I think unscripted variety television may or may not get a bad rap now, but it is a fabulous environment. It is exactly who I am, and there's so much creativity there to express.

I was a child of a single mother/art teacher, and a father who was an architect, so I've always been around the combination of art, fine art, and architecture my entire life.

My approach is to 100 percent get the concept and the visual right. Get the client to love the space. Once they love the space, everything's possible.

I was a gay kid in high school in the late '90s, and I was in theater club. I was never a thespian. I was much more of a lighting guy or a backstage guy. Because I wanted to do something easy for the rest of my life, I thought, "Maybe I'll go and apply to colleges that specialize in theater set design. I'll do that. That's what I want to do". With theater, really, I'd be around the gays.

I was applying to the art school, but there was a checklist that said I had to do either production design or stage management or acting. I thought, "I don't want to be an actor, but I know production and stage management take acting classes" - this is literally my internal monologue. I was like, "Designers don't have to take acting classes. Cool. I'll check that box".

I think unscripted variety television may or may not get a bad rap now, but it is a fabulous environment. It is exactly who I am, and there's so much creativity there to express.

I don't even know of a room that doesn't have a flat-screen TV in it. These are things that just come in environments these days. And if you were going to walk into a space, where did you come from? Was there a bathroom around the corner? These are things that are authentic, and that's what makes successful television. It's not pre-produced garbage. It's believability and connection. The environment has to tell that story.