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Dominion LenDing Centres OUR HOUSE FALL 2017 >> 33 from the family, it's just so raw and real. We just changed someone's life. i know it's just a tv show but at the end of the day, someone is actually getting a million-dollar house. that's huge. it's such a great show. What is it like on set with all these personalities? i've made so many great friends. they are so incredible. now that we're in our second year, we just felt so much more comfortable. We weren't trying to figure out the show. it was a very different environment the first time around; we were trying to get to know each other and every time the show premieres they come over to my house and we watch the show together. they're the sweetest people, i've learned so much from them. they give me ideas on how to do my house. i learned a lot from the show. i may just become a contractor or designer after this experience. Which one of the cast would you get to renovate or build your home? All of them together. to see them do the Home to Win house, they work so well together. if there was one particular person, Danielle Bryk. her style is my style. everything she does i love and she's so good at coming up with concepts. she'd be up my alley. i would love for her to come and do my house. The show is in its second season. Have you touched base with Heiber and Claudia Mina, the people who won the first home? the fact that they left vancouver to live in this house, my first reaction was, they're going to sell the house. [instead,] they came down and changed their whole lives to live in this house. that just says so much on so many different levels that this has value to them. they are such a sweet family. i haven't had a chance to go see them, but i get updates all the time. Up Close with the stars While Sangita Patel has a few favourite celebrities she loves to interview—including George Clooney and Tom Cruise—Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is still her No. 1. She considers The Rock a friend, noting that while she was vacationing in Hawaii, he sent her a message to visit his favourite pancake place. "The A-listers know how to do it," Patel says. "They don't bring an entourage, they know what to do, they know the questions we're going to ask and they know the right answers, so I love them for that. They're just so professional." While Patel's sat down with countless A-listers, there's still one on her to-do list: Oprah Winfrey. "Just to hear her story, everything she's done," Patel says. "Being a woman of colour, you don't see that when you're young. And the one person I did see is Oprah, and she truly inspired me in so many ways, her and Connie Chung. For me to sit down with someone I looked up to would be surreal for me." Patel switches easily from her glam life with ET Canada (left) to the workaday set of Home to Win (top right); Season 1's prize home located in southern Ontario (right).