‘Blow Out’ salon owner mellows

Location: Jonathan Salon, Beverly Hills.

Appointment time: 9 a.m. to noon.

Client: Haylie Duff.

Stylists: Jonathan Antin and Jenn MacDonald.

Treatments: Low lights and blow out.

That’s the appointment we booked at the trendy hair salon featured on “Blow Out,” Bravo’s behind-the-scenes reality series (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.)

The idea: to witness firsthand some of the over-the-top drama salon owner Antin inflicts on his harem of stylists.

But we discovered things have mellowed considerably since filming for the show wrapped in April.

Antin — known for his emotional outbursts and inward struggles that send him speeding in his Mercedes to psychotherapy — has taken a serious chill pill.

Even though his show is pulling in only a third of the viewers (about 680,000) who tune in at 10 p.m. Tuesdays to Bravo’s baby, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” Antin can relax knowing the cameras are off.

Even Duff’s arrival — 35 minutes after her appointment time — doesn’t disturb his perfectly groomed coif.

Antin, 36, connects immediately with the 19-year-old singer, who just moved into a new Valley home with her famous kid sis, Hilary.

As Antin’s senior colorist, the pink-haired MacDonald, foils Duff’s hair, Antin leads us on a tour of his salon.

In the storage room, he gets choked up when he finds a wig reminding him of a “very special” upcoming “Blow Out” in which he constructs a $10,000 hairpiece for a client undergoing chemotherapy.

He then leads us to the back alley, where he lights up a cigarette and treats us to some juicy hairstylist gossip.

It seems his sister, Robin, dates “Charlie’s Angels” director McG. McG’s going to direct “Superman” and has been hinting to Antin that Jake Gyllenhaal is almost a shoo-in for the role.

As the son of Michael Antin, an artist, and Brenda Antin, a former vice president at Motown Films (now working as an interior decorator to the stars), Jonathan has been playing with celebrities all his life.

“We used to have these rock star parties when I was just a baby,” he recalls. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and there was Elton John, Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood.”

In the early ‘90s, when his career was starting to rock and roll, Antin dated Vanessa Marcil (“Las Vegas”) for four years when she was still a virtual unknown. The two remain close.

“My exes are all my best friends — I love them all,” Antin says.

He likes to compare himself to Warren Beatty, whose role as a hair-styling Casanova in the 1975 sex comedy “Shampoo” is one of Antin’s favorites.

“How could you not follow (Beatty’s) life and just think, ‘Wow,’ ” he says. “But it was different back then when you could run around like a maniac and be with hundreds of different women and safety wasn’t even an issue.”

Antin returns to check on Duff, who’s been treated to $600 corrective extensions and is almost ready for the coveted $400 Antin blow out. The debutante diva instructs Marco to rifle through her Louis Vuitton bag for some lip gloss while she flips through Star magazine’s Best and Worst Beach Bodies issue.

Finally, Antin grabs his platinum blow dryer and dives passionately into Duff’s newly extended, low-lit tresses.

“It’s all about great hair to me,” he says.

With Duff’s scheduled three-hour appointment stretching into its fifth hour, the reporter had to excuse himself. But Antin reports that Duff left loving her new ‘do.

“She’s going to come back so I can cut and reshape her hair,” he says.

As for the possibility of Antin working his magic on Duff outside the salon, the playboy just grins devilishly: “It’s like I always say, I don’t cut and tell.”