Queer Eye’s food and wine expert, Antoni Porowski, has opened up further about his sexuality and some of his struggles with single life.
In spring 2018, Porowski said in an interview with Gay Times that his sexuality is “a little more fluid along the spectrum … Some people want to define themselves and they should as it is part of their identity. For me personally, I’ve never really had a label for myself.
“Today I’m gay – I’m in a gay relationship – and that’s where I am. That’s good enough for me.”
Yesterday, on the UK cookery and food podcast Table Manners, talking with Jessie Ware and her mother Lennie, Porowski said that when he got the job with Queer Eye, he never intended to talk much about his personal life, preferring to keep it private.
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He says he was happy for viewers to assume he was gay, to save himself revealing more.
“When I started the show there were certain things I told myself I was never going to talk about.
“The first one being I wasn’t going to talk about fluidity and they’d just assume I was just gay and like most of my life people just assumed I was straight and I would be in a relationship and working in a restaurant and people would just assume that.”
However, he quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. Queer Eye is an unscripted show. The five experts want the people they’re helping to open up about their lives. Porowski realized that to do this he was going to have to start opening up about himself, too.
“I told myself that I’m not going to talk about the gay things or my complicated family but what I realized very quickly was if we expect these people to open up about their lives with five total strangers everything has to be a conversation.”
Related: Antoni Porowski is back on the market after splitting up with Trace Lehnoff
He says a turning point came for him in the latest season of the Netflix show. In episode four, the team helps coach Wanda, who had a sometimes difficult relationship with her daughters.
One of the daughters tells Porowski that her mom never says “I love you.” Porowski was surprised at how much this impacted him. It reminded him of his mom, and he ended up talking about his sometimes difficult relationship with her.
He told Wanda that he doesn’t currently have a relationship with his mom: “I’m not saying she didn’t love me growing up, but she was somebody who never said ‘I love you’ back. It was very hard for her to say.”
He says he has a relationship with his dad, although the two were more distant when younger as his dad worked long hours. They found some common ground as his father made an effort to cook him a nice steak dinner every couple of 2-3 months: father-son memories he now cherishes.
Since finding recognition with Queer Eye, Porowski’s personal life has been the subject of media attention.
It’s known he broke up with his boyfriend of seven years, Joey Krietemeyer, in summer 2018. After this, he dated Flipping Out’s Trace Lehnhoff for around a year. They split a couple of months ago and Porowski’s now single.
Related: Antoni Porowski and Jonathan Van Ness finally address those relationship rumors. Sort of.
On Table Manners, where he was promoting his new book, Antoni in the Kitchen, he revealed he sometimes finds single life hard.
“I am somebody who is pathologically co-dependent, I’ve always lost myself in relationships. That’s just the person I am, I kind of tend to lose my identity and I have like abandonment issues, so I really try to make sure the person loves me and never leaves me. So I’m trying to learn to be independent.
“Especially with the life that I have now I am surrounded by people all the time and I mean you know what that’s like, you are in these crazy environments and at the end of the day you’re kind of like left with yourself and that is a terrifying thing for me.”
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“Because I love people, but at the same time, being with myself is probably the most uncomfortable thing … I hate being on my own.”
To learn to be more comfortable with being single, he said he was ensuring he had quiet nights at home alone in New York, lighting candles and listening to music and having, “a romantic night with myself.”
Heywood Jablowme
This is just the kind of millennial unintentional self-parody that makes me love Queerty. When we’ve got this, who needs The Onion?
Now bring on Donston to explain all the “fluidity” stuff.
Donston
Here I am. One of the reasons to embrace the reality of “fluidity” and the orientation and gender spectrum is so people who aren’t entirely homosexual or heterosexual in every way all the time won’t feel that “gay” or “straight” are some alien, one-note ideas that’s just too basic for them to relate. And that in turn helps to snuff out some of the pretentious prattling about yourself. But ultimately, I just don’t care what someone does or doesn’t want to call themselves. None of my diatribes or essays have been mostly driven by whatever “label” someone embraces. Though yes, I will argue against ignorance.
UlfRaynor
Good Donston, then they can label themselves what they actually are, bisexual.
Bisexuality exist on a spectrum, homosexuality does not, it is an innate characteristic and is still classified as such by the American Psychological Association.
And just because a bisexual person may lean more to the same sex or to the opposite sex doesn’t make them gay or str8, they are still bi.
Labels do serve a purpose and there is absolutely nothing wrong with being bi, gay or str8.
What is wrong is trying to “force” a square peg into a round hole.
You constantly keep trying to redefine what gay means, it is the word that homosexual men used to define themselves in a none defamatory way.
Rock-N-RollHS
Lol. So true.
Fluidity is b.s. Never met a truly fluid person. Fluids are always young and young ones always like to keep one foot in the hetero door because, hey, no one likes to be marginalized, esp the young ones–so sensitive. The worst are the young straight guys who claim the fluid label just to be politically correct–what they call allied identification. Own your “privilege,” as the kids say, and, for crissakes, spare me your guilt.
Donston
I agree that “labels” serve a purpose. But I don’t get the obsession with dictating them to others. Ultimately, you don’t have any control over what someone does or does not call themselves. Just like you can’t control whether someone comes out, whether they choose to embrace any identities at all, who they have sex with, who they have relationships with, how much of their orientation and motivations they wish to reveal. There are homos that claim bi or straight or queer, bi’s who claim gay or straight or queer, heteros who claim bi. Then you have the “no labels” folks. That is what that is. And “gay” didn’t become a popular term as an equation to homosexual. In fact, it initially became popular as a disconnection from “homosexual”. And no matter how obsessed people are with definitions, everyone seems to have their own ideas on this stuff. And yeah, there are people who are inherently heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual then they’re not. “Labels” may serve a purpose, but continuing to whine about what people do with them and beat people up over sociology and identity trends and identity politics doesn’t serve any purpose beyond ego. Its not helping anyone. This is why my focus is elsewhere.
Cam
So, in a gay relationship, has been in a gay relationship/s for ages, yet tries to jump on the “not gay” bandwagon because in some nebulous future there is the distinct possibility that he could possibly sleep with somebody different.
Judespeak
Wow, what a completely uninteresting person.
OzJosh
So his gay credentials are as nebulous as his cooking credentials?
Rock-N-RollHS
The dude is a narcissist. How the others on the show put up with him, beyond me.
EZinHTown
Fluid? Hahahaha! That is all
[email protected]
i do not care what someone defines themselves as ..as long as their behavior doesn’t make them hypocrites.
djmcgamester
Bisexual is a thing. No need for fluidity. Why are we redefining perfectly acceptable terms? I have had, on occasion, interest in some women. I guess you could call that fluid but it’s more like a blip here and there. Based on my behavior (years after coming out) you could probably put me at Kinsey 5.75. I call that gay. It’s irrelevant in my life and it only comes up here in response to this article.