‘Queer Eye’s’ Karamo Brown Hopes the Show Continues to Tell Diverse Stories and Include Transgender Women
Karamo Brown from Queer Eye would love to see the series continue to unveil more diverse stories, which means sharing experiences from transgender women too.
He recounts Queer Eye‘s original roots, where the series title was Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. The Fab 5 was a groundbreaking new concept featuring five gay men who were masters in their professions. The idea was to combine their resources in order to elevate the subject, a disheveled, often white straight man, into a more refined human.
Since the show’s trailblazing inception in 2003, Queer Eye transformed into more of a storytelling series, where new Fab 5 cast members tell the story of a deserving “hero.” The show has become more diverse and hedged beyond the original cut and dry approach of glamming up one white man. And while the series has expanded its reach Brown would love to see it taken even further.
Karamo Brown would love 70 more seasons of ‘Queer Eye’
Brown joked that he’d love to see the series continue for 70 more seasons. “My hope for the future of the show is 70 more seasons because we know Hollywood, they like to cancel sh*t and then you don’t get a check no more,” he shared on The Daily Smile podcast on Wondery hosted by Nikki Boyer.
“I’m like, ‘Please more, Netflix.’ But my hope for the show is also that we continue to tell diverse stories, you know, like from season one to season,” he continued. “We’re shooting season six right now. You know, we have worked with the network and the production company and encouraged them and luckily, they’ve been so open to it to be like ‘We need more diversity’.”
‘Queer Eye’ has come a long way, baby
Brown recounted Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s first season filled with straight white guys. “Except for like I think two stories of people,” he said. “I don’t even think we … did we have a woman in season one? We didn’t have one female in season one I don’t think. I’m trying to remember back, but I don’t. It doesn’t matter.”
“Point being is, that’s a problem that I can’t even remember if we had a female person in season one, you know what I mean? That’s an issue,” he asserted. “And we as a five of us were like ‘Mm, this is not okay, we’ve got to change this.’ And the network’s always like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re listening.’ We didn’t. We didn’t see this blind spot. We’re listening.”
Brown says every year gets better and better. “And every year it’s gotten more and more diverse,” he continued. “You know, we now tell an equal amount of stories of men and women. But now we need to start telling people who are nonbinary and not on that female to male spectrum. There’s still more stories of, you know, we’ve only told one story of one man who is disabled. We haven’t told the story of different people, different people who are disabled. We’ve only told one Asian-American story. I mean, like we need to tell more. There there’s so many more stories. We’ve told the story of one trans man. We haven’t told the experience of trans women.”
