Queer Eye may have ended its run on Netflix, but the behind-the-scenes drama has not. And now a new incident of inter-cast fighting has been revealed.
in January, Karamo bailed at the last-minute on a CBS interview with cast members Antoni Porowski, Tan France, Jonathan Van Ness and Jeremiah Brent citing a need to prioritize and protect his mental health. His assistant then shared a statement saying he “worried about being bullied.”
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Earlier this month, Karamo elaborated on the tension and disclosed the last straw was after his mom was on set and she heard several of his castmates talking smack about him.
“The thing I know is the tears I saw in my mother’s eyes,” he told the People. “[She kept repeating], ‘I thought they were your friends.’ It made me realize I can no longer stay silent about how often I was made to feel like an outsider.”
While Karamo did NOT name names, People vetted multiple sources who said Tan, Antoni and JVN were the ones allegedly heard talking negatively about him.
Tan’s turn
Now, Tan is speaking up about his own experience getting less than friendly treatment from one of his fellow cast members.
During an appearance on Jesse Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast, Tan for the first time disclosed getting into a “heated argument” with one of the Fab Five just as they were starting production on season one in 2017.
“I’ve never said this before, and I won’t say who it was, but during filming of that first season, somebody on the cast was quite frustrated with me when they found out that I wasn’t out to my family,” the fashion guru told Ferguson.
Tan had previously discussed how he did not come out to his family until two days before the series premiered in 2018.
The unnamed cast member believed Tan being closeted to his family was an insult to the whole point of the series. According to Tan, they told him, “basically, ‘You’re kind of a traitor to us on the show if you’re not out.’ Like, ‘How can you be on Queer Eye and not be singing it from the rooftops?’”
Obviously, Tan took issue with his new co-worker and responded by explaining his journey with trying to live as authentically as possible up to that point.
“We got into a heated argument, and I was saying, ‘You have no idea what my experience is as a queer Muslim, a queer brown person, a queer immigrant. It’s all well and good you’re saying this, but you will never understand what it’s like as a person of color trying to come out when you’ve had nobody ever say those words in your community before,’” he recounted to Ferguson.
Bobby Berk
Like Karamo, Tan didn’t name names, but this wasn’t the first pubic squabble he’s gotten into with one of his co-hosts.
Following Bobby Berk’s exit from the show after season 8, he admitted getting into a “situation” with Tan.
“Tan and I had a moment,” Berk said in 2024. “There was a situation, and that’s between Tan and I, and it has nothing to do with the show. It was something personal that had been brewing — and nothing romantic, just to clarify that.”
So if you’re doing the math, Karamo felt bullied, Tan did too, Bobby left, and then there’s the whole JVN getting accused of emotionally abusive behavior, which they have denied.
So far, Antoni and newbie Jeremiah seem to have avoided airing out any on-set dirty laundry. But there’s always tomorrow…
All 10 seasons of Queer Eye are streaming drama-free on Netflix.
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