I digress.
So I went out with my bag and introduced her to the producers. “She’s my little setcase,” I said. “She and I have been together forever. She makes space for me for whatever I need, wherever I go. She puts up with me and she’s doubly reinforced to put up with my big gay body. I can even turn her into a stool!” It was like the dry run of a stand-up act.
That night, they called and told us that half of us were going to be cut. I was stunned—they had flown in so many people from all over the place! The next day, we were down to twenty-five. I was shocked that I’d made the cut. Turned out they weren’t fucking around in this Glendale Embassy Suites.
This might be surprising, but I really am an introverted stoner at heart: When I’m on, I’m on, but at some point I do need to recharge and plug in and just be with myself. Actually spending time alone with myself at night after giving all my energy to clients day in and day out was something I grew to need. But it also came as part of realizing that I’m a smart, kind, funny, hardworking, opinionated bad bitch with something to say. Being at the precipice of such a huge opportunity was terrifying and exciting. Would this reboot translate? If I book this, will it succeed? Will it be a flop and end my career? Could I even rise above these queens to get it in the first place? And was I sure I was ready?
But I wanted this show. As soon as I heard that tagline—that the show was about turning red states pink, one makeover at a time—it resonated. Quincy went two-to-one for Trump. Having been brought up in such a conservative FOX News-esque enclave, I knew I’d be able to maintain my spirit, and my cool, while also sorting out that FOX News outrage with gorgeous calm-and-collected facts.
That’s what I tried to bring to the second day of auditions. I was still being funny, but I would wait for everyone to talk, then try to sweep in with some gorgeous knowledge. They started pairing us up in groups of five, and we would look at pictures of stuff that was in our vertical. Then it was our job to figure out what to say about it.
Gays started dropping like flies. You’d get attached to someone, and then they’d be gone. Soon we were down to fifteen people.
When we came back from lunch, we were doing our first-ever dossier reads—reacting to specific things from the files they’d prepared for us—on camera. There were some important people in the room by that point, and some other important people sitting in video village, where the people watching what was happening on camera were. People were rotating in and out, murmuring to one another between takes while we would all be sitting on these chairs in front of people, assuring ourselves this was all a completely normal experience, and at least for me, trying not to let the heartburn run down and explode out of my butt.
I knew who my biggest competition was: some fucking hairstylist, I mean a very nice boy, who didn’t even have to come to the first day of auditions because he was already working on another successful unscripted TV show. All the gays whispered about him: “He’s totally gonna be the one.”
When they started rotating us into smaller groups, they called his name first out of all the groomers. There were only three groomers left. Then, not long after, they called me in and sent him back.
Only once I came in, I never left the room again. They kept moving other people around into different configurations but they included me. I was nailing this long program.
Either I’m booking this, I thought, or they feel so bad for me that they’re just letting me wear myself out because they’re, like, Oh, poor queen, he’s never gotten this far before, he thinks he’s doing a little show! Let her do some stand-up and have a good time.
At some point, the creator of the show stepped up to us and said, “You guys are five of the top ten.”
Honest to God, my trachea fell out of my body onto the tip of my penis.
Then we went and got in two cars—split into two groups. They filmed us in the car driving to this gorgeous house and doing a lil episode beginning run-through. When we arrived, we split off into the house and began to do what we imagined we would do in an actual episode.
I found aromatherapy oil and started to do a sensory journey in the bathroom, including a wellness hand massage and a breathing exercise. “It’s not about what the products are so much as how you feel,” I told my pretend hero. “That’s how self-care starts—you take care of yourself from the inside out. How much water you drink is as important as the moisturizer you use. And yes! I love this chest hair. Maybe we could trim it biannually so it’s a little less of a thicket.”
My car also had Karamo, Bobby, and Tan. But Antoni was in the other car. Our food guy was someone else entirely.
Every time I was on camera at the same time as Antoni, I had to stop myself from making weird faces, just from staring at him. Girl, that sounds so good, I’d think, and I would turn into Winona Ryder watching her Stranger Things costar accept their SAG Award.
I was personally hoping Antoni would get because I could listen to him talk about food all day.
Not long after, the five of us got the call that we had been cast. Oh my God, I thought. I gotta move to Atlanta. I was making a good living through my salon. I had come back to LA to become a successful, self-supporting hairdresser. I accomplished that goal. I faced down so many of my demons and came out on top. I felt like I was America’s Next Top Model in the competition of my life. But this was a terribly exciting opportunity that I was so ready to launch into with everything I had. She was ready to go.
When the five of us descended upon Atlanta, I really didn’t know what to expect. I’d never been there outside of the airport and had never spent a lot of time in the South. But I was really excited to get to spend more time with the boys and find out what it would be like to work on the show.
Bobby got there before us, because he knew the nature of his job takes a little longer to produce, so he spent more time on the ground before the rest of us arrived. But once we all got there, we really quickly seemed to fall into a good working space. We all went out together, the cast and crew, for the first time to practice some shot-blocking, where we should stand, to get an idea where to position ourselves in houses based on how much light and space we had to work with.
You may know that a lot of reality TV requires a lot of reshoots, so the subjects have to deliver moments of emotion or vulnerability that may not have been caught on camera the first time. The team behind Queer Eye wanted to do our best to create moments of authenticity and connection the first time, so they wouldn’t be reshot in a way that wasn’t true to the way these moments unfolded. That’s part of why I think the show has been received the way it is. It really is a natural depiction of events that aren’t manufactured in the ways that we’re used to having makeover shows manufactured. For me, having had a little bit of experience with Gay of Thrones up to this point, and just from watching TV, I knew this was an energetic, honest, and earnest attempt at connection that I don’t know if I had seen done in this way before. We were all really inspired working together, knowing that we were creating something that was hopefully going to do some good in the world.
In my experience post–Queer Eye, I have fielded a lot of nervous-eyed questions about how true our onscreen connection is off camera. I get it. I’ve met a lot of celebrities in my time as a hairdresser who I anxiously hoped would live up to the idea of them that I had in my head, especially their relationships with their costars on TV. But the five of us really do love one another as much as it looks on the show.
That doesn’t mean we didn’t have growing pains. There were times, as in any family, where a few members spent more time together with each other than with others. But like with my actual brothers—the ones I grew up with—I feel well within my rights to talk about how maybe they have rubbed me the wrong way. But if I catch wind that someone outside of my family is talking shit about one of my brothers, you better hold on to your hats, ladies, because I am coming to you with the almighty force of Tyra Banks when she had to yell at Tiffany. “We were all rooting f
or you! Never in my life have I yelled at a girl like this!”
Bobby runs really hot. Karamo runs really cold. Like literally with temperature. I’m twelve minutes late everywhere I go and have zero personal boundaries. Tan is very boundaried and only five minutes late everywhere he goes. Antoni is the easiest, most laid-back guy. We all come together and gel, because at the end of the day, we all want what’s best for each other. And there’s not one thing about my sisters I would change in a million years. I love them so much and there’s nobody else I could imagine going on this ride with.
When we moved to Atlanta, we actually shot seasons one and two together concurrently. For the first eight weeks, I was living in Atlanta but every weekend I would fly to Los Angeles or New York to maintain the clienteles I had built in both cities. At that point, I didn’t know how successful the show would be. I didn’t know if I would even keep doing hair after the show came out. I hoped I would, because I loved doing it.
But my good old busy bee part was right there for me, because I was not going to let my clients who I had worked so hard for so long to build up go without me. I didn’t want to rely on this show for providing me with the rest of my life. I knew nothing in entertainment is guaranteed, and I couldn’t abandon the career I’d already built.
Through the back half of shooting, I was introduced to a new part of myself I had not yet known: my powerful, bad-bitch corporate lady ferosh who wasn’t afraid to kick ass, take names, and get shit done. Prior to Queer Eye, I was pining for a world where I could fully realize a life in entertainment and doing hair. Now, honey, my dream had come true. I was on camera Monday through Friday, flying to LA on Saturday, doing clients, shooting Gay of Thrones in its totality on Sunday, then back to Atlanta for my Monday-to-Friday grind as soon as I was done. It was fantastic. Was I stressed? Yes. Did my insides feel a little bit like I was being electrocuted? Yes. But like I learned in hair school: Fake it till you make it and make it look graceful. And that, I did.
Right up until episode fifteen out of sixteen, which was the firefighter episode.
A few producers and I had grown to love popping up on Bobby’s field trips to prank him. I scared the bejesus out of Bobby twice on two of those field trips, and I knew he was scheming on a way to get me back. (The only person who feels worse about what happened than me is Bobby Berk, and he’s given me full permission to tell this story.)
During the episode with the firemen, while Antoni and I had been applying my gorgeous egg-white-peach face mask, one of the firefighters stopped and called me over to look at one of the fire trucks. As I was looking at the instruments on the truck and trying to sort out what he wanted me to see, Bobby suddenly shot out from under the fire truck on a metal dolly with little wheels. He was trying to give me the fright of a lifetime, honey, so he grabbed my ankles. He was serving me Scary Movie 2 eleganza.
I was wearing fierce gladiator sandals—obviously—and as he grabbed me, I felt this blinding white light that illuminated from my toe all the way up, but the dolly was covering my foot so I couldn’t see what had actually happened. (My view was also obstructed by Bobby wiggling around making noises in jubilant joy, because he was so happy he’d finally gotten me back after so many pranks that he’d endured.)
“Bobby,” I said, “stop moving. I think you just crushed my foot.”
His face changed. “Oh my God, are you serious?”
“Yes,” I said. “Stop moving! Get off!”
When he got up and I moved the dolly off my foot, my big toenail was lifted up like an open garage door. Like, my big toenail was past perpendicular to the ground. Like, about a 135-degree angle, if you’re a mathematician. (I was only good at geometry, so if that visual escapes you, sorry!) There wasn’t instantly blood everywhere, but as I hobbled as quickly as my grievously injured gay body could take me to video village behind those lockers, where the producers were, pools of blood followed me in every footstep. I didn’t know how I was even going to unstrap this gladiator sandal to get it off me.
Coincidentally, my mom had picked this day of all days to visit set for the very first time. Thank God for her. She knew instantly that I was concerned about people touching me because of my HIV status—not that I would have been contagious, but it was something I didn’t want to have to tell anyone about—and I live in fear of getting some kind of weird medication-resistant-staph-infection journey. It was one of the best times I’ve seen her be a true mama bear. She just cleared everyone away and ensured my personal space and made me feel as safe as possible in this very random situation.
And then I actually puked. Like full-blown threw up from blinding pain into a garbage can, and I was pouring sweat and shaking and trying to remove the gladiator sandal without touching the nail.
“Eight of you!” I roared, like an injured animal as a gaggle of very shocked firemen clamored to help clean up my mangled, bloody foot. “Eight of you thought this was a good idea! Nobody thought to look at what shoes she was wearing!”
One producer, who hadn’t seen it yet, came up to me. “Come on, Jonathan,” he was saying. “How bad could it be?” Then he saw it. “Holy fuck!” he yelled. Then he ran away to go throw up too.
As I was sitting in the chair, continuing to roar and make a scene, my mom leaned in and whispered in my ear: “You have a really good opportunity here to come off looking very normal. Very professional. You’re starting to go off the rails from that right now. Let’s pull it back. Why don’t I just take you home?”
I popped my head up and realized she was totally right. “I would like to go home,” I finally said. “I just need to go home. Mommy’s in too much physical pain.” So with the grace and poise of a Kerri Strug, I collected myself, hobbled out, filmed a usable button to end the scene, and went on home.
By the time I got home, I was feeling really bad for Bobby. It had been his birthday and I knew he was feeling completely terrible because never in a million years did he ever mean for me to be injured. And for the last two weeks of production, he and Tan and Antoni and Karamo carried every bag for me as I hobbled through the sets. The boys did their best to help make sure that I could do everything I needed to do.
But if you take a second peep at Mama Tammye’s episode (how much do we love her, by the way), which was the next one we filmed after the firefighter episode, you’ll see that I’m always in flip-flops with my big toe wrapped in a bandage. Because I could not even get my swollen-ass toe in a shoe.
And Bobby and I came out of that as sisters more than ever. I love you to pieces, Bobbers. If our friendship can survive a ripped-off toenail, our friendship can survive anything.
We wrapped our time in Atlanta at the end of the summer and I went for a gorgeous end-of-summer Fire Island moment and then went back to LA for business as usual as I picked up where I left off and continued doing hair five days a week: six weeks in LA, then two weeks in New York, as I’d been doing prior to Queer Eye.
That December, Netflix announced that the show would be coming out February 7, 2018. And I had no idea really what to expect. I knew that the salon had always been my safe place and the place where I felt the most engaged and the most needed and in my creative power, so I threw myself full force back into that and kept doing what I knew I could do best. I just waited for February 7 to come like it was Christmas. I was really hoping that by the end of 2018, I would, with some luck and by the grace of God, pass the 100K mark on Instagram. Little did I know that I was going to be left wigless from the Queer Eye makeover that our socials got.
On February 7, the day before the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Games, Queer Eye premiered. Also coincidentally—in the long tradition of people dying on auspicious days in my family—Noonie’s husband, Papa, my dad’s dad, died the same morning Queer Eye came out. One of the last things he was lucid enough to see was our billboard in Times Square. He’d told me when I was seven years old that he knew someday I would be famous. He was also ninety-two by the time he died and very ready to bounce
out of here, so it was as happy a passing as you can ask for. I knew he would have said the show had to go on, and so it did.
My life felt markedly changed. The show had been out for about a week. Mirai Nagasu threw her triple axel successfully and helped secure Team USA a bronze medal in the team figure-skating event in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. And my in-box was starting to get flooded with notes telling me how my presence on Queer Eye was giving people a confidence that they didn’t know they had. I realized that it was time for me to take some of my own advice and try something that I had always wanted to do. Years earlier, during the second season of Gay of Thrones, we’d had the opportunity to work with Margaret Cho, who was someone I’d already admired, both for her comedy and for her LGBTQ+ advocacy. After filming together, she said: “You should really be doing stand-up.” It bowled my gay body over.
“Girl,” I said, “you’re a legend. I can’t do stand-up. But I would live to do your hair, if you’re not already attached to someone!”
Margaret being the queen she is took me on as her main hair chick, and after those years of working with Margaret, shooting Gay of Thrones, and now putting out Queer Eye, I was ready to take on a new challenge. So I decided that, after having done a few stand-up and storytelling events, I was ready to take my comedy aspirations out into the open. I did my first couple of sets between Los Angeles and New York with the full support of the Queer Eye boys in attendance.
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