Jonathan Van Ness Breaks Silence on Scathing ‘Queer Eye’ Exposé

Jonathan Van Ness is finally opening up about allegations brought to light in a recent Rolling Stone expose on Queer Eye. According to the outlet, Van Ness was labeled as “abusive” with their behavior on the set and was “very difficult” to work with.

Sources close to the show used words like “monster,” “nightmare,” and “demeaning” to describe the star’s alleged behavior. During an appearance on the Table Manners podcast, Van Ness broke his silence on the allegations against him during the series.

“There was this article that was written about ‘Queer Eye’ and myself in March, but our whole ‘Queer Eye’ family had first learned about this article in December,” Van Ness said. “I went from this bankruptcy to like, ‘Oh, there’s someone who’s gonna write an investigative takedown, expose piece about you that isn’t really based in reality but can certainly have a lot of things taken out of context to make you look as bad as possible. So that could drop any day now.

“So from January to March, I was walking on eggshells being like, ‘When is this going to happen?’ And then it finally did happen,” they added. Van Ness denies the claims, though Rolling Stone used information from a trio of sources close to the Netflix series.

“[There’s] a real emotion of fear around them when they get angry,” Rolling Stone reports. “It’s almost like a cartoon where it oozes out of them. It’s intense and scary.” They added that tension between Van Ness and other members of the cast: Antoni Porowski, Bobby Berk, Karamo Brown, and Tan France.

The departure of Berk from the series after Season 8 reportedly had a lot to do with Van Ness’ behavior. For Van Ness, he’s focused on trying to filter the hate out. “I think a lot of people were looking for a reason to hate me or looking for a reason to be like, ‘See, I always knew that they were a fake c-t,’” he says on the podcast. “My family was so supportive, and my husband and my team. But I didn’t even get on social media to look at my phone for like three weeks and anytime I tried to dip my toe in, I would immediately see something that was so intensely hurtful.”

They claim the expose was “overwhelmingly untrue and done in bad faith” and stands by the denial. “There have obviously been times throughout my career where you’re stressed out or I may have been elbow deep in highlights and was like, no, I can’t talk about that right now. I know that there were times where I could have been better.

“But sometimes loving yourself just looks like feeling your feelings. And I just had to be sad for a minute. And I just had to kind of withdraw and go into myself and feel it,” Van Ness continued. “And then once I got done feeling it, I was able to get the language to be able to say what I just said. It just kind of paralyzed me.”

Van Ness and the other cast members did not address the expose when it was published. Berk has been replaced by HGTV star Jeremiah Brent for Season 9, which Van Ness has confirmed finished filming back at the start of June.