isn't there to defend the title.
From working together to sharing a family, the couple has found a way to strike that perfect balance and sneak some quality time in there, too.
"Ladd and I, our love language, both of us, is quality time, so we do best when we're together more than we're apart," Ree shared. "When it comes to business and creative decisions, obviously I try to take the reins, and he's got a pretty good mind for business because of agriculture and ranching, but I mean, we have big butting head sessions where we completely disagree on things, but we always come together in the evening, kick off our shoes, stream a Netflix series and watch a movie, and that's sort of our time when we reset every evening."
Hitting the reset button was something Ree and her family were able to do a lot more of during the COVID-19 quarantine.
"I think there was such a universal experience with families when they first came together during quarantine, it was kind of like an extended Christmas break, and we played games and had poker nights, and then about three or four weeks in I'm like, 'I need my life back. I need my space,' and there was just so much bacon happening," she said.
You read that right, lots of bacon to feed the Drummond family over their extended stay at home.
"I would fry, you know, three or four pounds of bacon to feed us all, and because everyone in my household is over 6'2", so all the kids are really tall, but as soon as I'd clean up after one bacon episode, it seems like an hour later I'd hear sizzling from the kitchen and there would be more bacon happening, so it was great," Ree explained. "I think we all looked for the blessings in those weeks and months."
While her family might have been indulging in all the bacon she could manage to fry up, Ree on the other hand, is cutting back. The TV personality showed off her 50-pound weight loss earlier this year, crediting moderation and a manageable workout routine for her slimmed-down figure.
"I will never take a break from bacon. I love it," she admitted. "I just have one or two slices instead of seven or eight these days."
And if all of that wasn't keeping the entrepreneur busy enough, she can now add actress to her long list of titles, taking on her first acting role in Discovery+'s first original movie with Food Network, Candy Coated Christmas. The holiday movie sees Ree playing the owner of a bakery who befriends a young woman (Molly McCook), who returns to her mother’s hometown of Peppermint Hollow, and introduces her around town.
Ree told ET she was humbled by the experience of making the film, and called it "fun" to try something new.
"I was very touched, humbled, but then after I filmed the movie, I was just so appreciative because I had had this experience. At age 52, you kind of think, 'Well, the experiences I've had are kinda the experiences I'm going to have,' so it's really fun to try something new," she shared. "And after age 50, you become less concerned with embarrassing yourself or your children, so I sort of texted my kids before filming began on the first day and I said, 'Well, here I go, I hope I don't embarrass you.'"
The Drummond family watched the movie together recently and to Ree's surprise, they all got pretty into the holiday film.
"Ladd, the girls and I watched it a week or two ago and they stuck with it the whole movie," Ree revealed. "I thought they would maybe jump to my scenes and then turn on the football game, but they actually got invested. My son-in-law, Mauricio, too, it's his first Christmas movie he had ever watched, and he's in love. He loves the genre now."
The Pioneer Woman airs Saturdays at 10:00 a.m. on Food Network.
Tune in to tonight's episode of Entertainment Tonight for more of ET's interview with Ree and the Drummond family.
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