Queer Eye alum Bobby Berk is finally speaking out after fans speculated that there was a feud between him and Tan France.
“Tan and I had a moment,” Berk, 42, explained to Vanity Fair in an interview published on Thursday, January 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 and nothing romantic, just to clarify that.”
Berk sparked feud rumors after fans noticed he unfollowed France, 40, on Instagram shortly after announcing his exit from the Netflix show in November 2023. In his Vanity Fair interview, Berk admitted that he regretted unfollowing Tan.
“Should I have unfollowed Tan? No,” Berk told the outlet. “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.”
Two months later, the duo — who starred on Queer Eye together alongside Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski and Jonathan Van Ness since 2018 — reunited at the Emmy Awards and started to make amends with each other.
“I will always have a very special place in my heart for him and [Tan’s husband] Rob [France] and the kids,” Berk explained. “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.”
In November 2023, Berk announced his exit from Queer Eye after six years.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I announce that season 8 will be my final season on Queer Eye,” he wrote in a lengthy Instagram post at the time. “It’s not been an easy decision to be at peace with, but a necessary one. Although my journey with Queer Eye is over, my journey with you is not. You will be seeing more of me very soon. I love you all so so much and I’ll meet you all in Nola for one final season. @foreverthefab5.”
A few days after his announcement, a source told Us Weekly that the reason for Berk’s departure was “because he wasn’t vibing with the cast.”
“There were many challenges with scheduling [and] there was a loss of interest from Bobby filming the show,” the insider shared with Us. “The network and the cast thought it was time to bring in fresh blood. His heart was not in it and the rest of the cast started to resent him because of that.”
A second source shared that Berk “was not asked to leave” and the “decision was amicable.”
Berk addressed his decision to leave the show in the Vanity Fair interview, noting that him and the rest of the original cast were ready to part ways when their seven-cycle contract was up in September 2022. However, after the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, Netflix decided to offer them a new contract for four additional cycles, which Berk thought him and his costars would not sign.
“We’d just assumed that the show wouldn’t come back if we all didn’t come back. I was like, I’m not going to be having FOMO cause the show is not going to happen. I had become at peace with it,” Berk explained before sharing that the other members decided to renew their contracts and Netflix ultimately decided they could “recast one person,” which ended up being Berk.
While Berk was “angry” with the decision at first, he ended up coming to terms with it as he already made other plans he “wasn’t willing” to change.
“We had mentally just prepared ourselves to move on — that’s why I left,” he said.
