“WE TALK
ABOUT
WOMEN AND
THEIR BODY
ISSUES...
BUT WE PUT
THAT SAME
PRESSURE
ON MEN.
CLOCKWISE
FROM FAR LEFT
George and his son
Levi on their farm;
Tan, the ‘style guy’
serving his best
cowboy chic; the
town of Yass had
never seen so many
selfies; Antoni
outside Yass‘ Club
House Hotel.physically with another man – there’s nothing
sexual about it.”
In a manner that feels only gently formulaic,the production crew begins to tick-off the key
moments in the episode: the meet-and-greet
chat, the wardrobe assessment, and,
eventually, come to a shot that will clearly be
the make-or-break of the mini-episode.
Karamo Brown is the reboot’s chosen ‘cultureguy’. But rather than introducing the ‘heroes’ to
theatre, or ballet, or stand-up comedy – as the
original series did – Brown has evolved the role
to introduce men to other things: to gentle self-
relection, to gradual emotional confrontation,
to the articulation of feelings they may not yet
have realised were there.
The role suits him. Brown’s background insocial work and psychotherapy gives his cues
an underpinning of sincerity, and an ability to
know when, and where to push.
Season one of the rebooted Queer Eye wasilmed in and around Georgia – a irmly
conservative US state, and a far cry from New
York, where the original was based. As such,
the men who would become the subjects of
transformations have been far more diverse.
The ive men, too, feel more diverse: Brown is
an African-American, while Tan France is a
gay Muslim Brit with Pakistani heritage.
In one episode, Brown’s one-on-one timewith ‘hero’ Cory Waldrop – a Trump-
supporting white police oficer – proved to
be one of the show’s coming-of-age scenes,
as the two discussed African-American
relations with the police force. There were
no overwhelming revelations, no neat bow tied
on the issue, but the fact that the conversation
went there, and went there respectfully, is
a mark of the maturation of a TV show that’s
easy to dismiss. Each of the Fab Five help the
show’s subjects open up emotionally – but
Brown is undoubtedly the lynchpin.
“I was ighting, day in and day out to have
the men have these cathartic cries. And not in
a sadistic way,” he says. “I would get upset in
an episode if one of our heroes did not have anAUGUST 2018 GQ.COM.AU 137