A Look Back at Bravo's "Queer Eye"

AE: Well, thank God there are you guys to counter that kind of crap. Jai, I think for a lot of parents and friends, especially who aren’t in big metropolitan cities or who are in very close-knit religious communities that are conservative, they might not believe there are people out there who are accepting. This really revolutionized your mother’s viewpoint, correct?
JR: Yeah, it really did. And I can’t say that she’s… She always says “I don’t support the fact that you’re gay, but I don’t think that you should have...” She’s very like, playing both sides of the fence because she’s still very involved with the church. But she gets very offended if someone says anything about me being gay in a negative way.

Like when the show first came out, you said when you come out, your parents come out. Well, we came out globally. So my mother was getting a lot of people at the church coming up to her and saying, “I’m so sorry to hear about your son.”

AE: Oh my God…
Jai: So that really put a chip on her shoulder. It kind of kept her really being smart and making the right decisions. She’s said many a time, “There’s nothing wrong with my son.” She’s like, “Please. If you had to point out all your flaws.”

She’s very much a New Yorker in that sense that she has her beliefs, but she’s chosen basically by experience. She’s lived with me, she nurtured me. She knows that I’m not a bad person. And all the things that have been put on her religiously from the people [in her church], the pastor, whatever, she says, “I eat the meat, I spit out the bone.” She’s like, “I know what’s true. I know who you are, I’ve met your friends, they’re good people. I refuse to believe that…” So it’s pretty cool.

TA: [archly] What does that mean exactly: “I eat the meat, I spit out the bone”?

JR: You take the good, you leave the bad.

TA: So that’s what that means.

AE: While Jai was the youngest when the show started, I’m sure that Kyan and Ted came to the show feeling like they were very self-accepting gay men, totally cool with themselves. I’m wondering if the show changed your own self-acceptance?
Kyan: Wow. I would say without a doubt. You know, ultimately self-acceptance needs to come from within, but a lot of times we get to that place through our experiences with other people. And I think that just the repetitiveness of working with a hundred different straight guys and making a genuine contribution to their lives, and then them saying so.

Like, “Thank you, you really have helped, and I’m really glad to meet you guys. You’re just not these guys on TV, but you really do care about us.” Coupled with the experience of having random straight guys come up to me in a restaurant or on the street and saying, “Hey, thanks a lot.” I think that just has a validating effect. And I was telling someone earlier that one way that I’ve been made over by the show is by just feeling more comfortable with straight guys.

And I think you’re right. I think I had a certain amount of self-acceptance. And I was out to my family, and everybody was really cool with it and all that. But there’s just something really powerful about meeting your straight brother or your straight friend, and them getting you, and loving you, and appreciating you. And it certainly has helped me out.

TA: I like that question a lot. I guess especially because we’re talking with AfterElton, and we’re coming up on national coming out month in November. We were a very extreme example of being mega-out. But for folks who aren’t on television shows, who are gay, who haven’t gone through that process yet, our experience just goes to show how much more relaxed and happy and comfortable you can be when you’re living an honest life.

I wish people like Larry Craig could have had that experience as well. I guess it’s not too late [for Craig], or maybe it is. You can’t say it enough, how important it is for gay people to be out and open. And when you are, even if it hasn’t been broadcast in 98 countries, you can check into a hotel with your partner and say “Yeah, we want a king bed.” And you get to a point where that isn’t difficult anymore.

AE: And I think those kind of things have changed dramatically in the last five years.
TA: Yeah.

AE: Like you’ve said, you were mega-out. That "Queer" was in the title and you weren’t playing characters, you were yourselves. And you’ve seen how the experience changed the world and yourselves. How does that change your understanding of what being “out” means?
TA: People give lip service to the idea of role models all the time. But we learned how profoundly real the need for role models is. I remember there was a gay kid named Michael Shackelford who at the time was 17 and was profiled by the Washington Post, they were doing a story about rural, gay kids. I sent him my book, and he ended up going on Nightline.

We all need to see ourselves reflected in the culture, and we all need to be able to dream we can be successful. So if there are no African Americans on television, if there are no gay people on television, no lesbians, no transgender people, it’s very hard to imagine yourself ever succeeding, ever going anyplace farther than the little village you grew up in.

So I think the people who are able to be out, the Rupert Everetts and the Ian Mckellens and the people in other fields, do such an incredibly important thing for people coming behind them. And they should really be proud.

Read more from Kyan Douglas on the AfterElton.com blog.

Ted Allen can be seen as a judge on Top Chef and Iron Chef America, as well as his PBS show Uncorked. Jai Rodriguez is currently doing guest spots on Nip/Tuck, and has a new show coming out on the Style network. New episodes of Queer Eye air Tuesdays at 10pm on the Bravo network, with a special additional episode tonight at 9pm.