Jeremiah Brent is Queer Eye’s new interior designer — and he’s setting the record straight about rumored rifts between the cast on set.
“I’ve got to tell you, there’s no drama with any of us,” Brent, 39, shared during a Wednesday, March 27, interview with House Beautiful. “We’re all in a group chat. We’re having the time of our lives. Everybody’s heads and hearts are in the right spot. It’s really healthy right now, and I think we’re all really excited about this season.”
Brent, who is replacing Bobby Berk for season 9 of the Netflix hit, even detailed how much fun things have been behind the scenes.
“I haven’t laughed this hard in a long, long time,” he disclosed. “In some ways, Queer Eye is connecting me to a part of myself that I had left behind, because I’m in dad mode and I run a business. With them, I get to be a little bit more free.”
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He added, “I love an install. I love the stress. I love the pressure. And this is not my first rodeo—I know what I signed up for. There is an amazing art department and team behind the scenes that are working hard around the clock. I’m excited to get in there, roll up my sleeves, earn my keep, and hopefully show people some really beautiful designs.”
In February, it was announced that Brent would be taking over after Berk, 42, revealed that he wouldn’t be returning for season 9 of Queer Eye.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I announce that season 8 will be my final season on Queer Eye,” he wrote via Instagram in November 2023. “It’s not been an easy decision to be at peace with, but a necessary one. Although my journey with Queer Eye is over, my journey with you is not. You will be seeing more of me very soon.”
Berk was an original member of the Fab Five alongside Karamo Brown, Tan France, Antoni Porowski and Jonathan Van Ness when the revamped version of Queer Eye debuted in 2018.
Shortly after Berk released his statement about his departure, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that his exit from the series was related to his conflicts with his fellow cast members, noting that he wasn’t “vibing with the cast.”
“There were many challenges with scheduling [and] there was a loss of interest from Bobby filming the show,” the insider shared. “The network and the cast thought it was time to bring in fresh blood. His heart was not in it and the rest of the cast started to resent him because of that.”
In a January 2024 interview with Vanity Fair, Berk confirmed that he and France, 40, had butted heads.
A couple of months later, France offered more details about the root of their drama via an Instagram video.
“This all started because of a comment on a gossip blog that just got reposted and reposted that it’s almost become gospel,” he noted. “So, from the horse’s mouth, I’m telling you that that’s not at all how it went down. And that’s all I’ll say on the matter. If you need to dig deeper, if you still don’t believe it, believe me, so be it. But that’s it.”
Later that month, an exposé published by Rolling Stone claimed that tensions between Berk and France heightened further after France allegedly campaigned to replace the designer with Brent, who happened to be a friend of his.
However, France shut down speculation that he was directly behind his costar’s Queer Eye exit in an Instagram video.
“My former colleague getting fired had nothing to do with me trying to get my friend hired. Netflix and the production companies did a full-on casting,” France told his followers. “I didn’t put my friend up for the job. They ended up getting it because they were the best person for the job. Am I so happy that they have the job? Uh huh, I really am. I think they’re gonna be incredible on the show. But, I didn’t get them hired by getting rid of somebody else.”
The Rolling Stone exposé also claimed that crew members accused Van Ness, 36, of having toxic behavior, which involved “rage issues” and acting emotionally “abusive” toward others on set.
“Jonathan’s a person who contains multitudes and who has the capacity to be very warm, very charismatic, and has the capacity to make you feel really special that they are paying attention to you,” one production member who worked with the star claimed. “But at least once a day, they would need to yell at somebody. It might be something small, but there’s always going to be somebody to point out and blame and make the villain of the day.”
Another accused Van Ness of refusing to share the spotlight with their other Queer Eye costars, stating, “There were times when we couldn’t even shoot scenes with certain members of the Fab Five together because it got so bad.”
Van Ness has not publicly addressed the accusations against them.
