Jennylee Berns and Neils Hoven, partners on The CW's Beauty and the Geek, were eliminated last night after making it down to the final three teams.  One of the most talked about and well-liked teams on this season of Beauty and the Geek, Jennylee and Neils both showed incredible growth as people during the course of the show, especially in their relationship as partners.  Jennylee will likely be best known for her "showmance" with "geek" Nate.  Their relationship became increasingly romantic as the season went on, resulting in many touching moments during the show.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Neils and Jennylee together this morning here at BuddyTV.  The two talked about their relationship as partners, Jennylee's attraction to Nate, and how they dealt with the oft-frustrating Cecille.


Can you each tell us how you got involved with Beauty and the Geek? Was it something you auditioned for? Had you heard of it before?

Jennylee:  I live in LA and when they called me to do an audition for Beauty and the Geek, I had never heard of it and I was like, “What’s that?” And I couldn’t make the audition so I was like “Oh no, thanks but sorry I can’t make it.”  That was that.  And then they called me back a week later and asked if I could come in again and I was like, “Okay, yeah.”  And I went in with a ponytail up and everything after a day of work and they put me on camera, made put my hair down and I just moved on to the second round of casting and then the third. It’s definitely, the casting, it’s a grueling process. And I passed the psych test, so I was in!

Neils: It was a killer psych test.  But for me, I’d already gotten interested in self-improvement and really trying to get a handle on my social life, which was really the one part of my life that I didn’t feel like I had any control over.  So, I was already actively working on that.  I had a friend Onkar, who was also in my Department at UC Berkeley, Onkar from Season Two.  There’s something about the electrical engineering department at Berkeley that the producers really like.  So, I was at a party at his house and ran into some members of the casting team and got them interested and was telling them about the work that I’ve been doing and how I was interested in improving myself and they were like, “Oh, that’s really cool, you should come in for an interview.”  And evidently I nailed the interview, because that was that.


What was each of your first initial, internal reactions to getting each other as partners?

Neils: Jennyleelee’s really tall.

Jennylee: Gosh, I don’t know. Well, right off the bat when he came out and we met each other, he started talking in another language about electrical engineering and I couldn’t even remember, for the first few days I was like, “What’s that you do again, what is your major? Electrical something?” They show that clip all the time, he’s going on talking about it and I’d close my eyes, open one eye and be like, “Is he still there talking about this?” We did have hard times, but we’re both really good and we work it out and I think we were good teammates.

Neils: Yeah, absolutely.


In terms of expectations going into the show, did either of you have any personal goals? Anything you wanted to better yourself at or did you just go in looking to have a good time?

Neils: Yeah, I was looking for more comfort in social situations.  Especially around new people, around attractive women, around the sort of  people that I wouldn’t normally interact with in my everyday life.  And I’m kind of surprised about the amount of people who came into the show with the attitude, “I’m good enough as I am, I don’t need to change”. I came in, and I told the girls, “Anything you can tell me to change, I’ll work on.” And they gave me a big long list, so it was much appreciated.

Jennylee: He was pretty receptive to change which was cool because anything anyone wants to know, I’ll totally tell them.  Pretty much anything, I’m almost too honest at times. 

Neils: They told me I need to wear my pants lower, that was really important. 

Jennylee: I had never seen the show, so I had no idea what it was all about, and I kind of went into it not knowing what to expect or what to hope for.  Because I didn’t know, and I kept being like, “Have you guys seen the show? Has anybody seen the show?”


On last night's show you guys got to see video of yourself from when you entered the house.  How shocking were you expecting those videos to be?  When you saw them you all seemed taken aback at how much you’d changed.  Had you guys thought you were going change that much?

Jennylee: Well, they didn’t show the entire clip of that video.  I remember watching that and being so hot in the face.  Because I had never seen myself, I hadn’t seen myself on television there in the house, you know.  So it was like, “Oh wow, that’s me like talking like an airhead. Huh.”

Neils: It’s difficult because you're really beginning to develop this new sense of who you are and find aspects of your personality that weren’t there before.  Then you get thrown back to where you were a couple weeks before you put in all that time and all that effort and all that progress and it’s kind of a shock to the system. 


All right, sorry Neils, but we’re going to do a couple Jennyleelee and Nate questions now.  Your guy's romance was a pretty big story during the season.  Was there anything that got cut out from what we saw on TV that you’d like to explain? Anything that viewers didn’t get to see that you wish they had?

Jennylee; I think it was done very nicely.  Our relationship was really intense, you know, while we were living at the house together.  We saw each other first thing in the morning and last thing at night.  And it was kind of a secretive thing.  We would stay up after everybody went to sleep and talk and stuff and we got closer.  And then that night that they show us kissing for the first time, we really didn’t think there was a camera there at all. We really thought we had them fooled.  We were like, “Okay, we’re going to sit here on the bottom of the stairs, that camera can’t see us and that camera can’t see us.”  But I guess there’s hidden cameras everywhere and if you could see the angle, there must have been somebody crouched outside in the bushes with a hand-held.  And I’m looking around upstairs like, “Is anybody watching us right now?” Iit was a really good time.  I mean, I’m not sure how it looked last night, we were, like, in bed together.  I was like, “What does it look like? What does it look like we were doing?” Because we weren’t doing anything, it was a pretty sweet, innocent thing.


Have you guys kept any sort of relationship going since the show ended?  Has it progressed at all?

Jennylee: The thing with reality television is that you’re supposed to lay low until the show comes out and we did shoot it six months ago, so we do talk on the phone now.  We are allowed to.  But a lot of time has gone by, and it was really hard.  It was like all of our lives, that month, everybody that we spent time with and especially each other, and then you know, it was over.  It was like a cut off. It was kind of shock, you know?  And even looking back, we were talking when we watched it on television.  I’m like, “Oh my god it’s really gone by fast.”  We miss each other like crazy and we talk on the phone a lot, but, you know, he’s at Harvard.


For both of you guys, how frustrating was it being on a show like Beauty and the Geek, where people tend to change for the better, with someone like Cecille who was so set in her ways and could be so frustrating?

Neils: It was really difficult because I think a lot of people did come on the show to grow.  And even those who didn’t were at least in the business of tolerating change.  And Cecille was the only one who really seemed to feel that change was bad, something that should be avoided.  I think it put a damper on the experience for the rest of us, and I think, especially towards the end you start to see some of the bickering and bitterness and resentment.

Jennylee:  I don’t know, Cecille is a character.  She definitely, I don’t know, I kind of see right through her.  You know she acts like that’s how she wants to be and that she’s happy in her own ways, but if you look at her for just a few more seconds then you know that that’s not so.  She’s just as insecure as the rest of us, if not more.


Can you guys talk about your future plans? What you’re up to right now, what you’re going to be up to after the show finishes airing?

Jennylee: All kinds of fun stuff.  You know, modeling and acting is what I’ve always done and what I plan on still doing now.  And I plan to work at UFC in the future and go in the direction of film.  We’re going to have an awesome wrap party in Vegas at Tao and you know we’d love for all of your readers or viewers to join us! On the 21st at Tao in Las Vegas.

Neils: I’m now working as a dating coach for a company in San Francisco.  I teach guys social skills and relationship skills.  And, yeah, nobody saw that coming.  And I recently got back from a workshop in Australia and I’ll be headed to Europe in the next month and I’m really excited about that.  It’s the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.