The Ho family is ready to bring even more love, laughs, and luxury in House of Ho season 2. Bella and Kim Ho will be joining the family onscreen this season and spoke to HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY about what to expect. Bella’s father is Andy Ho, the “youngest troublemaker of all the Ho siblings.” Kim’s father is Tien Ho, who is “one of the 11 children in the Ho family tree.”
Of everyone in the Ho family, Bella and Kim are closest to Judy and Lesley. “Lesley is just someone who’s can sit with us and whenever we’re down we need someone to listen to our problems and just drink wine with and hang out,” Bella said. “She will shop with us. But then Judy is the woman that gives us solid advice. She’s always been with us our entire lives.”
Kim added, “Judy has always been with us. She’s always been this picture-perfect idol that we just want to be so bad. We put her on a pedestal, and she was just so out of reach. But now that we’re older, we’re able to spend time with her and talk together as friends rather than an idol and a fan. It’s definitely a change of dynamic that we really have come to appreciate because we drop in on Lesley and Judy all the time and force them to hang out with us. And then Lesley is a new addition to our family. We didn’t grow up around her, but as Bella said, she feels like she’s been there our entire life and just a girlfriend that we can just gossip with and hang out with. They each provide a different type of comfort that we definitely appreciate.”
In the trailer, it’s revealed that Bella’s mother has been dubbed the “Justin Bieber of Vietnam.” Bella admitted that her relationship with her mother is “complicated,” to say the least.
“My mom is finding herself again. She is still trying to be who she wants to be and find her purpose in life,” Bella told HollywoodLife. “She has been singing all these years of her life and that was her identity, right? And now that she’s been doing it for so long, there’s something else that she wants out of life. She has to sit there and really understand what it is that she wants and who she is as a person and all of the past trauma that she’s gone through. How does she navigate through that? But what’s difficult is that I’m also going through that. I have my own struggles and my own trauma that I’ve been dealing with.”
She continued, “I think the biggest issue is that we both have these emotions and feelings. We do both care about each other a lot, but I need to have that open conversation with my mom, and she needs to have it with me. How do we continue and rebuild our relationship? And have a better relationship and just be better people because nobody’s perfect. I’m never expecting my mom to be perfect, and I hope she doesn’t expect me to. But I do expect if she cares about me enough, and I care about her enough, I know that we will work through our problems and meet in the middle.”
Bella revealed that she’s always “felt that filial piety towards my mom, and my dad. Even though my parents were more westernized and allowed me more freedom, I still wanted to make them proud and do all these things for them and just never made sure that they had to worry about me. I felt like me doing that by myself, without ever being asked, that was my way of repaying my mom for all the things that she’s ever done for me. And I think, in her eyes, she didn’t see it that way. She just kind of saw it as I should be doing that anyway.”
She credited “generational differences” for some of the tension between her and her mother. “She came here, worked 12 hours a day, and then sang all night and did it again. I came here and had the luxury of just figuring myself out and exploring those things and never having to worry about stuff like that. But I still struggle, and I still feel so many different things just like her. My experience is not invalid, and neither is hers. It’s just, how are we going to move forward from that?” Bella noted.
Kim revealed that her family is “more traditional in the sense that their views are a little bit more conservative.” Growing up she didn’t really get the chance to “express” herself.
“I understand the sacrifices my parents have made, and I have, as the older sister, done everything in my capacity to make sure that every single day they know that their struggles have been worth it,” Kim told HollywoodLife. “But in the mission of carrying out their wishes, I kind of lost a bit of myself. So when I was given the opportunity to go to college in California, even though it was against my parents’ wishes, it was probably the only thing in my entire life that I had done at the time that went against their wishes. So I took it for myself and was a little bit selfish. As a result, I was able to learn even more about my culture. Along the way, I learned more about myself and when to put my foot down and say that even though I am appreciative of all the sacrifices and all the things you’ve done for me, my mental health, my well-being, are also important. Even though you live for your family and our Vietnamese family, we also need to live for ourselves.” House of Ho season 2 premieres August 25 on HBO Max.