“I will never hurt you.” That’s a promise from Jennifer Lane, “Queer Eye’s” showrunner, to the reality series’ participants, as well as viewers. That vow has paid off with a devoted following and a record five consecutive Emmy awards for structured reality program. The show’s hosts are in the running for the fourth time in the host category as well.
Season 7 of “Queer Eye” was set in New Orleans; the state slogan, “Feed Your Soul,” reflects the show’s intentions. Each episode introduces us to a “hero,” a person in need of guidance who is delivered into the capable hands of the Fab Five hosts: Tan France, style; Bobby Berk, design; Karamo Brown, culture; Antoni Porowski, food and wine; and Jonathan Van Ness, grooming. “We meet people where they are,” Lane says. “There’s no judgment.”
Well, maybe a little. When the season opener, “Queer Eye for the Lambda Chi,” revealed a filthy University of New Orleans frat house, those college boys had nowhere to run. “We’re going through the house cleaning up, and Bobby was like, ‘Why, why does it look like this?’” recalls Ryan Parker, then chapter president, now recruitment chair. He had to admit, “It was what we moved into, and we carried a dirty tradition.”
As with all things “Queer Eye,” the mess signified something deeper. The Fab Five used their skills to direct the boys toward manhood. “I knew we were messy and dirty, those were the obvious things,” Parker says. “But it was the things you weren’t expecting, like how to style yourself, how to keep up with your hair, and how much of a difference it makes not only to your appearance but how you feel within yourself, and how that translates to how you present yourself to other people.”
Browse the Instagram feeds of any of the “Queer Eye” hosts and see their comments to each other, and it’ll be hard not to question the depth of the friendships in your own life.
Brown was particularly influential, Parker says. He sat the group down and got them to open up — and break down — about issues they’d never told each other before. “It opened my eyes, like, ‘Ryan, you need to ask these guys how they’re doing.’”
He wants the Fab Five to know the lessons have stuck. “I have a girlfriend now, and sometimes I feel like I get too emotional with her. I’m like, ‘This is really how I’m feeling.’ I would never have done that before. But it helps with the relationship and keeping communication flowing.”
Ray “Speedy” Walker, hero of “Speedy for Life,” also credits Brown with opening him up. At 18, he suffered unimaginable loss in a car accident that killed his mother and aunt, and left him paralyzed. “I had to focus on myself, and getting back into the best shape possible, so I couldn’t grieve properly,” Walker explains. “Karamo preached to me that grief is important. Sometimes as men, we try to deal with it ourselves, but I learned from him that it’s important to talk to people about it, don’t suffer in silence, let it all out. It’s OK to cry.”
Brown also brought back a previous hero, Wesley Hamilton, a wheelchair user who founded the organization Disabled but Not Really to empower people with disabilities. Lane notes, “The Fab Five are producers this season. Karamo said, ‘I’m not about to counsel this young man without putting him in touch with someone else, and there’s no better person than Wesley.’” Walker, who posts videos on TikTok to show people what living with a disability is like, found Hamilton inspiring.
As were the other hosts. “The clothing was just so amazing. I just want to be fresh sometimes, I want people to be like, ‘Hey I like your shirt,’ instead of seeing the wheelchair first.” Porowski helped him with nutritional choices, so he could gain some much-needed weight. “He also said it’s important to push forward, because at some point, everybody’s going to face adversity; it was just bad that I had to face it at the age of 18. I take that with me.”
And Van Ness helped him with his anxiety as well as his hair. “Sometimes I get so stressed out thinking about the future, and I remember Jonathan saying, ‘Live in the moment, you’re still young, you don’t have to have everything figured out now.’” Berk found an accessible apartment and tricked it out beautifully, so Walker can live independently. “I love it. My own little spot, my comfort.”
Neither Parker nor Walker had seen “Queer Eye” before participating. “Superfan Steph” hero Stephanie Williams had watched it occasionally, as a pick-me-up, but had no idea how revelatory it would be. A sports fanatic with piles of jerseys and memorabilia to show for it, Williams lived with her father and her girlfriend Rachael (Rae), and used her collections to bury a world of pain.
Brown got her to discuss a homophobic encounter that had occurred a few years earlier, and helped her connect it with her super-fandom. “Holy cow, Karamo just peeled it back,” Williams says. “He had me understand the mask that I had been wearing, how I haven’t been my authentic self.” He also brought in her brother from Chicago to give her support. “I realized this is a turning point in my life, to be a better person, to be a better partner.”
Berk not only took on the interior design of the new home she and Rachael bought, but “helped me understand the importance of sharing spaces.” Porowski got her to eat vegetables for perhaps the first time, a deceptively lighthearted scene that demonstrated her willingness to change. France got her out of those endless jerseys. “We also got to talk a lot about him coming out, how he’s raising his family, and me and Rae and my concerns with that,” she says. “It gave me perspective that it can be done, and you can’t let fear control your world. Those are conversations that didn’t make it to air, but that I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
But it was Van Ness who first made her realize what she had signed up for. Hanging out in her bathroom on Day 1, he asked her to say, “I accept myself completely” to herself in the mirror; she started crying. “You’re thinking it’s going to be a meet and greet and all this fluff, and here he is with his affirmations,” Williams says. Yet she trusted him — even to the point of going blond.
Echoing the other heroes’ sentiments, she says of the Fab Five, “They’re special people. I get asked all the time, ‘Are they like you see on TV?’ And I say, ‘1000%.’ They’re as real as it gets. They deserve everything.”
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