Queer Eye Season 8 is Bobby Berk‘s last. The interior designer announced his impending departure from the Emmy-winning Netflix reality series when Queer Eye was renewed for Season 9 in November 2023. Now, Berk has revealed why he’s really leaving the show.
Berk gave an interview about his final Queer Eye season to Vanity Fair just before Season 8 premiered on Netflix on Wednesday, January 24. “Queer Eye has been the most amazing gift that I couldn’t have ever imagined. It’s been a life-changing moment,” he told the outlet. “I’m leaving something that is a huge part of my life. Even though it’s my decision, it still wasn’t an easy one.”
A supposed feud between Berk and co-star/fashion expert Tan France is rumored to be the cause of Berk’s exit. “I hope this interview will help extinguish some of the speculation,” he said of those rumors. “I want people to know that Tan and I — we will be fine.” In reality, Berk says he and the rest of the Fab Five — Berk, France, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown, and Antoni Porowski) thought Season 7 would be the show’s last, as it marked the end of their seven-season contract. The stars started saying their goodbyes to the series and everything.
“The Fab Five and the crew, we all stood there, and we took pictures and cried,” Berk said of the last day on set of Season 7. “We thought we were done. Mentally and emotionally, I thought we all moved on. I know I did, and I started planning other things.”
When the actors’ and writers’ strikes hit in 2023, Berk says Netflix offered a contract renewal to the Fab Five to fill the gaps in its catalogue. The contract proposed four more seasons with the five stars. Berk decided not to sign the new contract and says that other co-stars considered doing the same.
“We’d just assumed that the show wouldn’t come back if we all didn’t come back,” he explained. “I was like, I’m not going to be having FOMO ’cause the show is not going to happen. I had become at peace with it.” But France, Van Ness, Brown, and Porowski ultimately decided to return, Berk said, “and with only one of us not coming back, Netflix felt [it] could recast one person.” Reported contract talks among the stars are said to have influenced their reasons to accept the contract, but those exact reasons were not disclosed by Berk.
“There were definitely emotions. But each one of us had our reasons why we did what we did,” Berk added. “I can’t be mad—for a second I was.”
He didn’t go back on his decision not to return because other plans were too far set in motion. “All the plans that I had made when I thought we weren’t coming back, I just wasn’t willing to change those,” he revealed. “I would have had to pump the brakes on multiple other projects that are already in process. We had mentally just prepared ourselves to move on — that’s why I left.”
Gavin Bond/Netflix
Berk addressed the fan comments joking that he had a the hardest job on the show, as he was tasked with renovating an entire home in a short number of days while his co-stars’ tasks weren’t as much of an overhaul. “You will have never found me quoted as saying that I have the most important job and I do the most work. All five of us are of equal importance,” he said.
Berk does acknowledge that he and France had a fight. Fans noticed that France has not been tagging Berk in his Queer Eye photos on social media recently, the interior designer says that’s because he no longer follows France on Instagram and his settings don’t allow people he doesn’t follow to tag him in photos.
“Tan and I had a moment,” Berk revealed. “There was a situation, and that’s between Tan and I, and it has nothing to do with the show. It was something personal that had been brewing — and nothing romantic, just to clarify that.”
“Should I have unfollowed Tan? No,” Berk added. “Maybe I should have just muted him. But that day, I was angry, and that’s the end of it. We became like siblings — and siblings are always going to fight.”
The pair reunited at the Emmys, and Berk feels reconciliation is in their future. “We both embraced each other, and we both said congratulations. And that’s where we are right now,” he said of the Emmys reunion.
“I will always have a very special place in my heart for him and Rob [France’s husband] and the kids,” Berk added. “I can foresee in six months or a year, Tan and I at each other’s house being good. The Emmys was already the first bandage on that wound.”
Queer Eye, Season 8, Available now, Netflix
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
