Can We Have Another Gay "Design Star" Yet?

Rooting for Team Gay on HGTV's Design Star can be a rough gig. After out Miami designer David Bromstad won the crown in the show's first season and went on to become one of the network's most popular designers, all the other out contestants have either fizzled out early or come tantalizingly close only to get squeezed out in the end.

So which is it going to be this year? Out designer Michael Moeller has made it to the final four. Can he be the next gay Design Star?

Moeller, 30, is a New Yorker, and hoping to bring some hometown mojo to the series' seventh season, set in Manhattan and directed by reality show superstar Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Apprentice). He's been a designer for almost 10 years, and owned his own business for the last two years.

"Design Star is the first time in my life I've been able to take several weeks away from work and do something like this," Moeller told AfterElton.com. "It was an opportunity to get away from a desk, and projects that take six to nine months, and get crazy. To spit out ideas super-fast – some good, some bad. It was like being an interior designer on steroids."

Michael Moeller

It's always hard to interview contestants on reality competition shows. They, and the shows' PR teams, already know who won, and when each loser was eliminated – but they're not telling. Moeller is so relentlessly happy and enthusiastic about the experience it's hard to believe he doesn't get pretty close to the finish, at least. Or was the experience just that much fun, win or lose?

"It was a great opportunity, and I'm really proud to be a part of it," he said, echoing every reality contestant ever interviewed. Then he laughed. "The thing is, you really had to make very fast decisions, and trust your gut all the time, go on your instincts. It was like the biggest, best game I ever played."

Moeller has so far escaped much criticism from the judges, and come out on top or on the winning team most of the time. He says the secret of his success so far is that he uses principles of design to guide his design choices. "I hate when you ask team members why they want to do something, and they have no reason – they just say they 'feel like it,'" he said.

"Take Alex. He's a talented gentleman, but he has a lot to learn. He'd ask me why I would or wouldn't do something, and I could give him an answer. He couldn't do the same."