When Christina Haack (formerly Hall) signed on to do HGTV’s The Flip Off with her ex-husband Tarek El Moussa and his new wife, Heather Rae El Moussa, she told Yahoo Entertainment she did have one concern. But it had nothing to do with her relationship with her ex-husband, and everything to do with her husband at the time, Josh Hall.
“Not everyone is easy to film with,” Haack told Yahoo Entertainment ahead of Wednesday’s premiere. “Josh and I always had struggles filming together, and I was worried about that going into it. That was really my only concern, not even Heather and Tarek.”
The Flip Off began as a house-flipping competition show between the two couples. In Episode 1, the banter between the Halls and El Moussas was mostly playful, but it was clear there was real tension in one marriage.
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“Remember, you’re a Hall now. Don’t get confused in this competition about what your last name is,” Hall told Haack at one point in the premiere episode. “You’re rude.”
“I don’t ever talk,” Haack replied.
“The shit you say … I’m like: I wish you’d shut up already,” Hall said.
Haack told Yahoo she saw the episode early on, as she’s a producer on the series, she admitted, “It’s hard to watch.”
When pitching the show, Haack wasn’t worried about shooting with Tarek — “We’ve had our ups and downs, but filming was never our problem” — and filming with Heather “was so easy, so fun,” she said. It was a different feeling with Josh, her husband of nearly three years. The two previously filmed Christina in the Country together, which aired from 2023 to 2024 on HGTV and was shot during their marriage.
The two previously filmed Christina in the Country together before their divorce. “My concern was how Josh was going to react to being able to film with [Tarek and Heather], because they are naturals and they’re both very good on camera,” she explained. “So watching that back, I was like, ‘Oh gosh.’ It just makes me feel so stressed to watch it back, because that really was the dynamic at play, and it wasn’t fun.”
Haack and Hall split in July 2024, when The Flip Off was in production. The audience learns of the news during an emotional sit-down between Haack and Tarek in Wednesday’s episode.
“Josh and I officially split up,” she told her ex-husband. “We had a blowup over nothing. Truly, nothing.”
Haack told Tarek that Hall was “in my face,” putting his “middle fingers in my face.”
“Things with Josh have been bad for a long time. Not just kind of bad, like: bad. The kids literally asked me to leave. They told me he’s not nice to me,” she said, visibly emotional. Haack told Tarek he made Hall “very insecure.”
“Every time we would barely joke at soccer, or if I laughed at you, he would not speak to me for two to three days. I would get the silent treatment,” Haack said. “[Josh] doesn’t like me, he calls me cocky. Thinks I’m arrogant. When we both know I’m not cocky or arrogant, I just do work.”
The Flip Off airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on HGTV.
