- Christina Haack told Tarek El Moussa about her split from Josh Hall in the premiere of “The Flip Off.”
- In an interview with BI, Haack said watching the conversation back still makes her emotional.
- She also said she didn’t expect to talk to El Moussa about their past.
HGTV’s “The Flip Off” premiered on Wednesday, bringing Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa back together on screen.
Tarek El Moussa and his wife, Heather Rae El Moussa, were supposed to compete against Haack and her husband, Josh Hall, in a house-flipping competition on the series. However, in July 2024, Haack and Hall abruptly split after filming had already begun.
Hall appeared in the first half of the premiere but vanished after they separated off-screen. Haack shared the news of their breakup with her first ex-husband in a tearful conversation documented on “The Flip Off,” during which she decided to finish the competition alone.
Six months later, Haack told Business Insider she still gets emotional watching the conversation back.
Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack had an emotional conversation on ‘The Flip Off’
In the first episode, El Moussa met Haack at her home, where she told him that her relationship with Hall ended after a “blowup fight over nothing.”
“Things with Josh have been bad for a long time. Not just kinda bad, like bad,” she told El Moussa. “The kids literally asked me to leave. They told me he’s not nice to me.”
Haack went on to say that El Moussa made Hall “very insecure” and that Hall called her cocky. She also teared up as she told El Moussa that she feels like she’s in “a tornado all the time” and doesn’t know how to escape it.
“Everything since, like, 2016 has been so hard and so horrible,” she said through tears, referring to the year she and El Moussa separated.
Haack also said in an interview with producers that she was the first person in her family to get divorced and thought it was “safer to be back in a relationship.”
“But, ultimately, that was not safe either,” she said.
Haack also told El Moussa how much it “really, really, really hurt” her not to get to be “a full-time mom” because of their divorce. The exes share Taylor, 14, and Brayden, 9, and Haack has a 5-year-old son, Hudson, from her marriage to Ant Anstead.
El Moussa told producers he knows he wasn’t the best husband or father during his marriage to Haack after facing health struggles and addiction.
“It was the day that I met Heather that really got me back on track,” he said. They got married in 2021 and share a son, Tristan, who turns 2 on Friday.
Watching the conversation back still makes Haack emotional
When she spoke to BI before the premiere of “The Flip Off,” Haack said rewatching her conversation with El Moussa still made her “emotional.”
“I’m not a crier by any means, but it still makes me emotional,” Haack said. “I just look back to that time and that feels like so long ago, but I was just very stressed, very overwhelmed. And when I watch it, I just honestly feel for me in that situation.”
“It still makes me emotional, and I feel so much better now,” she added. “I’m in such a better spot. I’ve learned so many lessons.”
Heather Rae El Moussa chimed in to say the conversation was also healing for the Haack and El Moussa’s relationship.
“I think it’s important, too, for their relationship to talk about certain things that maybe they hadn’t talked about in the past, but they just did it now in front of the world,” she said.
Although the former “Flip or Flop” stars are now on good terms, Haack and El Moussa’s relationship was strained in 2021 and 2022.
People reported in July 2021 that El Moussa yelled at Haack on set, calling her “a washed-up loser.” When “Flip or Flop” ended in March 2022, the outlet reported that the show had become “too intimate” for the exes to film together.
Haack was surprised she opened up to El Moussa about their past
Haack said she didn’t anticipate talking to her ex-husband about their past when they discussed her divorce from Hall on “The Flip Off.”
“Going into that scene, I didn’t mean for that — that wasn’t set up,” she told BI. “No one said, ‘Hey, talk about these things.'”
“It was supposed to be, ‘Just tell Tarek that you and Josh broke up,’ but I was so emotional in general over what I’ve been dealing with for the past year,” Haack said, adding that it turned into a “therapy session.”
“I think it’s good to show the world that we’re not just house flippers,” El Moussa told BI about the conversation. “You know, we’re humans, and we have feelings and emotions and lives, and we’re no different than everyone else.”
New episodes of “The Flip Off” will air on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on HGTV and be available for streaming on Max the next day.
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