If “Home Town” stars Ben and Erin Napier are Laurel, Mississippi’s first family, Ben’s beard might be its favorite son. And those manly follicles are turning into teenagers this year.
Ben was last clean-shaven in the fall of 2006, he told TheWrap, back in his and Erin’s college dating days. It wasn’t a good look.
“It made me cry,” new mom Erin said during our wide-ranging interview ahead of their show’s Season 3 premiere. “Because he walked in the bathroom, and he was like, ‘I’m gonna shave it and I’ll come back out.’ And when he walked out I cried because he was like a stranger to me.”
“He had the beard when we met in 2004,” she said. “He shaved it the one time… and never again.”
That doesn’t mean growing it back out wasn’t without growing pains.
“It took me a long time– there are some pictures in our book that I’m so embarrassed by,” Ben said. “My beard’s like– I couldn’t figure out how to trim it, and in my mind, I was doing myself a favor by not letting anybody else trim it. And then finally my barber was just like, ‘Dude, let me take care of it.’”
And so he did.
“Since then I’m a handsome fella,” Ben beamed.
See his beautiful face (and some attractive house restoration too, we suppose) when Season 3 of “Home Town” premieres Monday, Jan. 14 at 9/8c on HGTV.