‘Queer Eye’ Exposé ‘Paralyzed’ Jonathan Van Ness: ‘There Were Times Where I Could Have Been Better’

After three months, Jonathan Van Ness has broken their silence on allegations of emotional abuse and displays of rage brought forth by Queer Eye crew members in an investigation published by Rolling Stone in March.

In the report, four Queer Eye production sources and three sources who worked with Van Ness described them as “demeaning,” referring to them as a “monster” and a “nightmare.” These seven individuals stated that the reality star would lash out at crew members and people who worked closely with them. Three noted that Van Ness — who uses they/she/he pronouns — was at times emotionally “abusive,” with one source explaining: “[There’s] a real emotion of fear around them when they get angry. It’s almost like a cartoon where it oozes out of them. It’s intense and scary.” (At the time, Van Ness did not reply to Rolling Stone‘s multiple requests for comment.)

Another source who worked with Van Ness told Rolling Stone that these moments would occur “at least once a day,” adding: “They would need to yell at somebody. It might be something small, but there’s always going to be somebody to point out and blame and make the villain of the day.”

During a recent appearance on the Table Manners podcast, Van Ness revealed that when she first learned of the article from Netflix, she spent months “walking on eggshells” and wondering: “When is this going to happen?”

Van Ness claims that Netflix warned him that the article wasn’t “really based in reality, but can certainly have a lot of things taken out of context to make you look as bad as possible.” “That article came at an incredibly vulnerable time, like for my hair care company, for my whole career,” he added, noting that his company had recently declared bankruptcy at the time.

“Even though I do believe that that article was overwhelmingly untrue and done in bad faith, there have obviously been times throughout my career where you’re stressed out or I may have been elbow deep in highlights and was like, no, I can’t talk about that right now,” Van Ness continued. “I know that there were times where I could have been better. But I think also being a survivor of abuse and talking about everything that I’ve talked about, I internalized it so badly. I was like, oh my God, is it true? Like, am I really this bad person?”

Van Ness explained that they took the experience as a learning opportunity. “It forced me to just really learn how to slow down, disengage and then really love myself. But sometimes loving yourself just looks like feeling your feelings. And I just had to be sad for a minute. And I just had to kind of withdraw and go into myself and feel it,” they said. And then once I got done feeling it, I was able to get the language to be able to say what I just said. It just kind of paralyzed me.”

Once the article was published, Van Ness says they sought comfort from their husband and professional team and avoided social media for three weeks, noting: “Anytime I tried to dip my toe in, I would immediately see something that was so intensely hurtful.” They added that they thought “a lot of people were looking for a reason to hate me or looking for a reason to be like, ‘See, I always knew that they were a fake cunt.’”