Jeremiah Brent Is a Natural—and Needed—Addition to "Queer Eye"

In the first few minutes of the ninth season of Queer Eye, Netflix’s home/life improvement show, the Fab Five find themselves in Las Vegas, running around Caesar’s Palace, in search of something yet to be identified. The team is conspicuously missing a member, but what they are seeking appears to be waiting for them on the roof—a large crate, delivered via helicopter. Jonathan Van Ness, the beauty/grooming guru, opens a suitcase containing a tangle of wires and pushes a big button. The crate opens and reveals its precious cargo: Jeremiah Brent, clad in a tuxedo, grinning, and only somewhat covered in the crinkly paper packaging that he came with. Sprung free from the confines of his container, Brent hugs his brethren, grabs their hands in solidarity, and the group, restored to its ideal form, struts off screen. 

Squint and it’ll seem like these men have always been together, rehabbing and refreshing the lives of strangers in desperate need of outside help; this, as we know, is not true. When it was first announced late last year that Bobby Berk, Queer Eye’s most indefatigable cast member, was departing and moving on to greener and altogether different pastures, I admit to feeling concerned about how the show—and the group’s dynamics—would play out. Though Queer Eye has moved so far away from the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and various reports in the media over the past few years have suggested that these men are just coworkers and not the magical fairy godparent besties they play on TV, there was something about the transformative magic they created together that kept me watching, even though the show itself is structured in such a way to extract emotional reactions that often feel unearned. It’s not that what the Fab Five do isn’t useful, worthy, or good—it’s just that when a nice message is wrapped in mawkish window dressing, it never quite resonates. 

Berk’s presence on the show was generally an antidote to this kind of sentimentality for sentimentality’s sake—as the house guy, he really rolled up his sleeves and got to work, disappearing into the background after the Fab Five wended their way through the space (and ostensibly the life) of the "hero" (the show’s term for the people they make over). Berk often emerged only when the final reveal of the finished house was complete, and the rest of the show’s minutes were occupied by the rest of the men doing what they do, one new wardrobe and recipe at a time.

This is what I expected of Brent on the show; I figured that a newcomer would first sit back and learn the ropes before coming in, guns blazing, ready to shake things up. To his credit, Brent gets right in the mix, making his mark by fitting right in, enjoying a natural rapport with the boys that, for anyone who has not paid close attention to the intricacies of the cast, would feel correct. And as difficult as it is for me to admit this, Brent does lend an air of something new, even though it might not be to my taste—a blandly spiritual, happy-to-be-here presence that fits right in with the rest of the Fab Five’s general mien. 

Brent is still responsible for fixing the interiors, but his approach is a little more hands-on than Berk’s ever was. It’s not rude or incorrect to say that the designs featured on Queer Eye are sort of middling, but what concerned me initially about Brent’s appointment was how he’d translate his very specific style and vibe to the wide range of suburban tract homes and condos the men usually take on. Brent and his husband, Nate Berkus, traffic in a style that I can only call "handsome"—one of their favorite adjectives for their own work that is both specific and irritatingly vague. Think: marbles of every stripe, French antiques, shades of sage and cadet blue and verdigris, and a predilection for large tree branches plonked into enormous vases. This is not for everyone. And because of that fact, I struggled to see how he’d bring this to the denizens of Las Vegas. But I found myself pleasantly surprised at the results and how well he was able to interpret the design in ways that felt natural for his heroes.

The season’s first hero, Paula, is a retired Vegas showgirl whose living room and spare bedroom have been overtaken with the detritus of her seamstress business and also, curiously, a large wall with a pass-through into the kitchen that’s covered in cerulean fake flowers—a stylistic choice that Brent certainly doesn’t approve of, but handles with kid gloves nonetheless.

"Think about what’s serving you," Brent says at one point, invoking the kind of gentle therapy-speak favored by all of the men and pioneered specifically by Karamo, the Fab Five member whose responsibility seems to be teaching vulnerability in 48 hours or less. Brent’s mission is to "pull out her sparkle" and "to elevate her life"—two worthy goals that, naturally, lead him and Paula to a New Age crystals store, somewhere in the dusty outskirts of Las Vegas, where he wanders the aisles speaking carefully about "intentionality" in design. "Your house should have your past," he says at one point. "But you gotta leave room for the future."

When Brent applies these aphorisms to the design, the result is impressive. The clutter and mess have disappeared, swept away into closets or corners, and in its place is a calming living space in varying shades of cream and pink. The furniture is bouclé, the countertops in the kitchen are now marble, and the overall effect is nice to look at But for Paula, who cries (as does Brent) when she sees her new home, it’s perfect. It’s everything she’s ever wanted, articulated in a way that she would never be able to.

The formula of the show is so locked at this point that adding a new cast member by replacing one that was formerly beloved is a great way to shake things up. And even though the design choices are never going to be terrifically design-forward or modern, they’re still somehow elevated versions of what the heroes in question need or want, sometimes without even having to say it at all (at least that the audience sees). In the show’s second episode, a woman named Nicole weeps when she sees her new bedroom, complete with an abstract sort of canopy situation—linen fabric on the ceiling that resembles a Roman shade. She never mentioned wanting a canopy to Brent, but he put one in, anyway. Intuition is a crucial part of good design, and even if Brent’s style is not to your taste, the happiness he brings to the heroes is nice to see. 

Other "heroes" get a similarly spiritual treatment, and Brent slots in nicely to the show’s cadence; his interior design advice is dispensed in between shots of Antoni Powroski furrowing his brow in a kitchen and Karamo doing whatever it is that he does. But it’s a miracle what a fresh coat of paint, new furniture, and marble countertops can do to a tidy little house in a suburban subdivision in Nevada. And that’s maybe where the magic here lies—simple fixes like paint, finishes, and furniture don’t require a sledgehammer, but they do require the one thing Queer Eye has in spades, which is corporate sponsorships. In Paula’s episode, Brent and the crew conspicuously open Amazon boxes; in another, Brent, the "hero," and the cameras linger on the logo at a Crate & Barrel. A custom closet, furnished by The Container Store, makes Clyde "Snack Attack" Gaskins, a poker dealer whose livelihood took a hit when the pandemic hit, cry tears of joy.

You can be "good" at design by knowing the vocabulary required or being able to correctly identify jacquard as opposed to damask, but what makes a home—even a freshly-painted and completely refurbished one—feel like a home is more than money, which the Fab Five and their production team have in spades. To roughly paraphrase Luther Vandross, a house is not a home until the people who are meant to live in it are really doing so, which means the trouble with Queer Eye’s grand reveals is the same as with any other home renovation show. A staged living room, even if it’s decorated to the vision you didn’t even know you had, is still a stage—a set waiting for its actors. And the messy magic of living a life is what the Fab Five can’t pull out of an Amazon box, but good on them—and Brent—for creating the right vessel for opportunity. 

Image courtesy of Netflix

Related Reading:

What Will Jeremiah Brent Bring to Queer Eye?

Bobby Berk Explains His Next Move