Tori & Dean's Guncles Talk New Parenthood and Helping Others Adopt

Scout Masterson, Tori Spelling (holding newborn Simone) and Bill Horn

If you’re a regular viewer of the Oxygen series Tori and Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood, you’re familiar with the ever-growing family of Tori and her husband, Dean McDermott (yes, as was revealed on the show’s season premiere last week, Tori is pregnant with their third child). Their circle of friends include celebrities like Denise Richards and Tori’s no-longer-estranged mother, Candy Spelling. But the ancillary characters that seem to have garnered the most attention are "the gay uncles" or, as they’re better known, The Guncles.

Over the past few seasons of the hit reality series, we’ve seen Scout Masterson and Bill Horn have their commitment ceremony planned by Tori, we've also shared in theiir adventures navigating the adoption process. New this season, the addition of their daughter, Simone. After the adoption experience, the couple launched an award-winning website, www.GunclesOnline.com, as well as a new endeavor called “Hold My Hand,” where the Guncles help (free of charge) other couples who are going through the adoption process.

AfterElton.com: Now that the new season of the show has started we finally get to meet Simone. Congratulations!?
Scout Masterson: We’re excited for everyone to experience that first episode with her, as well as the whole season, but for us it’s extra special. It’s kind of like a home movie and very fun to re-watch it.

AE: So much of your relationship has been seen on the show. The commitment ceremony, the adoption process and now seeing you both as parents.?
SM: I know! It’s been a lot of fun and we’re glad we can be mentors to young gay people in general. We have a lot of people who reach out to us on Facebook and Twitter and say ‘Because I do watch you guys, thanks, because now I can see it’s okay for me to want a family.’ We really do take all of that to heart so much.

AE: When you were first appearing on the show, were you nervous about how people would react??
SM: Actually, we thought we would get a lot of negative backlash for some reason. I don’t know why. We just sort of thought we may get some of that, but everyone honestly has been amazing.

Bill Horn: Years ago I [worked] at GLAAD in New York. I answered the phone in the mornings and listened to the voicemails so I’d listen to these nasty, hateful voicemails every morning. It was young kids who were drunk-dialing GLAAD. I expected we would get more of the negative, hateful Facebook [posts] or some from the story on People.com about the adoption, but we didn’t get those. We did get some reaction from people saying they felt it was better for a man or a woman [to raise children] but nothing hateful. It felt like more of a conversation.

SM: It’s great. We’re really excited. It’s our understanding that we’ll be the first real gay family on a reality show with a child.

Scout, photographer Adam Bouska and Bill during the Guncles' NoH8 shoot.

AE: For people that didn’t watch the first few seasons you were on the show, was having kids always a part of the plan??
SM: For me, if you’d asked me twelve or thirteen years ago I would’ve said ‘I’m not having kids.’ But when I met Bill he felt like family to me. And then Tori and Dean had Liam and Stella, and we became really close with the kids. It was just no question for me that we wanted to start our own family.

BH: When I was younger, I knew I definitely wanted to have kids, but when I first met Scout we had a lot of fun. We went to Europe and Mexico and Hawaii. For the first couple years of our relationship we were doing so much and going so many places, but as our relationship grew and when Liam and Stella were born and got older I had the same feeling that I wanted to have a family.

SM: And now he’s talking about a second already, and I’m like ‘You’re joking.’ He keeps bringing it up.