Longtime HGTV stars and twin brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott grew up in Canada with all kinds of creative passions, from acting to performing magic shows to flipping houses.
But Jonathan’s latest passion — solving escape room challenges — has gone beyond being just a fun pastime, according to Drew. Along with his fiancée, actress Zooey Deschanel, Jonathan seeks out escape rooms everywhere he goes.
Jonathan Scott Says He & Zooey Deschanel Have Been to ‘Hundreds’ of Escape Rooms
GettyIn late April 2025, the popular “Property Brothers” stars told Wall Street Journal Magazine about their busy lives, including their favorite “indulgences.” For Drew, it’s “table tennis,” and for Jonathan, it’s solving timed puzzles or mysteries at venues with escape rooms, an increasingly popular activity that’s expected to grow into a $24 billion industry by 2030, per Research and Markets.
“We’ve done hundreds of them around the world,” Jonathan told WSJ Magazine. “I’m doing one this evening. Here in L.A. there’s one called the Escape Hotel, which has you check in like you’re checking into a hotel. They’ve got incredible build-outs, very realistic, all different themes.”
Drew chimed in, “Jonathan and Zooey are so hardcore, they have a shared Google doc with other supernerd escape roomers.”
But it comes in handy when he wants to join in, Drew admitted, adding, “They have all the rooms rated, the type of room, the level, the cost, so I don’t have to worry about figuring out what rooms to do.”
Jonathan, who started dating Zooey in 2019 and proposed in 2023, sweetly and proudly noted, “Since I’ve started seeing Zooey, I’ve never lost a room.”
Jonathan Scott Says Alcohol & Escape Rooms Are a Bad Mix for Zooey Deschanel
This is not a new passion for Jonathan and his longtime love, who’ve periodically shared their escape room adventures on social media. In November 2022, Deschanel told Extra that they’d learned she could not drink alcohol and solve escape room puzzles at the same time.
“We realized that she can’t drink anything hard before we do an escape room because it affects the ability to compute,” Scott told the outlet.
Deschanel agreed “I can’t drink anything before an escape room! I can’t have, like, a glass of wine. I can’t have…no, nothing.”
Although many escape rooms allow for large groups to participate, the couple told Extra in 2022 that they preferred to do them as a duo because it was hard to find people who matched their skill level.
“We’re very good,” Jonathan said. “We’re obsessed. We will go and just do them by ourselves, even when they’re like ‘you need at least 4 people,’ we’re like…don’t think so.”
“Yeah, we’re like, we got this,” Deschanel laughed, adding, “We’re kinda pros.”
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Drew Scott Says Brother Jonathan Scott’s Favorite Pastime Has Become a ‘Hardcore’ Obsession