Retta Vulnerably Shares She Was ‘Very Scared’ to Host HGTV’s ‘Ugliest House in America’

After crowning a winner on the sixth season of HGTV’s hit show “Ugliest House in America” on June 30, 2025, comedian Retta has firmly established herself as part of the network’s most beloved stars. But when she was first approached to host the show, she gave them a hard no.

That’s what she told “Ugliest House” co-star Alison Victoria, who swoops in to give each season’s winner a $150,000 home makeover. She invited Retta onto her new “Pap Smear Podcast” for the July 1 episode, during which they talked about how reluctant the comedian was to sign on with HGTV.

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to host,'” Retta recalled. “I’m just, I’m scared of it, which is why I did it.”

Retta Says She Was Scared HGTV Would Want Her to ‘Make Fun’ of People on ‘Ugliest House in America’

Retta rose to fame as a stand-up comic and comedic actress on the hit NBC sitcom “Parks & Recreation,” which ran from 2009 to 2015, per IMDb. She also starred on “Girlfriends Guide to Divorce” and “Good Girls” before one of HGTV’s production partners, Big Fish, came calling in 2022.

Retta told Victoria on her podcast that she was “very scared” because she’d never hosted anything and she wasn’t sure about the premise of “Ugliest House in America.”

“I particularly didn’t feel comfortable because I was like, ‘I don’t want to be making fun of people. That’s not what I do. That’s not what I do in my standup’ … which I hadn’t done in forever anyway, but I was like, ‘I just don’t, that’s not my cup of gold.'”

“I didn’t like being made fun of and I have no interest in making fun of people now,” Retta continued. “If it’s just with my girlfriends, yeah, I’m going to talk trash about people, whatever. But that’s in a tight circle, you know? And it’s not to be heard by the person! But me standing in front of somebody to make fun of whatever? I was like, ‘Yeah that’s not for me.'”

The producers assured Retta that the homeowners were submitting their own “ugly” homes, begging for someone to fix them, to which she said, “That kind of made me feel a little bit better … but I’m certainly not looking to make them feel bad.”

After Being Scared for Season 1, Retta Got Nervous About Season 2

When the first season of “Ugliest House in America” was an instant hit and HGTV ordered a second season, Retta told Victoria, “Then I got nervous. Because I was like, I felt like (the success of) season one was a fluke.”

“When you go to make that second album,” Retta said, her eyes widening, “the second album is always a flop! And I was like, I got real nervous about it. The second season … logistically, they changed things to make it easier, even though I say the job is hard, it was easier than the first season, that much I know.”

Turns out Retta had nothing to worry about. “Ugliest House in America” has been so popular that it’s been continually renewed, with a seventh season in the works for 2026, per Deadline, and a second season of its spinoff — “Scariest House in America” — will return in October.