Queer Eye's Antoni Porowski: 'I just wanted to feel like I fitted in'
Two minutes into my conversation with Antoni Porowski, I discover that we’ve both lit a candle to stave off the winter gloom. Lifting a flickering D.S. & Durga jar in front of his laptop screen (Jalisco Rain, in case you’re wondering), he drops a nugget of wisdom: small candles are perfect for hand luggage. ‘If you take the candle out of the bag, it usually doesn’t set off any alarms,’ he says, with a knowledgeable air, then breaks into a boyish grin. ‘There’s some useless travel information for you!’
One might say that dispensing practical advice is what Porowski does best. After all, he’s one-fifth of the group a global audience has come to know and worship as the ‘Fab Five’. Alongside grooming icon Jonathan van Ness, fashion guru Tan France, interiors expert Bobby Berk and cultural connoisseur Karamo Brown, Polish-Canadian Porowski shot to fame in 2018 when he became the resident food and wine expert on Netflix’s hit series Queer Eye, a reboot of the famous 2003 makeover show, then titled Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, which helps people from all walks of life transform their inner lives as well as their wardrobes. With a liberal sprinkling of French tucks, ‘yass queens’ and impromptu therapy sessions, Queer Eye quickly proved to be the kind of uniquely warm TV the world needed.
Porowski and I are speaking one week after the US election, in which former president Donald Trump was elected to the White House for a second term. The past week has been a ‘little stressful for a lot of Americans’, he says mildly, explaining that he believed the election would go in a different direction. ‘I think it’s very sad and troublesome for women’s rights and for a lot of ethnic minorities, but I just try to have faith that the universe is going to figure it out somehow.’ Today, he’s bundled up in a grey hoodie, apologising for looking a little dishevelled, though he looks nothing of the sort. Entire columns have been penned in praise of Porowski’s beauty, and it’s all true; he’s an exquisitely handsome man, with a bone structure that looks like it’s been carved by the gods and a pair of puppy-dog eyes that translate an aura of shyness.
When the first season of Queer Eye landed in 2018, critics lauded the advancement of onscreen gay representation and the way the show portrayed LGBTQ+ people as complex and multidimensional. In an era where television is increasingly centralising real LGBTQ+ perspectives, however, Porowski says the way the show platforms queerness remains just as radical. ‘I think it’s just as important, if not more important. “Progress on the journey to equality,”’ he says, quoting Barack Obama, ‘is usually a case of “two steps forward, one step back”, which is why people have to be vigilant about hard-won rights. Especially where we’re at right now. There are a lot of people that are happy with the direction that the country is heading in, and there are a lot of people who are terrified and who are worried about their rights and their right to exist, to have kids and to marry with threats to Obergefell [a landmark 2015 ruling that established national protections for same-sex marriage in the US].’
As well as being a cultural bridge in an increasingly politically divided country, Queer Eye has found fresh ways to interrogate sexuality and identity, and Porowski says there is a conscious effort to show diversity with the heroes they platform. ‘What I always try to push for is, like, let’s not get too comfortable with showing people that we’re already rooting for. We need to really try to connect with people that we don’t understand, because I think that makes for very interesting storytelling. It’s an opportunity to learn and just to kind of extend my perspective, or try to understand the other side, because they’re things that I’m just genuinely confused about, that I really struggle with. And they’re not all going to get cured in one episode of Queer Eye, but at least we can kind of inch our way towards understanding each other and finding a bit of common ground, because I think we really need that right now.’
Porowski might be responsible for helping the subjects of Queer Eye improve their credentials in the kitchen, but talking with him reveals a thoughtful and passionate chef who has a true appreciation of cuisine and culture. Indeed, he clinched his job on Queer Eye after entrancing producers at his audition with a description of his ideal last meal and it’s not hard to see why he stunned people into silence. When answering a question, he meanders into descriptions of food with a writerly, appetite-driven sensuality: pierogies (Polish dumplings), he explains, are ‘boiled and then fried so they get crispy, with the caramelised onions that are almost burnt and full-fat sour cream’. As a child, he adored the ‘bright green sorrel soup’ made by his mother. And on a recent hiking trip with his father in Zakopane, Poland, he savoured the delights of zurek, a ‘beautiful, sour, rich soup that just puts meat on your bones’. Food, he says, is central to everything he does. ‘It dictates where I come from, where I’m heading. What I eat for dinner every night is a reflection of how my day went,’ he muses. ‘I don’t know, I think about food all the time and I’m obsessed with it, and I’m deeply curious as a person, so I just wanted to learn that about other people as well.’
It makes perfect sense, then, that he’s branching out from Queer Eye with his own National Geographic docuseries, No Taste Like Home. In the show, he embarks on a global culinary adventure with a star-studded lineup of celebrity guests, including Awkwafina, Henry Golding and Florence Pugh, exploring their family history through the lens of food. On the one hand, Porowski explains, it’s a great opportunity to delve deep into an actor’s personal life that we so rarely get to see on screen. On the other, there’s a universality ‘that I think is very relatable of all of our family histories’, he says. ‘I didn’t think that we would go as far as the jungles of Borneo and on to the coastlines of Saint-Louis in Senegal, but we did, and it was just one of the most magical experiences.’
Although genealogy research is done in advance of filming, the unscripted nature of the show produces touching emotional moments. ‘I’m kind of holding the hand of whoever it is that I’m on any given episode with,’ Porowski explains. ‘I do have a bit of information ahead of time, but authenticity is very important to me.’ The most fascinating thing he’s learned, is about the ‘beautiful generational gifts’ that are passed down from our ancestors. He tells me that Pugh, an actor ‘obsessed with eating well’, learned that one of her ancestors sold kipper sandwiches for a living. Golding, who has a Malaysian mother of Iban ancestry, learned that he had headhunters in his family. Issa Rae, meanwhile – a ‘strong f*cking boss’ – discovered that one of her ancestors was one of the first female business owners in Saint-Louis, Senegal, to bring in ingredients from Mali by boat. ‘So we learned that we have these parts of us that are very much ours, but without sounding too cheesy, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and those giants are our ancestors, and everybody has that,’ Porowski says.
The show is as much a personal one for Porowski as it is for his guests. Born in Montreal to Polish parents after they immigrated to Canada, Porowski was the first in his family to be born outside of Europe. Growing up, he had a ‘really weird’ relationship with his identity. ‘I think shame is a strong word, but I didn’t feel very cool being Polish and bringing Polish food to school, to the point of, even when I lived in New York after I graduated, I wanted to legally change my name,’ he recalls. ‘I remember how upset my dad was, because I wanted to make it sound more American. And he really gave me a lot of sh*t. He was like, “How’s anybody gonna know you’re Polish if you change your name to just sound more American?” And I was like, “Oh, that’s actually a good point”, and I didn’t fully get it at the time.’ When he was a teenager, Porowski’s family moved to West Virginia, where he struggled to assimilate in high school. ‘I spoke Polish very well growing up, and I forgot it, I think subconsciously, a little purposefully, when I lived in West Virginia, because I just wanted to feel like I fitted in, because I wanted to sit at the cool kids’ table. I didn’t want to feel like I was an outcast.’ But when he moved back to Canada, he had a change of heart. ‘I was working in a Polish restaurant, and I met young Polish people like me who were actually really proud of where they came from,’ Porowski recalls. ‘I realised, “Well, I’m Polish. I’m not going to change that. This is probably actually something I should be proud of. So I just kind of leaned into it.’
Porowski is also gearing up for the release of the ninth season of Queer Eye, now an 11-time Emmy-winning juggernaut. This time around, however, the ‘Fab Five’ looks noticeably different. In 2023, Bobby Berk announced he was leaving the show to pursue new opportunities, although rumours quickly began to swirl about an alleged feud with his co-star Tan France. Berk has since been replaced by interior designer Jeremiah Brent, who has presented shows in the US with his husband, fellow designer Nate Berkus. ‘The show is evolving and changing, and our family has changed, and it’s still really exciting,’ says Porowski. Filming has been ‘wonderful’ with Brent, he continues, and says the fact that he is married with two children offers ‘a different perspective into the chaos of the five of us’.
Even so, it must be an adjustment, I note, to film with a new cast member. ‘Look, I’ve said this before, but we’re a middle-aged boy band, and we’ve experienced this really bizarre phenomenon together,’ he says. But as a child of divorce, he continues, he understands that families are constantly in a state of flux: ‘I think I try to lean into the impermanence and just have faith that everything is as it should be, even if there’s sadness or joy that comes with it.’ Does he speak to Berk? ‘We’re not really in touch,’ he says. ‘I support anything that he chooses to pursue. I did have some really wonderful years with him; no matter what happened or happens, we will always have these memories and these things that we experienced in the endless press junkets, where one of us is falling asleep from jet lag, and the other one would pick up the other’s slack. And so we always have those beautiful memories.’ He returns to the analogy of shifting family dynamics. ‘Right now, there isn’t too much communication, but I don’t have any resentment or ill-will or anything like that’.
Away from the world of TV, Porowski has just been announced as a new ambassador for the UN World Food Programme, and is working to help girls stay in education in Senegal. And when it comes to personal happiness, he’s all about simple pleasures, such as taking a weekend hiking trip with his dog. ‘When life gets really big, I always try to counter it with something small, because my biggest fear is always getting out of touch, or just getting too obsessed with work and forgetting how to really enjoy myself,’ he says. As if on cue, the morning sunshine edges past the curtain, bathing him in warm golden light. ‘It’s what we touched on right at the beginning,’ he adds. ‘I think it’s trying to balance taking care of myself but also being an active participant in what’s going on in my community.’
No Taste Like Home With Antoni Porowski is coming soon to Disney+ and National Geographic. Season nine of Queer Eye is available to stream on Netflix
This interview is taken from the February 2025 issue of Red
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