INTERVIEW: MADISON HILDEBRAND

MAD ABOUT YOU

WE LOVE YOU, MADDY!!!!

His name is Madison Hildebrand and not only does he come across as decent and self-aware, he is, if not actually humble, at least not gratingly arrogant. He also is that rarity on television – an American male who defines himself not as gay or straight, but bisexual (or as he puts it “polyamorous”).

AfterElton.com recently had the chance to catch up with the man who is one of the most successful real estate agents in Southern California.

AfterElton.com: Tell us something about yourself, Madison. Where are you from? How big is your family? How old were you when you came out?
Madison Hildebrand: Well, I have lived all over the United States, coast to coast, including a little bit in the south of Texas and I have two brothers. I’m the middle child. Currently, my parents live back in Texas. My older brother lives here in Malibu with me, next door to me. And my little brother lives in Arizona. I came out not very long ago at all. I think it will be two years – holy cow! As of yesterday.

AE: Congratulations. I read that you don’t define yourself as a gay man, so I wanted to give you a chance to say how you would define your sexuality.
MH: On the preview [for Million Dollar Listing], the word I have chosen to use as far as sexuality goes is polyamorous, and I am really trying to stay away from being in one particular category one way or the other. I’m very open. I’m open-minded. I really connect to energies. I still have encounters with women and I’m interested in dating men and/or a woman. It doesn’t really matter to me. If the energy feels right and it’s safe and it’s comfortable, I’m open to that.

AE: Have you dated any men up to this point?
MH: Yes.

AE: At what age did you start to realize that your sexuality didn’t fall in line with what most other people experience?
MH: Well, there’s a lot of other personal parts that play a role in my past in discovering who I am all together, but also who I am sexually, so that question is a bit hard for me to answer, but I guess I started to understand that I had multi-feelings for both sexes in my teens, in my early teens.

AE: What prompted you to decide to come out as “polyamorous”? I have a friend who is polyamorous who describes it as not having one relationship with one person at a time, but having relationships with one, two or more people. Almost like a group relationship. Is that how you define it?
MH: No. That’s not how I define it. The reason why I don’t like the word bisexual is because most of the people who define that word have a derogatory definition that means the relationship is based strictly on sex. For whatever reason, that’s the mainstream definition or the energy behind the word. So for me polyamorous is just – yeah, poly is multi and amorous is love, but I’m not having love relationships with multiple partners at one time. It’s more being open to multiple situations and different touches and energies and being able to fall in love with that rather than having multiple relationships.

AE: I personally don’t see anything wrong with either one, but I just don’t want to put that word out there and then having people coming up to you and saying, wait a minute – you said this –
MH: Thank you.

AE: So for other people, maybe bisexual without the negative connotations might describe you?
MH: Yeah.

AE: So what prompted you to decide to be out about your sexuality? Did you feel that you had to come out to your parents or to your friends and family?
MH: For me it is being able to wake up every morning and just be who I was. I was struggling with a lot of other conflicts and I didn’t know if they were playing a role or not and finally I just realized this is the last thing I have not accepted and the last thing I have not shared with people and that has to be what is the dead weight in the morning when I wake up.

Whether you want to call it depression or not, I was never depressed, but it felt I was getting there because I don’t think I was living what I was feeling. And that’s a problem.

AE: I went through a period before I came out where I was so depressed I could hardly get out of bed at times because I knew I wasn’t being honest about who I was, so I think I understand what you’re talking about.
MH: That’s unfair to live that way and I owe it to myself and anyone owes it to themselves to respect themselves enough to just live and be comfortable in their own skin, because you only live one time and that’s all there is.

AE: So being on the show, do you see yourself as a role model then?
MH: It was a big decision for me to talk about my sexuality on television. Obviously I did not have to go into that stage or category and I didn’t have to bring any of that up, but I really looked at it as an opportunity, especially being a feature on Bravo – it’s a very open network – I just looked at it as an opportunity to, you know, keep pushing society to accept and to be comfortable with sexuality.

I think we’ve made huge progress as a country and in the world, but we I think still have a ways to go. So if I had the opportunity to send the message out to a huge audience, then I felt like it was worth opening up and being vulnerable to the public in order to be a positive role model.

AE: It’s obviously a show about real estate, but in the first episode we did see you talking about your sexuality and talking with your very attractive personal trainer. Are we going to see more of your journey and your exploration during the season, or is that going to be it?
MH: No, I think the arc of my role on the show is primarily [my] sexuality.




AE: So without giving anything away or getting you in trouble with Bravo, do you have anything you can talk about that would interest our readers?
MH: I think I can mention that you will see someone who I had a prior relationship with and I was trying to figure things out and just basically talking about sexuality and figuring out that we’re on different paths. It’s a road to discovery and there is definitely a very intimate relationship that plays out on this episode.

AE: What was the reaction of your friends and family when you came out?
MH: You only get to go through it once, but I think it was a pretty difficult reaction. My mother and my father had a really strong reaction, but immediately expressed that the love doesn’t change. My older brother was immediately accepting and did not care one way or the other and it was great in that regard. My little brother also had mixed feelings, but our relationship now is awesome.

AE: You mentioned in regards to your posing for Playgirl that your family is Mormon, correct?
MH: I was baptized Mormon and my mother was raised Mormon. I think they’ve all . . . I’m certainly not affiliated with any church anymore, but I would say my family, you know – I don’t want to speak for the rest of them, but . . . raised Mormon, yes.

AE: If you were baptized Mormon, I assume you were raised Mormon. Did that cause you conflict when you were younger? Did that raise issues that you had to sort through?
MH: Not really. No, I mean I think I’ve always been more of a free spirit spiritually rather than religiously, and so I don’t know if that had a subconscious impact on my coming out, but that’s not what I’m referring to now.

AE: How does your family feel about you suddenly being so high profile on a successful Bravo show? Is that something they’re excited about or is it intimidating?
MH: It’s not – we had a small warm up with season one and this season obviously has a lot more energy behind it. My Dad is just excited because there are a lot of opportunities to be – he sees it as a great opportunity. My mom is a little bit tense about so much being exposed on TV. She’s very private.

AE: I’m curious, were you surprised when Bravo revamped the show from season one to season two and you were the only agent kept on? Was that a surprise to you?
MH: I was excited. I don’t want to say I was surprised that nobody else came back. I was just excited I was coming back to the show.

AE: I have to say, to be perfectly frank, I’m incredibly put off by Josh and Chad, at least in that first episode. We don’t see you interact with them a lot in the first part. Do we get to see you interact with them more as the season continues? What do you think of the two of them?
MH: It’s set here in Malibu and LA so we do cross paths and I think that we’ll be on TV [together] more. I think both of them are just trying to do what they do in the fashion that they do it and whether I agree with their style of business or their personalities, I don’t really want to comment on.




AE: Will we learn more about how you feel about them as the season goes on?
MH: Maybe, yeah. I think so.

AE: It’s funny, you come across as a very reasonable and normal person and they just don’t. Are you concerned about being lumped together with them or do you just feel the show will stand on its own merits and you’re going to stand on your own merits?
MH: Yeah. I don’t have a lot of energy or time to worry. I’m going to be in the show with some other strong personalities and I may or may not get tarnished or looked at differently, but I’ve done it. I went with my instincts from the beginning and it obviously is going to off-put some people and it’s also going to attract some people and that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to happen and I am along for the ride.


AE: Given that you didn’t grow up in Southern California or Malibu, do you ever have trouble with what some people perceive as the superficiality of the business and what I would describe as – Chad is so image-obsessed and talking about his trophy girlfriend and his car. Do you have a hard time dealing with that kind of mindset in Los Angeles or are you comfortable with that?
MH: I think when I first got our here, it was tiring – nine years ago, but now there’re such awesome people in this city also and I really found a great group and great clients. Yes, it comes out at times here and there, but for the most part I’m really surrounded by grounded people that are completely comfortable with their image and have other things to talk about than the shallow seasonal themes of looks and life.

AE: Would you like to do more television?
MH: Well, I don’t know. Whether it’s television or whether it’s just more investing or starting another company. I have another company that I haven’t put out at all yet. My book just came out. So I’m always doing something. I don’t keep [still] very long. I have a problem doing that.

AE: Anything else you’d like people to know?
MH: I get a lot of emails and inquiries from my page on Facebook and from my business email and they’re pretty much the same questions. How did you do it? Can you give me advice? Etc. etc. And I wrote a book so that that person who needs to reach out, can reach out. It’s called Activate YOUR Passion, Create YOUR Career.

MH cont.: You can buy it online at Amazon or on my website, TheMalibuLife.com. And I wrote that after the first season because I was inundated with emails from young people, and it’s all really positive and I’m really excited about it and I love that people contact me, but it is so overwhelming that I want to answer each and every person, but I’d rather direct them somewhere else if you can with me in the interview rather than having them reach out to me. My information is all over the Internet because I’m a real estate agent, and I guess that goes with the territory, but it’s a little bit tiring.

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