If you’re going to be stuck at home with someone, Jonathan Scott highly recommends it be Zooey Deschanel
Minus any coronavirus-related anxieties, their six-plus weeks holed up together have been, actually, kinda great, he recently admitted to People. “Let me tell you, I’ve been quarantined with the perfect person,” he noted. “Not only is Zooey an amazing cook, but she’s a musician, so our house is constantly filled with music.”
She’s also a worthy board game adversary, a capable hairdresser (“She cut and colored my hair and did an incredible job,” he said of his trick for covering up the silver streaks that had begun poking through) and a constant source of positivity.
“I’m blown away, it’s really been wonderful,” the HGTV personality said of the 24/7 together time. “I think we’re just taking it one day at a time here and it’s a crazy thing nobody would have predicted. But I’m glad that I’m with somebody that I love.”
He was speaking, specifically, about the stay-at-home situation, but his thoughts could have applied to their seven-month romance as a whole.
What started as an unexpected pairing between the affable reality TV contractor from Canada and the Los Angeles-bred Hollywood veteran has become, to borrow some verbiage from Scott’s world, the relationship equivalent of a move-in ready property, a potential forever home, if you will.
“I don’t think it was expected,” Jonathan allowed to People. “We come from very different worlds on the surface, but it’s uncanny how many things we have in common, from both having an equestrian background to our education, to everything.”
Chief among them, an earnestness that has them competing to be the more thoughtful half of the relationship, with the New Girl alum no doubt working to come up with an idea for the 42-year-old’s birthday that might top her ’80s themed 40th birthday bash this past January.
“I have never been in a relationship where my partner is as romantic as, if not more romantic than, I am,” Jonathan gushed to People. “I’m usually the one who carries the romantic load.”
Now, though, it’s as if his personal life has finally caught up to the professional one he built with twin Drew Scott, their Property Brothers empire consisting of a seemingly unending list of spin-offs, books, CDs, product lines and their newest venture, Reveal, a quarterly magazine. “Absolutely everybody has clicked with Zooey,” he raved. “She’s a very considerate person, and that’s what I’m looking for.”
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His initial criteria, as he outlined to the mag last summer, mere months before he connected with Zooey on the set of James Corden‘s popular “Carpool Karaoke” segment, included someone independent, confident and adventurous.
Someone he’s still excited to be around even after a thousand straight hours of together time? That’s just a bonus.
Currently living his best life, Jonathan is sleeping in ’til 8 or 9 a.m., hours after he used to report to set and enjoying more than the occasional nap. In between, he’s avoiding the quarantine 15 thanks to Zooey’s healthy home-cooked fare, putting together puzzles, battling for Scrabble dominance and following through on a vow to brush up on his piano skills, a goal made easier because his current live-in girlfriend plays “every instrument imaginable.”
His decision to bring the piano out to their living space has inspired more than a few jam sessions with the She & Him musician. “She was playing piano last night and we were singing along,” he said on Access Hollywood April 10, an at-home interview set up to promote he and Drew’s latest creation, Celebrity IOU. “There’s spontaneous music constantly in this place.” (Thankfully he had studied up on how to harmonize, having caught several performances during her recent seven-date holiday tour with duet partner M. Ward.)
And, naturally, virtual face-to-face time with his tight-knit brood is also a fixture, Drew and wife Linda Phan being the ringleaders when it comes to Zoom game nights with their parents, older brother JD Scott and his new bride Annalee.
By this point, of course, Zooey is practically part of the fam, having won everyone over during that initial gathering at JD and Annalee’s Halloween vows. Her first time meeting the parents, Jonathan was already confident Zooey was his forever match, their instant chemistry and easy communication invoking something that wasn’t quite there in his previous marriage to airline-crew scheduler Kelsy or three-year relationship with Jacinta Kuznetsov.
“I’ve definitely never felt like the way I feel with her with anyone in my life,” he said.
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That feeling was more or less immediate, he allowed, sharing that The Late Late Show With James Corden producers had their work cut out for them, editing out much of his cheesy flirting. It was just the more he learned about the actress he’d watched in Elf and 500 Days of Summer (“I had never seen her TV show,” he admitted), the more entranced he was.
“You know, we both went to college for a short period of time and then we decided to jump into the real world and actually just, you know, make a mark for ourselves,” said the Vancouver native, who tried his hand at illusion work before landing in the world of home design. “Strange things, too, like some of our music tastes—love ’70s—some of our food tastes. And so it’s just impressive when you have this many things in common.”
He gets that “opposites attract” is a well-worn phrase for a reason, he said, “But, damn, it’s so much easier when things are all aligned.”
Because he checks off a few of her boxes as well, a list that includes someone who works in a creative field and the type of guy who makes you wake up every day and want to commit.
Though he joked to People, “I’ve got perks! I can fix your plumbing, I can paint, I can design a space,” he’s every bit as thoughtful as advertised. Asked on Access the last romantic gesture he made, he revealed he may have cut a piece of pink tissue paper into a heart, wrote a quick something and slipped it into her purse: “Just a little note saying, you know, ‘You’re magic,’ and the rest I’ll leave to secrecy.”
And, perhaps most crucially for the mom of two, who shares daughter Elsie Otter, 4, and son Charlie Wolf, 2, with former husband Jacob Pechenik, he loooooves children. Prior to crossing paths with Zooey last September, he’d looked into the adoption process, eager to set forth on his plan to become a dad.
“I wanted to be with the right person,” he explained on the Tamron Hall Show in January. “Otherwise, I was very confident in being a single dad, to raise somebody because I think I would be a great dad.” He’d done the research, he continued, “and I was quite confident, you know, that that would be an option for me. And then, lo and behold, out of the blue we’re filming ‘Carpool Karaoke’.”
Suddenly he’s showing off his storytelling chops, he and Drew reading the children’s books they co-wrote, Builder Brothers: Big Plans and Builder Brothers: Better Together, on Facebook Live and gushing about a partner who, as he told Access Hollywood, “can literally do anything.”
Including change his entire life trajectory.
“Zooey and I have a very, very great communication style. Everything jives with us,” he told Tamron Hall. “It was exciting for me to realize that all of a sudden I’m on this new path with somebody who, I know she’s an amazing mother, she has two beautiful kids. And so I think, for me, all of a sudden I’m like, ‘I don’t have to go this road alone and this is somebody who I absolutely love and adore.'”
It’s a situation that’s become all too clear in recent weeks as they survive a test that might undo less solid pairs. And it’s not just a healthy perspective of how fortunate they are that’s getting them through.
“I was doing an interview yesterday, and someone said that the coronavirus and self-isolating is going to all of a sudden, you know, make you change your priorities and want to spend more time at home,” he said on Access Hollywood. “And I said, ‘I’ve got to be honest, it’s falling madly in love with somebody that does that. It has nothing to do with the COVID situation.'”
Though, if you are going to be homebound, doing it with a master chef and hair stylist who has the ability to best you in Scrabble and then lead a singalong of your favorite ’70s tunes is definitely the way to go.
“Being here and being together all the time has been fantastic,” he said during a recent Zoom appearance on The Talk. “If I had to pick anyone on the face of the planet to be isolated with, she’s the one.”
Sounds like a phrase that bears repeating.
