Back in March, Netflix announced that the splendiferously coiffed Jeremiah Brent would be replacing Bobby Berk as the interior design expert for Season 9 of Queer Eye. There had long been rumors of Berk being unhappy. Still, Berk let it be known that he was a little surprised he was the only one of the Fab Five leaving. Then Rolling Stone put out a bombshell story in which many production sources described beauty expert Jonathan Van Ness as an absolute nightmare to work with. All of the sources were anonymous to protect their jobs. Van Ness has kept mum since the takedown piece… until now. They were on the Table Manners podcast last week and took full accountability for their actions and making people feel unsafe at work. Hahaha just kidding! Yeah, Van Ness totally played the victim:
Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness is breaking their silence on the allegations against them.
If you don’t know, back in March of 2024, an exposé was released that had some behind-the-scenes, unverified information from unnamed sources.
Three insiders called the star emotionally “abusive” and having “rage issues,” and all seven sources said the star would lash out at crew members and people who worked closely with them.
During filming, one production source said that JVN would explode at least once a week, describing the star as “a yeller.”
Now, they’re finally responding to some of these claims.
They said on Wednesday’s episode of the “Table Manners” podcast, “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.”
“I went from this bankruptcy [JVN Hair had to be sold]. Then, ‘Oh there’s someone who’s going to write an investigative takedown, exposé 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 from January to March, I was walking on eggshells being like, ‘When is this going to happen?’ And then it finally did happen,” they said.
Jonathan added about the reaction from the public, “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-nt.’”
“My family was so supportive, and my husband and my team. But I didn’t 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 added.
You guys, Jonathan didn’t look at their phone for three weeks — the struggle is real! Have they not suffered enough! Lol, poor baby. I feel like there’s a deeply philosophical point somewhere in the fact that the expert in charge of beauty seems more than a touch delusional. Back when we covered the Rolling Stone article, many of you commented on Van Ness’s bad behavior. Things like their team members warning people in advance not to make eye contact, along with lots of descriptions of temper tantrums. So no, I’m not at all surprised that Van Ness’ response is to say the article “isn’t really based in reality.” If Van Ness had comms people on staff worth their salt, they would have trotted out some carefully crafted lines like, “I never thought I conducted myself poorly, but I have to take into account that multiple people feel this way, and I’ve been looking at my behavior accordingly to see how I can do better.” Van Ness doesn’t have to believe any of it! It just would’ve been an easy PR win to issue a conciliatory statement, instead of snapping right into “the whole world was looking to attack meeee!” So in conclusion, I definitely agree with Van Ness that someone isn’t operating in reality; I just don’t think it’s Rolling Stone.
Photos credit: Ilana Panich-Linsman/Netflix, Getty Images for Netflix