Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness has responded to allegations of “difficult” behaviour on the show, saying they were “overwhelmingly untrue”.
The hairdresser, 37, was subject of a report by Rolling Stone in March, which claimed they had “rage issues” and were a “nightmare” to work with on set.
Van Ness told Jessie and Lennie Ware’s Table Manners podcast that the article was written “in bad faith”.
“I think a lot of people were like looking for a reason to hate me or like looking for a reason to be like, ‘See, I always knew that they were fake… and this is the proof,'” they said.
However, speaking about times they might have been “stressed out”, Van Ness did acknowledge: “I know there were times where I could have been better.”
Van Ness, who identified as non-binary in 2019, also revealed that the cast of the hit Netflix show found out about the planned article last December, around the same time their hair care brand – JVN Hair – was sold.
“I went from this bankruptcy [to] then, ‘Oh, there’s someone who’s going to write an investigative takedown, exposé piece about you that isn’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,'” they said.
“So from January to March, I was walking on eggshells being like, ‘When is this going to happen?’ And then it finally did happen.”
They also said, following the backlash, they avoided going on social media.
“My family was so supportive, and my husband and my team,” they said.
“But I didn’t even get on social media to look at my phone for like three weeks and any time I tried to dip my toe in, I would immediately see something that was so intensely hurtful.”
