Karamo Brown Says Queer Eye Made Him ‘Feel Like an Outsider’

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Karamo Brown Says Queer Eye Made Him ‘Feel Like an Outsider’

Photo: Michael Kovac/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images

Queer Eye has been a hotbed of inter-cast tumult for years — Bobby Berk quit the show after season eight, acknowledging that there had been tension between himself and Tan France; Jonathan Van Ness has been accused of being verbally abusive on set. But things really hit a fever pitch earlier this year when Karamo Brown abruptly dropped out of promotional events for Queer Eye’s final season, for fear of what his assistant described as “being bullied.” This week, Brown explained his side of the on-set drama at length in a new People interview, and from the sound of it, the Queer Eye crew has pretty much never gotten along.

Brown told People that tensions between the Fab Five began in the first few weeks of filming in 2017, when an anonymous sexual-harassment complaint was filed against him. According to Brown, he and another castmate, whom he did not name, had a “fun and flirty” relationship while the show was in casting, and Brown accused this castmate of filing the complaint before later learning it had been filed by an anonymous third party. Brown said he was cleared of wrongdoing, but it seems the guys never really moved past the complaint. “It broke us,” Brown said.

It sounds like the vibes on the Queer Eye set from then on were absolutely dismal — even as its first few seasons were hailed as the last word in feel-good television. An unnamed insider described the environment to People as “toxic as hell,” backing up Brown’s claim that a higher-up threatened to fire him. Brown said that, in season three, he relapsed after being sober for 12 years (he has now been sober for more than a year and regularly attends meetings). Confirming tabloid reports from when he dropped out of the promotional events, Brown said the last straw that led him to part ways with the rest of the cast was when his mom overheard his co-stars trash-talking him while she was visiting the show’s set in 2025. Brown said he picked up all he needed to know about the conversation from “the tears I saw in my mother’s eyes.” He added, “It made me realize I can no longer stay silent about how often I was made to feel like an outsider.”

Despite all this, Brown says he’s ready to move on. Acknowledging his own contribution to the on-set toxicity — “there were times I was hurt and would lash back out” — he argued that he and all of his co-stars deserve a little grace. “We were just doing our best,” he said. “It may not have felt like that in the moment, but it’s very clear to me now.”