It's not all rainbows and avocados on the Queer Eye set. In a revealing interview with Australian showbiz outlet Gold Derby, Bobby Berk and Tan France booted up their laptops for a video chat about all things Queer Eye. What they let slip was a lot about how tough it actually is to film the show.
For anyone unfamiliar with their roles, Bobby is the interior designer and Tan is the stylist on Netflix's wildly popular Queer Eye reboot. Absent from this particular interview were their co-hosts Karamo Brown (culture expert), Jonathan van Ness (grooming expert), and Antoni Porowski (culinary expert).
Antoni might have been busy working on his groundbreaking rom-com, and JVN seemed occupied with posting anti-racist TikToks, but Bobby and Tan had more than enough to say on behalf of the Fab Five. Read on to learn the truth about their Queer Eye struggles.
The Show Takes 'An Emotional Toll' On The Fab 5
"It takes a huge emotional toll on the five of us," Bobby dished to Gold Derby. "It’s not just our hero that is opening up their hearts and minds and lives to us, we are to them too."
"I don’t think there’s many shows out there where the host of the show is sometimes getting a makeover ourselves, emotionally," he added. As the men fairly often break down in tears on the show, it's easy to believe they're being put through the emotional wringer just like their contestants.
The first time Queer Eye was shown to the world, it wasn't the same as it is today. It was called Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and involved five different dudes performing speedy, single-day makeovers on schlumpy bachelors.
Bobby told Gold Derby that "in its time, it was a perfect show. It was exactly what the world needed." For the next generation, however, the current Fab Five are made to go a little deeper with each makeover, spending a full week with each hero and helping them grapple with more serious life and career issues.
Dealing with contestants who have been homeless, estranged from their parents, widowed, and extremely unlucky in life is the norm for Queer Eye this time around. While the original hosts got to focus on giving contestants a fresh new look and bachelor pad, Bobby & Co. have the more demanding task of truly uplifting their contestants from the inside out. It's a lot to ask!
They Feel Pressure to Deliver Perfection For Audiences And The Producers
Tan was eager to admit how much pressure he and his 'mates' are under to deliver perfection on Queer Eye.
"There's so much pressure! I don't think people understand how much pressure there is," he said on the Gold Derby video call. "It's not just that hero we have to impress, it's the tens of millions of people who are watching. If that hero appears to be unhappy, that then allows the audience to say 'well maybe there is a problem with something they've done.'"
From debating what they need to say to decide what they need to wear, the producers of this generation's Queer Eye have butted heads with the Fab Five more than once.
Tan revealed in the video chat that each of the hosts met with the Queer Eye producers near the start of filming Season 1 for some hard talks about what the show could be.
"We really fought," he said. "I'll be really honest, I've gotten really comfortable saying 'I don't care that it's for TV, they won't be comfortable doing that."
Bobby agreed that the producers' vision sometimes conflicted with his own.
"Our very first day of filming we walked in and we met Tom, and you know, producers were like 'alright go in and find everything wrong with the apartment, and Tan, pick apart his clothes' and this and that," he revealed. "We got in and we saw this broken man and we were all just like, 'we can't be mean to him!'"
"It just wouldn’t have been right, especially in this day and age, to tear people apart," added Tan. He went on to explain that producers had a different vision for his fashion makeovers as well.
"After three episodes, the producers said ‘we want you to go bold and wild...think of a bright pink suit,’ and I was like ‘I am not your guy then'...thankfully all of us are very strong-willed. We don’t back down easy."
Bobby Says People Don't Always Like Their Home Makeovers
"There have been those moments when we do the reveal and it's not always positive, you know?" Bobby told Gold Derby. "Sometimes the reaction is negative. Luckily within an hour or so of letting it soak it they usually come around, but it's happened!"
He believes the main reason people are sometimes disappointed with their new spaces is that they didn't want so many of their belongings to be thrown away or moved. In his terms, the team has "dealt with heroes who I would say are borderline clinically a hoarder."
Since limited time doesn't allow for in-depth therapy for hoarding, he says they sometimes just have to accept that his team did the best they could and move on - and try not to react badly when his design work is disrespected.
Queer Eye is known for diving deep into emotional, heart-to-heart conversations with its heroes, and Bobby and Tan say that none of that is ever faked.
Bobby says they aren't rehearsed, staged, or manufactured in any way, even if something technical goes wrong and the team loses a bit of audio that would be useful to include on the show.
Hours of serious, deep, and sometimes dark conversations about life, death, and everything in between make this actually a really draining job for these experts - but they keep pulling through! As JVN would say, can you believe?