"Design Star 3": More Design – Still Gay

The show filmed for a month in Nashville, and while it's still in production, the contestants are all home. (Even the eliminated designers have to stay isolated from their normal lives until filming is ending, to avoid hints of the outcome.) Was it worth the stress and strain on their personal lives?

"I had the best experience," said Michael. "What 23-year-old do you know that gets to go through this? I mean really. I don’t know any 23-year-olds who – you know – this is huge."

I asked if Michael had been inspired by Christian Siriano, the 18-year-old out gay wunderkind who dominated the last season of Bravo's Project Runway.

"I love me some Christian Siriano!" he said, his tone of voice indicating that perhaps that sentence should have had six exclamation points instead of just the one. "He's not the usual kind of guy I'm into at all, but if you can get me on a date with Christian Siriano…"

I assured him that my powers of matchmaking weren't quite up to that, and that the last time I'd interviewed Christian, he already had a boyfriend. Stribling confided that he'd had one, too… until three days earlier, when as all good things must, their relationship had come to an end.

Which isn't to say that Michael lives alone. He shares his life with a Shih Tzu named after Andrew Lloyd Webber. "Is that not sad?" he asked me, laughing. "He's so sweet, though."

Locke, on the other hand, lives with his partner, Heath, in Los Angeles, who he mentioned frequently during the interview. They've been together around a year, living together for the last six months.

"If I hadn’t had him when I left to do the show, I don’t know what I would have done," Matt said. "It was so great to have somebody back home kind of watching over things. Cause they keep us completely cut off from our lives. And you just kind of have to plan ahead, but he was there to make sure it all worked out."

In its first season, Design Star carved out a competition reality TV niche for itself with a laser-like focus on design instead of backstage drama. Last season's competition lost that focus, and fans noticed. Rumors flew during the off-season that the producers had heard the concerns and planned to shift back towards the design end of the spectrum, but it's hard to say from watching the first episode if that really happened.

"I feel like there was enough backlash or fan comments about what happened last season that this season they decided this is going to be more about design," said Matt. "We’re going to put these designers through the ringer to figure out who really can cut it and they also picked all adult, professional designers. Everyone that’s on the show this year has a business doing this; it’s not kind of like a little, oh I think I’d like to try this out.”

That doesn't mean there aren't personality conflicts and even some backstage drama. "I think when you put nine type A, go-getter, strong-opinioned adults in a communal living situation where we work from sun up to sun down with no break, you’re going to get that," he said.

Interviewers always research their subjects in advance, but Matt had done some homework of his own, too. "I did read your blog," he said, referring to my recaps of Design Star's second season, "and I think you probably are voicing the opinion of a lot of viewers, which is: I’m not really interested in this contrived personal drama. But I can tell you as a contestant that they really don’t contrive that. There is drama, and there are tears, and there are some hurt feelings and some bruised egos, but it’s just us doing it with each other."

Matt admitted some of the tears are his. "I cry," he said. "I save it up for one episode, but I cry."

Michael, who studied interior design at Wade College, agreed that the focus was more on design and less on drama in the third season than in the second. "That's what America wanted," he said. "If you read the blogs from last year, America wanted educated interior designers. When you have some formal education, you really know what you can do. You know what’s going to work, you know how it’s going to work, and you know what direction it’s going to go. You know how to do it."

I pointed out that Kim Myles (Myles of Style), last year's winner, was a hairdresser, and didn't have a background in design.

"No," he said, "But doing hair is an art in itself."

I asked Michael if he had any last words for his gay fans, and while he at first laughed and said, "Yes. Date me," he got serious right after. He told me he'd already heard from some young gay men who had been inspired to come out by seeing contestants on Design Star, and he'd related it to the struggle he had with his own family around being out.

"What I want to say to my gay fans is if you’re coming out and you just want to email somebody and share stories, or if you want somebody to help you with anything, then I’m here," he said. "We may not all get along, but at the end of the day we’re family, and there’s a lot of gay family out there who doesn’t have a family support of their own, so we have to support each other."

The third season of Design Star airs Sundays, at 9 PM ET/PT on HGTV. For more information, visit HGTV's Design Star website.