Bobby Berk opens up about Tan France feud drama and why he’s really leaving ‘Queer Eye’: ‘There was a situation’
Former “Queer Eye” guy Bobby Berk is dishing on his exit from the Netflix series — and came this close to confirming it had to do with a feud with co-star Tan France.
“Tan and I had a moment,” Berk told Vanity Fair in an interview published Jan. 25. “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,” he continued, “and nothing romantic, just to clarify that.”
Berk, who handled home renovations on the series, first announced he was leaving “Queer Eye” on Nov. 25 in an Instagram post — and that Season 8 of the series, which premiered Jan. 24, would be his last.
After his announcement, series fans noticed that Berk unfollowed France on Instagram, leading to speculation he was feuding with France, who is the show’s personal style guru.
“Should I have unfollowed Tan? No,” Berk said in the Vanity Fair interview. “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 Post has contacted France’s rep for comment.
Berk added that he and France took a step toward reconciliation when they saw each other at the 75th Emmy Awards on Jan. 15 in LA — and said they “embraced each other.”
“I will always have a special place in my heart for [France] and Rob [his husband] and the kids,” Berk told Vanity Fair. “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.”
Berk elaborated that he and the “Queer Eye” crew — France, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski and Jonathan Van Ness — were ready to throw in the towel when their contract was up in September 2022.
“We thought we were done. Mentally and emotionally, I thought we all moved on,” he told Vanity Fair, according to Today.com. “I know I did, and I started planning other things.”
After the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Berk said, Netflix offered them a new contract for another four cycles — and that he figured they were all on the same page as far as leaving the show and that the network would cancel the series.
But France, Brown, Porowski and Van Ness decided to ink the new deal and Berk’s role will be recast (as of writing this, Netflix has not announced his replacement).
Berk said he was angry “for a second” but that he now understands his former castmates’ decision to return.
“All the plans I had made when I thought we weren’t coming back, I just wasn’t willing to change those,” he told Vanity Fair. “I would have had to pump the breaks on multiple other projects that are already in process.
“We had mentally just prepared ourselves to move on — that’s why I left.”
