Ann Kaplan Mulholland, ex-Toronto Real Housewife, brings cameras to England to buy, restore a castle
A core personality on the 2017 show The Real Housewives of Toronto, Dr. Ann Kaplan Mulholland brought a camera crew with her after purchasing a castle in England. In the new reality show Queen of the Castle (Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. ET on on CTV Life, CTV.ca, and the CTV app, and streaming next day on Crave), Kaplan Mulholland takes home renovation to another, more regal, level.
Interestingly, the original plan for Kaplan Mulholland and her husband, Dr. Stephen Mulholland, was never to purchase a castle, but rather, they were trying to purchase a flat in London. But when Kaplan Mulholland found that the cheapest contender was £8.4 million (now about $15.4 million), she thought to check how much a castle would cost.
That led the purchase of a £5.5 million Lympne Castle (now just over $10 million), with a new plan to renovate and restore the historic property in the small community.
In terms of going back in front of the camera, Kaplan Mulhollan was actually set to star in a different reality show before this castle opportunity came up.
"I was asked to do a TV show about entrepreneurship for women, and ... I said I'd rather do a show on entrepreneurship, because I just feel like it doesn't matter if you're male or female, ... it's the same lessons," Kaplan Mulholland told Yahoo Canada. "I think after years of being in finance and in a man's world, I just felt that I had to rise above that."
"I phoned up one of the producers and said, 'We're looking at this castle.' The offer was in. But the survey wasn't completed. And I said, 'I think it'd be interesting to do a show on a renovation of a castle.' ... And the show got picked up."
Right from the beginning of the series there are questions about how Kaplan Mulholland will integrate with the existing, close-knit British community. But despite some initial resistance, Kaplan Mulholland stressed that she's very much part of this town now.
"These families have lived there forever. There's a few last names in this whole county," Kaplan Mulholland said. "The house on the corner is actually called the corner house."
"I didn't think about it, because we bought the castle without thinking about the community. And then when I joined the church I got to know some people, and didn't realize the impact we had on the community. ... They've opened their arms to me, almost everyone has. ... The castle is a happy place. So the community comes in. We sit and play Scrabble. I go to their houses for dinner. I'm invited home for tea. ... I walk down the street and we give each other hugs. In church, we stop and hug each other. It's really quite lovely. And they're not talking to me about the castle or TV or anything, [it's] how's the kids and things like that. It's really nice, the way a community should be."
But that does't mean that Lympne Castle is void of Kaplan Mulholland's flair, including her desire to put olive trees on the property, which we see in the first episode.
"I had searched to make sure that the olive trees were good for that soil and for that area, and that they would survive," Kaplan Mulholland said. "It was a process, but we did not want to harm the trees."
"And prior to that, just [trying to] find five olive trees the same size and height. And these are old, mature olive trees. So it was quite a process."
Additionally, Kaplan Mulholland certainly brought her fun energy to the show. Kicking off the development of the bistro on the property, The Naughty Dog, with a sausage eating contest, which also created some surprises for the crew.
"The camera crew did not know that they were going to eat out of bowls, and the people that were in the competition did not know they were going to do that, so we brought out the chopped up sausages ... and we had one bowl of mustard and one of ketchup, and then they did not know that I was going to ask them to put their hands behind the back," Kaplan Mulholland explained. "So it was quite funny ... and the camera crew had to film it without knowing, without laughing, and just run with it."
For fans of The Real Housewives of Toronto, or home renovation show lovers, Kaplan Mulholland's series Queen of the Castle, puts her unique spin on both reality TV formats.
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