Queer Eye has found Bobby Berk‘s replacement in the Fab Five. Jeremiah Brent will now serve as the interior design expert following Berk’s exit in Season 8.
Netflix announced Brent’s casting on Tuesday, February 27, simultaneously revealing that Queer Eye Season 9 will film in Las Vegas. Production will begin this spring.
Viewers may know Brent from his work on Netflix’s reality series Say I Do: Surprise Weddings and HGTV’s Home Town Kickstart and The Nate & Jeremiah Home Project, which co-stars his husband, fellow interior designer Nate Berkus. Brent joins original cast members Tan France, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown, and Antoni Porowski.
Queer Eye Season 8, which premiered on January 24, was Berk’s final season. Berk revealed ahead of Season 8’s release that the Fab Five had signed on for seven seasons at first, and they all said their goodbyes after filming wrapped on Season 7. Then Netflix offered to renew their contracts, and all but Berk said yes.
“We thought we were done. Mentally and emotionally, I thought we all moved on. I know I did, and I started planning other things,” Berk told Vanity Fair.
“We’d just assumed that the show wouldn’t come back if we all didn’t come back,” he continued. “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 his co-stars ultimately decided to return, Berk said, “and with only one of us not coming back, Netflix felt [it] could recast one person.”
While Berk was definitely upset for a time, he remains confident in his decision to exit the series.
“All the plans that I had made when I thought we weren’t coming back, I just wasn’t willing to change those,” he said. “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.”
Queer Eye is produced by Scout Productions and ITV Entertainment.
Queer Eye, Season 9 Premiere, TBA, Netflix
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
