Netflix’s “Queer Eye” cast is no stranger to behind-the-scenes dust-ups, and now star Tan France is opening up about one previously unknown point of tension from early in his time on the reboot: coming out.
Tan, who’s from a conservative Muslim family of Pakistani descent, shared on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “Dinner’s On Me” podcast Tuesday that the fact he was not openly gay to his family while the series was filming ahead of its 2018 premiere caused a “heated argument” with one of his Fab Five cast mates.
“I’ve never said this before, and I won’t say who it was, but during filming of that first season, somebody on the cast was quite frustrated with me when they found out that I wasn’t out to my family,” France said, explaining that they said, “Well, basically, you’re kind of a traitor to us on this show if you’re not out. Like, how can you be on ‘Queer Eye’ and not be singing it from the rooftops?”
“We got into a heated argument, and I was saying, ‘You have no idea what my experience is as a queer Muslim, a queer Brown person, a queer immigrant,’” France continued. “‘It’s all well and good, you saying this, but you will never understand what it’s like as a person of color trying to come out when you’ve had nobody ever say those words in your community before.’”
“So yeah, I was navigating something so different to everybody else at the time, so it felt really heavy. But once my family accepted it and understood it — and now, God, they’re a huge part of my life. They love my husband. They love my kids. We are so close again.”
Watch the full interview below:
Elsewhere in the podcast, France recalled finally coming out to his family — just two days before “Queer Eye” premiered.
“That must have been really intense,” Ferguson empathized as France admitted to feeling “physically sick” about the conversation.
“I know a lot of people come out when they’re younger, and I’m very happy for them, and that’s amazing that they can,” France reflected. “I was in a Pakistani-Muslim family. You’re not coming out early. You’re just not. I’d never heard another South Asian say, ‘I’m gay.’ I think that most of my people just assumed it was a white person thing.”
The entertainer used his mother as an example, explaining she’d never even “thought of the notion that two people of the same gender could be into each other. And so it’s teaching somebody the basics of what queer people are — and then saying, ‘And now I’m telling you I am one of those.’”
Coming out to his family ultimately led to a falling out where they did not speak to France for a year, he said. But after watching “Queer Eye,” they came around to understanding “you’re not the devil just because you’re gay.”
“We’re very, very, very close,” France emphasized.
France’s admission to clashing with one of his “Queer Eye” co-stars came Tuesday just weeks after Fab Five cast mate Karamo Brown opened up about his own tensions on the reality TV series. The 10th and final season of the reboot debuted in January.
