The O.G. ‘Queer Eye’ Turns 20: Where’s the Original Fab Five Now?
Things keep improving, especially for the stars of Queer Eye. On July 15, 2003 — 20 years ago now — the Queer Eye franchise debuted with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a Bravo makeover show with a totally different Fab Five than the gang you see in the Netflix reboot.
Those five original stars were “Food and Wine Connoisseur” Ted Allen, “Grooming Guru” Kyan Douglas, “Design Doctor” Thom Filicia, “Fashion Savant” Carson Kressley, and “Culture Vulture” Jai Rodriguez.
That Bravo show — which eventually morphed into Queer Eye as the show expanded its scope beyond cis-het male subjects — aired five seasons and 100 episodes until its finale on October 30, 2007. Of course, the first Fab Five didn’t just stop there. See what they’ve been up to in the photo gallery below.
Ted Allen
Since 2009, Allen has hosted the Food Network competition series Chopped — appearing in more than 700 episodes by this point — and he hosted the spinoffs Chopped Junior and Chopped After Hours.
“Chopped is a place of passion, discovery, talent,” he told TV Insider in 2019. “Even though it’s tightly formatted, there’s no end to the ways it surprises and shocks and even makes you shed a tear.”
In the years since his Queer Eye days, Allen has also made frequent appearances on Top Chef, Iron Chef America, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, and Beat Bobby Flay. His cookbooks, meanwhile, include The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes and In My Kitchen: 100 Recipes and Discoveries for Passionate Cooks.
Kyan Douglas
After Queer Eye, Douglas hosted a season of the TLC reality series 10 Years Younger and made more than 100 appearances as a style expert on the talk show Rachael Ray. He visited the latter show one last time in May 2022 to announce that he’d be stepping away from his TV career.
“I am retiring from the television business at last,” he told host Rachael Ray. “I just feel ready to move on to something else. I don’t know what that is yet, but things come to an end, and the universe will fill a void. It’s time to step away and see what’s next for me.”
He’s currently on Cameo, so fans can purchase personalized videos from the Queer Eye star.
Thom Filicia
Now the proprietor of the interior design business Thom Filicia Inc., Filicia has worked on residential and commercial interiors around the world, according to his website. He also has a furniture and decor line, the Thom Filicia Home Collection, and a lifestyle brand, Sedgwick & Brattle.
On TV, Filicia hosted the Style Network shows Dress My Nest and Tacky House and reunited with Kressley for the 2018 Bravo show Get a Room with Carson & Thom. He competed on RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race in 2022 — “You’re one of my favorite men in the entire world, and now you’re one of my favorite women, too,” quipped Kressley, a judge on the show — and then brought back his drag queen alter-ego, Jackie Would, in RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 8.
Carson Kressley
After Queer Eye, Kressley hosted the Lifetime reality series How to Look Good Naked and made dozens of appearances on daytime TV shows like Live With Kelly and Mark, Good Morning America, and The Wendy Williams Show. He also competed on Season 13 of Dancing With the Stars (coming in eighth place), Season 3 of the Australian reality show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (coming in eighth), Season 11 of Worst Cooks in America (coming in seventh), and Season 3 of Celebrity Big Brother (coming in sixth).
Kressley has served as a judge of the Drag Race franchise since 2015, though he missed most of this year’s 15th season, later explaining at a viewing party for the competition series that he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on set.
Jai Rodriguez
Rodriguez has been steadily working since his Queer Eye days — notably starring opposite Reba McEntire in the 2012 ABC sitcom Malibu Country. More recently, the actor guest-starred in shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The Rookie, Equal, Bosch: Legacy, and Uncoupled. He also popped up in the film Bros last year and episodes of Fantasy Island and Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens this year.
In a recent interview on the podcast Behind the Velvet Rope, Rodriguez also revealed that he bombed his audition to play Cam on Modern Family. “I decided to play him butch, so, not at all what they were looking for,” he recalled. “And I see them looking at me — I’m three lines in — and then they just looked down and they zoned out.”
