The new Joe Millionaires! Kurt Sowers and Steven McBee are both searching for love in Fox’s reboot of their 2003 show, this time titled Joe Millionaire: For Richer or Poorer.
The new series, kicking off on Thursday, January 6, will feature 20 women looking for The One in either Kurt, 32, or Steven, 27. The twist is that one of the men is rich while the other is not.
“The original show definitely misled the women. It was more of a lie to these women. And in this remake, there’s no lie being told whatsoever,” Steven told Us Weekly exclusively about the new show versus the original. “The women know exactly what’s going on. They know one of us is wealthier than the other, they just don’t know which is which — which, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn’t matter.”
While the journey was one they’ll both remember forever, it wasn’t an always easy, Kurt noted to Us — and fans may see some tears.
“Are we emotional guys? You just wait,” Kurt shared. “I think both of us probably deal with stress very well with business and life aspects, but with relationships, it’s very difficult, especially in this setting. On this show, it was very difficult to eliminate these women. It was very difficult to say goodbye to them. Sometimes you felt like you weren’t even giving them a fair shot, even just because of the flow and the process. So it was extremely difficult [and] actually way more taxing on both of us than I think either of us expected.”
Although the duo didn’t share whether they found love on the show, they did connect with one another.
“I’m from a big family, I’m used to sharing,” Kurt said of dating alongside Steven. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
Steven, for his part, added, “We kind of made fun of it on the show. We called them the cross-pollinators, the women that were interested in both of us. We were interested in them as well. So, it led to some interesting moments, a little bit of heated competition.”
Of course, no one knows which of the men has more than $10 million in their bank account and which does not — something that made finding love a bit tougher for the men to figure out, since some women aren’t there for the right reasons.
Luckily, they had each other to lean on. “I think Kurt and I had a really similar perspective in how we viewed the eliminations and who we thought was there for the right reasons and who wasn’t,” Steven said. “It made it a lot easier having Kurt there to bounce those ideas and thoughts off of.”
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