WASHINGTON –– Happy Pride from the White House! Well, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the West Wing, where Vice President Kamala Harris was busy queering up the nation's capital Thursday.
Harris chatted with the creators and cast of "Queer Eye" –both Bravo's original "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" series and Netflix's revamped "Queer Eye" – in honor of the show's (approximately) 20th anniversary. Yes, back when "just being out was crazy," says Jai Rodriguez, the culture and lifestyle mentor from "Straight Guy," clad in a bright yellow suit.
The conversation also included Carson Kressley from the OG series; Karamo Brown and Jonathan Van Ness from new one; and creators David Collins and Michael Williams.
"We can't take any of these things for granted," Harris said on the fight for progress, "and let's also be fueled by the optimism to know that we can also get better than we are, and that it's not only about maintaining the progress that we've achieved, but let's keep going."
'Did you see that?' 'Queer Eye' creator shares origins of show
The idea for the show originated in Boston on a Sunday afternoon more than 20 years ago. Collins and partner Williams were touring a studio warehouse in a gay area of the city with about 100 other people, all looking at art, drinking Champagne and noshing on cheese. A hush fell over the room when a woman began berating her husband. She was criticizing his looks; his hair.
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Four handsome, well-clothed men raced to his side, pushed his wife out of the way and began to build up his confidence.
"I turned to Michael, and just out of my head said, 'Did you see that? That was like 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.'" Boom. Less than a year later, the pair took it to Bravo.
Collins told USA TODAY ―outside the White House on a sunny and scorching afternoon ― that after they shot the pilot, he went home to Cincinnati to show his father and his friends. They were in his father's living room, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. After watching, "there wasn't a dry eye in the house. All these older, straight men crying." In that moment, "he knew we had something special."
'The show helped me to come out'
The original "Fab Five" were required to be out gay men – something Kressley joked he "didn't have to worry" about, though he admitted he did have to come out to his family, given the hosts were about to grace the cover of TV Guide.
"The show helped me to come out personally," he says, "and one of the most grateful things I am for that show is that so many young people come up to me today on airplanes or in the mall and say, 'Your show helped me come out, because it allowed a safe dialogue with my family to say, oh, gay is OK.'"
"When I signed up for the job, I didn't think it was going to have any social or political implications," Kressley later told USA TODAY. "I just thought we were literally trying to get rid of pleated khakis and mullets, which I was happy to eradicate." The fashion icon sported a sleek navy suit – though he's more down to earth than his reputation suggests: "Just an old hom*osexual with highlights," he deadpanned.
The show, of course, was always about more than just physical transformation. "Sure you get a new dress, a new outfit, a nice new sofa, but really, it's about the sharing of our stories, right?" Collins said during the Harris conversation. "I tell you my story, you tell me yours. You see each other's humanity, and we lift each other up.'"
Van Ness told USA TODAY he hopes the show's legacy is that more and more queer people can "find success and happiness and joy in their lives, and by proxy, allowing more of straight people to see us as humans, and that we're multifaceted."
Collins hopes more people can grow up like his daughter Ella, who "never had to live in a world where that fear of coming out was part of her existence."
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'We must remain vigilant'
Harris reflected on her own ties to the gay rights movement, including that she and late activist and politician Harvey Milk shared the same campaign manager. Jim Rivaldo.
"He was like a family member to us by the end of it all," Harris said of Rivaldo, who died in 2007. "He was just family. In fact, my mother took care of him as he was sick and dying. He had AIDS. Rivaldo felt so strongly about the movement being a function of many things, including a collective fight for freedom and for justice and the importance of community but (also) the importance of a particular coalition building."
Harris remarked on that fight elsewhere ahead of the planned conversation, given the Supreme Court ruling Thursday to preserve access to abortion medication mifepristone. She said this was not a positive celebration, given the state of reproductive health across the country. "We must remain clear-eyed about the threats to reproductive freedom in America, and we must remain vigilant."
Van Ness emphasized that Planned Parenthood's work goes beyond abortion, and brought up his own HIV-positive status: "Without their testing, without the access to that testing, I don't even know where I would be."
