With blonde hair, blue eyes and a serious tan, Get Out! host and Deal or No Deal model Lindsay Clubine is pretty much the embodiment of the Los Angeles stereotype – that is, until she starts talking.
“When I was in New York, I’d be out on the subway and I would just strike up a conversation with a stranger,” says Lindsay. “People were like, ‘You’re not from around here…’”
Originally from Camden, Missouri, a town of 150 people who say hello to, and open doors for, each other, Lindsay’s friendly personality hasn’t yet assimilated to the big city norm. Although Lindsay says she likes the small-town community of Manhattan Beach in LA, where she now lives, the 26-year-old says she still makes it a point to visit her family in Missouri at least once a month.
“My friends in LA are always like, ‘You’re going home again?’” says Lindsay. “But I have to. Just to stay normal, just to stay sane. [LA] sucks you in, you know? Going home keeps me grounded.”
And there have been lots of things to suck Lindsay in. Now in her sixth season of the HDNet series Get Out!, Clubine has traveled everywhere from New Zealand to South Africa. She’s bungee jumped off the tallest building in the world and gone cage diving with sharks. She’s even fed chicken to wild alligators and crocodiles in the Everglades.
“I can’t believe how lucky we’ve been,” says Lindsay. “It’s very dangerous. I actually told the producers that ‘You know, I’m getting older now and I’ve done everything. I’m going to take it easy and not push the envelope so much. I just turned 26 and I’d like to make it to my 27th birthday.’”
And it’s not as though Lindsay needs to jump out of planes to get an adrenaline rush. Considering that out of the twenty-six cases on ABC’s Deal or No Deal, Lindsay lays claim to case number 26, Lindsay is often put in the position where she’s the “make you or break you case.”
“For me, it’s even more intense when I’m up there because usually people wait to open me until the very end,” says Lindsay. “So many times I’m that last case that it’s all riding on. It gets my nerves going – If I open up a big case [with a large sum of money], I go off stage crying. I feel so bad, even though it’s out of my hands.”
But despite all of the opportunities that living in California has afforded her (when she visits Camden, people approach her in Walmart for her autograph), Lindsay still says she doesn’t consider it her home.
“I do like it out here and I have a lot of fun, but it’s not home,” says Lindsay. “I don’t think it will ever feel like home for me. I’m just a small-town farm girl.”