THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 21 AUGUST 21, 2019
EMMYS
THE
RACEHow TV’s Top Drama
Made Me a Comedian
Recapping Game of Thrones on Gay of Thrones gave Queer Eye’s grooming expert his big break — but
now the Emmy nominee (for shortform variety series) is mourning two series at once BY JONATHAN VAN NESSCo-dependency. I’ve
been struggling with
her since the 1992
Barcelona Summer
Olympic Games
nearly robbed me
of the ability to leave my house
at age 5, largely thanks to the
American women’s gymnastics
team’s heroic bronze medal.
Sometimes we can’t help but be
overly invested in someone else’s
successes and setbacks.
I only recently got out of a
thrilling but sometimes toxic
relationship. I know. Me? Single?
It’s a crime! Anyhoo, my part-
ner? HBO’s Game of Thrones.
How I loved them! They were
stunningly beautiful, brilliant,
sometimes problematic, exciting
and heartbreaking. Without Game
of Thrones, Gay of Thrones would
just be Gay — which honestly isn’t
a bad idea for a show, but it’s not
what we were there to do.
At Gay of Thrones, we recapped
every single episode of Game of
Thrones from inside a gorgeousfake hair salon in a cramped
office space off Melrose Avenue.
Doing our show, with our perspec-
tive, was a huge responsibility.
Episodes of Game of Thrones could
be more complex and intense than
a Florence Welch harmony. We
encapsulated the pivotal moments
of each episode into a five-minute
show and included a hairstyle
makeover! Tough edits had to be
made for time. “Would people on
the internet give us hell for not
covering Bran’s Miss Cleo routine
this week?” In the early seasons,
we literally had a few hours to
write and film an entire episode.
By the end, we were graced with
an extra day to prepare. That’s
still less time than they give
Emilia Clarke to get into her wig!
But we had a responsibility to
give our viewers a solid recap,
sprinkling in enough Scary Spice
references so they knew they were
among friends.
Some of our fans never even
watched Game of Thrones,
so we tried to give fans andnonfans alike a sense of the
show so they could confidently
talk about Baby Barack Obama
[Jacob Anderson] and Solange’s
[Nathalie Emmanuel] relation-
ship status while browsing salt
lamps at House of Intuition. If
that isn’t noble, then I don’t know
what is. We watched every move
they made with bated breath.
“Would this be the episode where
Brother D [Nikolaj Coster-Waldau]
finally gets his comeuppance?”
And you have no idea how badly
we wanted to comeuppance him!
Whether it was a big battle with amajor character’s demise or just
time-killing with everyone talk-
ing about the next episode, we
had to recap it.
I’ve never wanted children of
my own. (I have my own gymnas-
tics classes to get to, honey!) But
Game of Thrones was the child I
never had. You love them, but you
also have to let them go and make
their own way. If the internet
was mad at Game of Thrones one
week, we couldn’t let that affect
us. Too-dark-to-see battle scenes
can’t get in your way when you
have Dance Dance Revolution
references to make.
Game of Thrones has done noth-
ing short of change my life. The
series that introduced us all to
Westeros also introduced me to a
side of myself I’d never known. To
be welcomed into a small com-
munity within the Gay of Thrones
family was the catalyst I needed
to discover how much I love to
make people laugh. So much has
changed since Gay of Thrones
started. I have grown far past
my wildest dreams for myself as
an entertainer, comedian and
producer. I will miss the unpar-
alleled excitement of getting
together with Erin Gibson, Matt
Mazany, Joan Ford, Mark Rennie
and our Funny or Die family to
watch Game of Thrones and then
to go on an hours-long adventure
in writing and improv. I feel so
proud of the way we were able to
grow and evolve while offering a
strong, unapologetically female
and LGBTQ perspective on some-
thing mainstream.Van Ness started recapping Game of Thrones
in 2013, during the HBO drama’s third season.C
Van Ness parlayed Gay of Thrones into a lucrative gig among
the Fab Five of Netflix’s (also Emmy-nominated) Queer Eye.