What Will Jeremiah Brent Bring to "Queer Eye"?

The legions of Queer Eye fans left weeping at the thought of Bobby Berk no longer being on the show can now breathe a sigh of relief. Netflix announced Tuesday that Berk will be replaced by designer Jeremiah Brent, who will be joining the cast for the show’s ninth season, which is set to start shooting later this spring. The folks of Queer Eye will be taking their talents from New Orleans to Las Vegas, where the Fab Five will work their magic on another batch of unsuspecting citizens desperate for the change that only this group can bring.

Berk’s departure came as a surprise to longtime fans of the show, but his newest project—a line of curated interiors for Tri Pointe Homes—is a logical next step. And for Brent, Queer Eye might actually be the most logical next step, too; it’s hard to imagine a non-household name jumping into a group of now famous hosts. He’s been the host of Netflix’s Say I Do already, is the recent author of The Space That Keeps You, has been working as a designer since 2012 under his company Jeremiah Brent Design (JBD), and is also married to Nate Berkus, who, for the uninitiated, got his start in the public eye as Oprah Winfrey’s designer of choice. They were also in the news recently for buying back their old New York apartment, where the book party was hosted. Plus, OG fans will remember him as Rachel Zoe’s assistant on The Rachel Zoe Project.

The pair have been married since 2014 and have even taken their particular show on the road: in their shows Nate & Jeremiah by Design and The Nate and Jeremiah Home Project. In an interview with People last week, Brent was mentioned as a "fan favorite" replacement for Berk, to which he responded, "I’m open to anything. I love those boys. I’m friends with them, and I’ve got a lot of respect for what the show does and what it represents. It’s what matters most to me about design, so you never know. I'm open to anything that life presents."

For home renovation TV enthusiasts, Brent is a great get. He’s a charming personality with the appropriate amount of emotion, and has yet to make a homeowner cry in a bad way on any of the television shows I’ve seen him on. But if you’re curious about what he might do to the denizens of Las Vegas and their highly-specific interiors, look no further than his catalog of work. HGTV’s The Nate and Jeremiah Home Project concept bears some similarities to Queer Eye’s renovations: the clients need help with a certain space in their house and generally present a few pieces from their existing home as non-negotiables—your aunt Edith’s sideboard in the dining room that is objectively hideous but holds meaning or a particularly difficult (read: unattractive) armchair. Brent and Berkus generally regard these sentimental objects as a challenge, and usually are able to incorporate them into the finished spaces, along with their patented blend of muted colors, pops of marble, and varying shades of ecru, cream, oatmeal, and linen. Much like the end result of a Queer Eye renovation, the finished product is beautiful, functional, and unexpected. But the difference here is that the interiors Nate and Jeremiah create feel very reflective of their taste specifically and not so much the homeowners’. (Yes, this is largely the point of hiring an interior designer in the first place, but the finished product would ideally feel both new and familiar—a perfect marriage between the designer’s aesthetic and your own.)

Call it the Fixer Upper effect, wherein the reason to hire a designer is not just because you need help honing and refining your own taste, but also because it’s easier (maybe) to have someone else make the decisions for you. Unlike on Queer Eye, though, where the tight timeline of the show means that the homeowners have very little say in what’s happening to their home, The Nate and Jeremiah Home Project allows their clients to have an opinion with regards to colors and the items that they’d like to keep in the home. But if you watch all of the show in mostly one sitting, as I did sometime last year, you’ll see that it’s a bit of an illusion. Nate and Jeremiah have a specific point of view, and create interiors that can be described as "handsome" or, in their words, "Parisian"—not overly masculine, but strong in shape, proportion, and design. If there’s an entry or a foyer, the floors will be harlequin marble and they have an obsession with herringbone parquet that should be addressed privately. The homeowners are always pleased with the results, which are drastically different from what came before—and just like on Queer Eye, there’s a sense of relief that they didn’t have to make any of the decisions. It’s luxe but not so luxe as to feel unlivable; it’s just a style that is particularly, specifically theirs, and is not necessarily everyone else’s. This is the bread and butter of home renovation reality television—to show the ordinary person that the extraordinary is within reach, even if it doesn’t look quite how you imagined it. It will be interesting to see how he manifests his vision via the tighter timeline of Queer Eye, and while I have no doubt that he’s an excellent personality hire, I wonder if his design choices (quietly expensive in a Loro Piana way) will resonate in the upcoming season’s chosen city of Las Vegas’s entire vibe—Liberace-adjacent, loud like Versace, and unapologetically, unabashedly itself. 

Photo by Adrian Gaut

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