Photography provided by Sony Pictures Television and Jason Decrow
Nate Berkus lives one of those fabulous jet-set lives: a pied-à-terre in Milan with ex-model and designer boyfriend Brian Atwood, a stunning condo in Chicago where he runs an exclusive interior design firm and a Manhattan pad that is now home base more than ever.
But the thing about Nate Berkus is that he doesn’t come off as a jet-setter. There’s something about his boyish exuberance, his goofy grin that seems almost, well, Midwestern. Like those years of hanging out on Lake Minnetonka and hoofing it to class at Hopkins High haven’t completely faded. Maybe that’s what Oprah viewers have picked up on for the past nine years: a fancy interior designer who never got too big for his britches.
It’s that amiable connection that Berkus is really counting on now as he prepares to premiere The Nate Berkus Show on NBC this fall. He even went on a listening tour across the Midwest this spring to eat banana bread and drink coffee with the kind of women he hopes will be as firmly attached to his show as they have been to Oprah’s. “I feel a lot of anticipation, but I’m not nervous,” he told Artful Living. His schedule, though, is insane: meetings and shoots scheduled to the quarter-hour. Still, Berkus took time out to talk to Artful Living about his decorator mom, where to find the best antiques shopping in Minnesota and which celebrities are nuts about interior design.
So let’s talk about The Nate Berkus Show. What’s the formula going to be?
The show is going to be a hybrid. Celebrities will be a part of the show, but it will be more pops of celebrities, rather than celebrities coming on to promote their movie or their clothing line or whatever they have going on. It’s going to show sides of them that we haven’t seen before. For instance, Julianne Moore is booked on the show, and she’s super passionate about design. She’s going to share some of the principles that guide her when she’s decorating her homes for her family, for her children. It’s a side of Julianne Moore she’s never talked about publicly. Same with Jamie Lee Curtis, who is obsessed with home organization and has a million tips. Who would have thought?
Another segment we’re doing is called “Newsmakers,” and it’s going to be very fresh and topical. We have one very compelling story about a woman who lost her husband on the BP oil rig explosion. She gave birth to their second child a week after he died, and she came to us and said, “Nate, I really want you to help me figure out how to preserve his memory. My youngest is 2 weeks old, and he never knew his father. My oldest is just 2. I want to know how to keep his memory alive in our home.” So there is an interior design component, but it’s also connected to what’s happening in the world.
Will there be the kind of design makeovers you’re known for from your days as Oprah’s go-to designer?
There will be makeovers on the show, but I’m going to be primarily in studio. I’ll be bringing in various experts and sending them across the country to do makeovers and a lot of other things. One of the signature segments we’re doing is called “Nate’s Crate,” which is a crate that can end up anywhere, at any time, with anything in it. We’re having a lot of fun with that. So, for instance, I might send three viewers, in three different locations, a crate with the same stuff and have a competition about who can use the stuff the best and show the results on television. And break that down for people so that they can figure out ways to incorporate things in their own home.
We have another signature segment that is incredible because we’ve developed a brand-new technology that no one else has. It’s a computer program that’s like a video game and I can take a picture of someone’s room and completely redesign the space in real time. I can change the walls, the floors, the moldings. I can move all the furniture around and change it down to the upholstery detail.
So you’re going to be like CNN’s John King on election night, with that giant touch screen?
[laughs] Exactly, that’s like the best comparison! If the CNN election-night screen could change the trim on a pillow, that’s what it would be.
Is your mom, Minnesota decorator Nancy Golden, moving to New York to be closer to you?
No, unless you know something that I don’t! My mom is going to stay where she is, but she is going to be a contributor on the show. We’re going to send her out in the field to talk with other moms and go discount shopping, which is one of her specialties. People are going to be seeing a lot of my mom on the show.
You grew up mostly in Minnetonka. What were you like as a kid?
I was exactly like I am now. I spent a lot of time in Uptown; I spent a lot of time on Lake Minnetonka with my friends. I was at Lord Fletcher’s in the summer and busing tables at Sunsets in Wayzata. I loved growing up in Minnesota. I absolutely loved it.
How often do you come back?
My parents still have the house I grew up in, so my brother and sister and I come back for holidays. We have tons of cousins there, lots of extended family. I don’t come back as much as I should, though. It’s kind of sad.
How has the Twin Cities changed through your eyes?
I always thought the Twin Cities was a very cultural, interesting place, and now I think that’s just more apparent. I remember going to eat lunch with my mom at the cafeteria at the Walker Art Center and thinking it was the most sophisticated thing. Or when the Polo store opened on Nicollet Mall — I thought that was huge.
Is there anything you must do when you’re back in town?
I always have to have the wild rice soup from Lunds, which has like the highest fat content of anything on the planet, but I can’t resist it. And I always want to go hit the antique places in downtown Hopkins and around Uptown. I’ve found some great things in Minnesota that have ended up in homes in New York City and Los Angeles.
The stereotypical Minnesota aesthetic is kind of bad — cabin-chic or overdone traditional. Have you seen any sign that we’re progressing design-wise?
I’ve never done a house [in Minnesota], but I can say that my parents’ friends all have done beautiful jobs with their homes. Is it the same thing that’s going on in SoHo? No. But a lot of the big lines are at IMS [International Market Square], and the Twin Cities has some first-rate antiques shopping. I like Antiques Riverwalk [in the Warehouse District].
What’s your mom’s style like compared with yours?
We both love vintage, found objects and finding great deals. My mom likes a lot of bright colors, pattern on pattern, some florals and animal prints. Her style is very comfortable to me — it feels like home. But it’s not what I gravitate toward.
Do you have any future predictions for the field of interior design?
People have been interested in midcentury for a while now, but I predict a move back to traditional English antiques very soon. Right now, if you go to the flea market in Paris, you see all this French and Belgian industrial steel furniture, the kind of thing that’s being copied by Restoration Hardware. But the prices are out of control. I’ve seen dealers selling a perforated-metal chandelier for more than a bronze chandelier with crystal drops. That’s a huge disparity in quality. The prices of traditional English pieces are very, very fair right now.
With websites such as 1stdibs.com, people have more access to great product than they’ve ever had before. What does that do to interior design?
Interior design started out as this mysterious thing — no one really understood exactly what they were paying for. But with sites such as 1stdibs.com, people can find incredible things no matter where they live — great one-of-a-kind lamps and mirrors and so on. So we, as interior designers, are challenged to prove we’re worth it by coming up with the whole package. But that’s always been true. It was never about finding great stuff — the value has always been in the bringing it all together. That’s always been the real magic in interior design.
When you were a kid busing tables back at Sunsets in Wayzata, did you ever imagine that this would be your life?
No, I had no idea. When I went to college in Chicago, I studied sociology and French. It wasn’t until I got my first job at the auction house that I realized how much I loved the history of furniture and decorative arts.
What did your mom say about your decision to follow her into design?
She said, “I think you’ll be great, and that you have a real knack for it.” At the same time, in 1996, I was in a magazine for the first time. It was one page in Chicago Social, and there was this picture of me and a little bitty column of text. And my mom took that page to the framers and spent a fortune getting it elaborately framed. A few years ago, I asked my mom why she got that framed, and she said, “Well, I thought that was going to be the only time you would be in a magazine.”
