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A striking amount of reality show creators were gay, like John Murray, who created The Real World, and Charlie Parsons, who helped create Survivor. I don’t know whether that’s because gay men were excluded and marginalized, so ended up being in a more marginalized art form; or whether it has to do with a certain arch awareness of behavior.
Then you get to Bravo—which was founded, pretty much, based on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
I was shocked to learn in your book that when [the original 2003] Queer Eye premiered, three of the guys weren’t out to their families.
It does sound bananas, right? Just using the word “queer” was very shocking. Three of the guys, including Carson Kressley—who’s the most flamboyant, funny, fantastically charismatic character on that show, and who worked in fashion—had not come out to his family. And so Carson had to talk to them before he was on the cover of TV Guide. He said it made his coming out a really celebratory thing, because it overlapped completely with his rise to fame and his professional success. So for his mom and her friends, it was not just that Carson was out as gay; it was that Carson was a TV star.
A lot of things have changed since then, but I think that that show had a really powerful effect on the culture. It presents gay men not as the objects of mockery, or even as the kooky best friend, but as living lives that were so aspirational and admirable that goofy straight guys could only hope to replicate them.
Producers can be very manipulative—trying to provoke a reaction by acting like a contestant’s therapist, or even splicing together disconnected words or syllables in the editing room. You write about how reality TV workers have to find their own ethical line—and for a lot of them, it’s working on dating shows. Why?
I talked to field producers, editors, camera operators, audio operators, people who had done PA jobs, creators of shows. There were certain conventional questions I’d ask: What’s your favorite type of show to film? What type of show don’t you like to work on? What’s the line you won’t cross?