Jonathan Van Ness is breaking the silence. In the last episode of Table manners podcast, the Queer Eye star spoke for the first time about The Rolling Stone expose who claimed the hairdresser was “emotionally abusive” and had “anger issues” on the set of the series.
“Our whole strange eye family first learned about this article in December,” Van Ness said. “I heard… ‘There is someone who is going to write an investigative takedown/exposure article about you that isn’t really based in reality, but it certainly could have a lot of things taken out of context to make you look as bad as possible. So this could fall at any time. Just so you know.'”
From the moment Van Ness was alerted to the article until its publication in March, they were “just walking on eggshells.”
“And then it finally happened,” they recalled. “One thing it taught me was that I was getting a lot of self-esteem from social media and my job. I really didn’t think I got that much self-esteem from it (until it was threatened).”
The exposure, Van Ness believes, came at a time when “a lot of people were looking for a reason to hate me or looking for a reason to say, ‘See, I always knew they were fake and this is the proof.'”
During the tumultuous period, which also occurred in the midst of a challenging time for Van Ness’ hair product lineVan Ness leaned on their husbandMark Peacock, as well as his family and team.
“I didn’t even go on social media (or) look at my phone for three weeks. Every time I tried to dive in, I would immediately see something that was so intensely hurtful,” Van Ness recalled. “I think people forget, no matter how famous you are, you’re still a person… I’m certainly in a more comfortable financial situation than I was five years ago, but this article came at an incredibly vulnerable time, for my hair care company, my entire career has been very difficult.”
Although Van Ness noted that they are “someone who advocates self-acceptance,” the article made them realize that “sometimes self-acceptance looks like having to love yourself in incredibly difficult times.”
“Even though I believe this article was overwhelmingly false and done in bad faith,” Van Ness said, “there have obviously been times in my career when you have been stressed. it was like, ‘No, I can’t talk about this right now.’ I know there were times when I could have been better.”
“But I think also, being an abuse survivor and talking about everything I talked about, I internalized it so badly. I was like, ‘Oh my God, is it true? Am I really this bad person?'” they continued. “It forced me to really learn to slow down, tune out, and then really love myself.”
Van Ness noted that sometimes self-love “feels like feeling your feelings.”
“I just had to be sad for a minute. I just had to pull myself back and go into myself and feel it, and then when I was done feeling it, I was able to make the language say what I had just said,” they said. “It kind of paralyzed me, and then it took me a while to learn how I wanted to talk about it or if I wanted to talk about it at all.”
At the time of exposure, a source told ET“Some of the cast and crew of Queer Eye It seems that Jonathan Van Ness has had a sense of entitlement for some time now. This has caused tension and awkwardness between them.”
“They feel like Jonathan could quickly react negatively if something didn’t go the way Jonathan wanted or as planned,” the source added. “Some of the people who worked with Jonathan felt intimidated by Jonathan and, like, Jonathan is difficult to work with.”
O Rolling Stone the article was published a week later Netflix announced what Jeremiah Brent he would be replace Bobby Berk about Queer Eye for season 9. ET spoke to culinary expert Antoni Porowski following the article and the recasting, and he gave an update about how things were going on the set of the show.
“We all hang out together and we’ve all loved sharing a trailer since day one. Sometimes we won’t get along, but at the end of the day, we’re family,” he said. “… Through good times and bad, we’re in this together.”
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