Tan France Cried a Lot While Filming the Latest Season of “Queer Eye”

• Tan France told Insider that Queer Eye season 7 was the hardest to film.
• France got emotional after seeing the long-term impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans.
• France also explained how the upcoming season of Next in Fashion is raising the stakes for contestants.

Filming the latest season of the award-winning reality show was an emotional experience for Queer Eye fashion guru Tan France.

In the seventh season of Queer Eye, which has no release date yet, the Fab Five – France, Jonathan Van Ness, Karamo Brown, Bobby Berk and Antoni Porowski – are spending time in New Orleans this time.

But witnessing the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005, proved particularly challenging for France.

“It was easy to see what’s happened to the city and the state and the people and how it’s affecting them,” France, who promotes his collaboration with Starbucks and his Spring Coffee Break campaign, told Insider. “But my core feelings in general have changed since becoming a parent. I’m just a weeper now. So I’m much more in touch with my feelings. So there’s a lot of reasons why this has been a much more emotional journey.”

France and husband Rob welcomed their son Ismail in July 2021.

Since then, the couple have made a concerted effort to protect Ismail, from shielding his identity on social media to building a new one-room home in Salt Lake City where they can homeschool Ismail with their friends’ children.

The style guru, who had Ismail filming Queer Eye in New Orleans, teased the people or “heroes” who would be starring in the upcoming season.

“Each of our heroes comes from a really different background — and I’m not just talking about ethnicity or sexuality,” France explained. “I mean, unlike the life we ​​live or what a lot of people live. New Orleans has been through a lot of turbulence over the last several decades and how they’ve bounced back and in many cases not recovered from it.”

“And so this story is very valuable to really give our opinions on aspects or issues that we’ve never really spoken about on the show,” he said.

France has also contributed to the second season of Netflix’s Next in Fashion, which debuts on Friday. France is co-hosting this new season with Gigi Hadid replacing Alexa Chung.

For France, the experience of shooting with Hadid this season was a no-brainer. The two friends have known each other for almost five years and exchanged parenting tips. (Hadid shares 2-year-old daughter Khai with ex-boyfriend Zayn Malik.)

“We were just talking about people’s clothes that we would do on their sofa while we watch TV — something we basically do in real life,” France recalled filming the show with Hadid. “There’s nothing difficult about that. The only difficult thing about it is that we’re both new parents, and back then we watched new parents juggle home and work.”

He added: “But the show itself wasn’t difficult at all. It’s been five weeks of bliss.”

But aside from Next in Fashion and Queer Eye, France is also collaborating with Starbucks on its Spring Coffee Break campaign to help coffee lovers bring a seasonal refresh to their everyday routine this spring. There’s even a chance to win a virtual coffee break featuring France.