Q: Tell the truth, have you and Jeff Lewis ever dated?
A: Let me start by saying that stepping into the world of Flipping Out to shoot a reunion is a nutso experience. You are actually entering Jeff Lewis’s life, which is to say, the life of a high-profile house flipper/interior designer who happens to suffer from OCD. We usually shoot in whatever home Jeff is living in at the time, where his maid, Zoila Chavez, is puttering around in her uniform and full hair/makeup, bitching at “Yeff” under her breath. It really is what it looks like on TV.
Viewers think Jeff and I have a “Sam and Diane” dynamic, and we do get a huge kick out of each other and love to push each other’s buttons. We fell into that rapport when we met for the first time, for lunch at Arnie Morton’s in LA, just before we were to go into production on the first season of the show. He had two goals at the lunch: First, he wanted Jenni Pulos, his assistant and the reason for the show’s existence in the first place (I told this story in the last chapter, so check it out if you forgot), to have a producing credit—to which I agreed. Second, he wanted to find out how many millions of viewers he needed in order to be the highest-rated show on Bravo. I kept telling him not to worry about the ratings and that I had no expectation of his show being the highest-rated on Bravo, but he would not let it rest. He assured me he would do whatever it took to make a great show and that he’d essentially never turn the camera off during his entire production period. He lived up to that promise, and one of the reasons that show is so great is that the camera doesn’t miss a thing. Meanwhile, I spent much of the lunch staring at his lips and much of that first reunion asking every possible lip-related question I could think of. Have you ever really looked at Jeff Lewis’s lips? They are quite remarkable.
On second thought, we look pretty good together.
Oh, and we haven’t dated.
Q: Is Bravo gay?
A: That is a super-deep question. I am attracted to and excited by Bravo. I have been in a long-term relationship with Bravo. But because it is a television network, and not a person, I’m not entirely sure you can call it “gay.” If I had to assign a sexual orientation to it, I would say Bravo is maybe bisexual, because I think at the end of the night, this fun-loving, freewheeling network would be open to going home with whomever it fancied. During my tenure there, we’ve always had an abundant population of gay boys and girls swimming in the Bravo pool, no doubt because we’ve showcased people who are leaders in the fields of food, fashion, beauty, design, and pop culture, where it is safe to say the gay community is well represented. And if you identify Bravo as being “gay” and you assume that was all my doing, I’d like to point out how much gayer Bravo was before I even got there. Boy Meets Boy? Gay Weddings? Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Manhunt? All green-lit before my time, by my boss, British flower, wife, and mother Frances Berwick. Of course, not every single show on the network had an obviously gay theme before I got here. Bravo was also showing things like Cirque du Soleil and Inside the Actor’s Studio. Those are kinda straightish, no?
Maybe the reason some people think of Bravo as gay is because we never shied away from that subject matter the way other networks did, and therefore if you tried to put together a list of some of the all-time gayest moments on Bravo, your head might explode. Because I’m a trained professional, I’ve come up with a few that are top on my mind:
Queer Eye guy Carson Kressley deciding to surprise the Fab 5 by getting bare-assed naked at a Straight Guy’s house, and the Fab 5 locking him outside
Project Runway designer Andrae and other homosexual contestants making dresses out of flowers as Tim Gunn critiqued
A brigade of Atlanta Housewife sidekicks (hairdressers, event planners, and wig wranglers, oh my!) tromping around the ATL wearing high heels
Jeff Lewis and Ryan ending their friendship on television as I try to mediate and not cry
Kathy Griffin performing at a Bear Convention in San Francisco
Work Out’s Jackie Warner “turning” her straight trainer Rebecca
Brad Goreski’s Les Miz–inspired flashmob at his tenth anniversary party
Tabatha’s Salon Takeover star and fabulesbian Tabatha Coffey taking over a gay bar called Ripples
The Real Housewives of New York arguing over who got stage time at a gay marriage rally
The ubiquitous Dwight Eubanks, from Real Housewives of Atlanta, ignoring my protestations and showing me his penile implant on Watch What Happens Live
And while we’re talking about Dwight, I’d venture to say that the fur bikini he claims to have designed for the She by Sheree fashion show finale and the baby shower he threw for Phaedra are in a battle royal for gayest events in Atlanta Housewives history!
Q: Why do Bravolebrities who’ve been sacked keep popping back up again like whack-a-moles?
A: Bravo is like the mob. Once you’re in, you’re in. I used to love when characters who’d long left All My Children reappeared years later (1996: “OMG, Nina is
